Last year was Glasgow Podcart and Detour’s first invitation to Wickerman. Chay Woodman of The Solus Tent had expressed his love of Podcart and over email we decided to plan something. As everyone knows I am a huge fan of Detour and their limitless creativity and huge balls, so they were the perfect team to combine with.

We had an epic time and the videos, sounds and images that came out of it were only the start of what we were aiming to begin. This year we kindly invited back. The lead up was somewhat stressful, I am not going to lie, but it was worth every palpitation and freak out.

Chay Woodman, Chris Connick and Allan Carroll are the main team behind the Solus Tent and this year saw the addition of Kenney Harris who will be taking a more active role in the future. Chay Woodman has become a bit of an inspiration to me and the opportunity that he has given ourselves and Detour is so fucking humbling that it fuels the fire we have to keep going with what we do.

We don’t get funding for what we do. We use our own money because we adore it so much. After conversations with the Detour team which includes Ally McCrae, David Weaver, Ben Cowie and Gordon Davidson over the weekend I realised exactly how much we have achieved in such a short space of time. For people like Chay and his team to give us the chance to do what we do and give us the help they have means more than most people will ever know.

We push the limits with what we can and we try to inject as much fun into what we do so that the people involved and the artists get as much enjoyment as possible whilst still realising the absolutely phenomenal talent we have in this country. You can throw thousands at TV shows, you can offer a recording contract worth fuck knows how much to some manufactured 1 hit wonder, but it will fade after a while and like the emperor’s new clothes the public will get bored. When the ideas in your head become a reality and you start to push the boundaries of what is classed as entertainment then that is when it really becomes something worthwhile and exciting.

This weekend has seen a massive group of people from production, artists, stage hands and friends all combine and have one of the best weekends ever on a small budget using our unique ideas and Solus’s help. When you see some of the shit we got up to then I think you will be suitably pleased. In the meantime we will be sticking up our mini reviews and podcast. Detour will be hard at work editing videos which I totally sympathise with as they were filming like bastarding demons.

So this is a thank you to everyone that helped make this a special weekend and also a message to say thanks for supporting all of us continually because if you didn’t then we wouldn’t be able to do what we do and places like the Solus Tent would not be as vitally important as what they are.

Roll on next year.

Halina x

Photo credit: Euan Robertson : – http://www.euanrphoto.com