SALCOMBE COMES ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF MUSIC!

The second Salcombe Live Festival, held over the weekend of 1st – 3rd October, saw Salcombe come alive with the sound of music to the delight of music fans, many enjoying their first taste of live music in over eighteen months.

From folk, jazz and country to soul, acoustic, comedy and much more, almost 50 live performances were hosted across 13 venues in the town including The Distillery Bar, The Kings Arms, The Fortescue Inn, The Victoria Inn, Salcombe Harbour Hotel, Salcombe Yacht Club and the Holy Trinity Church. With specially erected small stages and marquees or stretch tents covering several of the venues’ outside spaces, festival goers enjoyed listening to the free live music whilst eating and drinking, all providing more business for the town’s hospitality businesses after a challenging year. 

The festival was organised by the newly-created Salcombe Live Community Interest Company (CIC), who plan to reinvest any profits made from the event into future events, aimed at attracting locals and visitors to Salcombe outside of the busy holiday season, and to enhance Salcombe’s reputation as a wonderful place to live, work or visit.

Salcombe Live CIC has been delighted to hear and read some fantastic feedback from the town’s residents, businesses and visitors to the town, including one festival-goer who commented ‘What a fantastic weekend of live music events!  We have had great fun trekking back and forth from South Sands to Salcombe and dropping in on different venues and artists. Well done to the organisers for providing such a wonderful event during such challenging times’, whilst another commented ‘Definitely what we needed to get us out and enjoying life again!’

Mike Roberts of Sailor V was delighted with the events hosted at his café in Fore Street, saying ‘It couldn’t have gone better’????? whilst MIke Johns - owner of The Ferry Inn - said he was already looking forward to next year!

After the disappointment of having to cancel the 2020 festival due to restrictions at the time on such events, the team of five volunteers, led by Chair Andy Jones, worked incredibly hard to make Salcombe Live a reality during a period of great uncertainty for live events and hospitality venues.  Says Andy, ‘In 2021 it felt even more important to us to do as much as we could to help Salcombe, its residents and visitors, and each of the sponsors and venues who supported Salcombe Live, come together for a weekend of live performances. Indeed one of the artists mentioned during her show how much she had been struck by the sense of community she felt during her time performing in Salcombe this weekend, something we couldn’t agree with more.’

Andy continues, We’d particularly like to thank our sponsors and supporters, including main sponsor Salcombe Distilling Co., plus Salcombe Tourist Information Centre, Toad Hall Cottages, Luscombe May, Ohjay, Moonhoney, Coast & Country Cottages, Blue River Cottages, Salcombe Dairy, and Hatch Marquees, who supplied a marquee extension for the central “Estuary Stage’ a The Kings Arms. Their support ensured that entry to all the venues was free of charge.

Andy continues, ‘Whilst it is difficult to pick out highlights from such an amazing and diverse weekend of live music and comedy, the event-finale show featuring award-winning Kathryn Roberts – brilliantly accompanied by husband, Sean Lakeman – will live long in the memory for many in the sell-out audience.  More than half had also attended the event-finale in 2019, and for many that was their last live music show, until now’.

In addition to the live music on offer around the town, a fantastic evening of comedy was hosted by Salcombe Distillery Co., and thoroughly enjoyed by a full capacity audience at The Distillery Bar.  The show was brilliantly compered by Luke Honoratty and featured well-known comedians Dan Evans, Nick Page and Tom Deacon.

Following the success of this year’s festival the organisers are already being asked for dates for the next one and hope very much to generate enough local support to put on an even bigger and better festival. Adds Andy, ‘We want to keep the vast majority of events free to attend, whilst continuing to showcase as many great acts as possible, but to do that we will need your help!  If you attended Salcombe Live, enjoyed it and would like to see it return in 2022, we would be very grateful for your support – donations, however small can be made via the CollectionPot page (until the end of October 2021) or festival merchandise including t-shirts and tea towels is still available on salcombe-live.co.uk.’