We are already busy in early preparations for Wychwood 2012 which will take place 8-10th June. We will start to announce the line up in the New Year, and some more new exciting content, but in the meantime here is news of our earlybird ticket offer for 2012, plus our new payment instalment plan, and our introduce a friend scheme which could mean you come to Wychwood 2012 for free!

Earlybird Ticket Offer and Payment Scheme
We are very pleased to announce that a limited number of earlybird tickets go on sale from 9am on Saturday 17 September. To order simply call us on 01993 772580, or download the application form from our ticket page. Tickets prices have been kept at the same level as our earlybird tickets from 2011, and if you buy now you will save up to £25 on the full price of an adult weekend camping ticket.

We are also introducing a payment scheme this year to make it easier for you to budget for your ticket purchase, with the your order split into four equal payments, one taken at the time of your order and each of the remaining three payments taken at the beginning  of each of the next three months . If you’d like to pay by instalments, just let us know when you call and we’ll set it up for you.

Introduce A Friend and Save A Further £20 Per Friend!
Thank you to everyone who filled in our recent questionnaire- the information was extremely useful for us to understand how we can make your Wychwood experience even better in 2012. One of the most gratifying things was that 96% of you would recommend Wychwood to your friends and family, and in light of this we are introducing a friends scheme to enable you to save even more on your ticket costs, when you introduce someone to the festival who has never been before. For every person you introduce to the festival and who buys an adult or concession weekend ticket, we will give you £20 off your ticket order. So if you buy a weekend ticket during our earlybird offer (at £100), and introduce 5 friends to the festival , your ticket is essentially free! You can introduce as many friends as you like, and you’ll be getting £20 for each and every one!

In order to become a Friend of the Festival, you must have already bought your own ticket for the 2012 festival, either when you left this year, or during this earlybird offer. Then simply give us a call on 01993 772580 and we’ll give you your own unique reference number to give to your friends to quote when they ring up for their tickets. This offer is only valid during the earlybird offer, at the end of which we’ll count up how many people you have introduced to the festival and then send you a cheque for this amount by way of thanks.

PLEASE NOTE that all friends’ orders will be checked against our database of previous customers to confirm that they are a totally new customer to the festival.

The eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed that we recently added some photos to our 2011 festival gallery. Click here to take a look.

If you would like to share your photos from Wychwood 2011 please post them on our facebook fan page.

What a start to this year’s festival. Wall to wall sunshine and 1000′s a happy smiling people. Even we were amazed at the sheer variety of things to do in every corner of the site.

Loved the main stage acts yesterday from The Travelling Band right through to The Charlatans and bands like Arcadian Kicks and Revere seemed to go down a storm in The Big Top. If you didn’t get down to the BBC Introducing Stage (in the Stagefright Bar) and the Pomme Stage then you missed some cracking music and there was some really interesting stuff going on in the cinema tent. So here’s to another cracking day of workshops, tunes, films, food and drink…

We’d love to hear what you think of the festival both in words and pictures so don’t be shy…feel free to post stuff on our Facebook page

The Big Lunch is an idea started by those splendid people at the Eden Project. The aim is to get as many people as possible across the whole of the UK to have lunch with their neighbours in a simple act of community, friendship and fun. This year it’s happening on Sunday 5th June and we’ve decided to take part.

We’ll be holding ours in front of The Pimm’s Bus at 12.30pm and it would be lovely to get as many of you there as possible. We can’t supply the food, but a feeling of communal warmth and loveliness is sure to be in abundance.

Welcome to our final newsletter before Wychwood 2011. Activity is at fever pitch on site as we build, what we hope, will be your ultimate festival experience!

Just three more sleeps until Wychwood 2011, and we look forward to welcoming you all!

We have such a wonderful line up this year including The Charlatans, The Waterboys, and Ian Anderson, through to Transglobal Underground, Eliza Carthy, Eddi Reader and Baka Beyond, and from John Cooper Clarke to Robin Ince! Not forgetting over 100 workshops for all ages, comedy, cinema, kids lit including Korky Paul and Judith Kerr, Headphone Disco, Healing Gardens, Sculpture Gardens- the list goes on and on!

Advance Tickets

If you still haven’t purchased yours, our Box Office will be open all week until 10pm so you can book your tickets in advance (tickets on the door will be more expensive). We are not sending tickets out now, but they will be ready for you to pick up at the festival box office…call us on 01993 772580, or visit our ticket page here for full information.

http://www.wychwoodfestival.com/tickets

The Weather

At the moment, the weather for our weekend is looking glorious- you can track how it looks by visiting The Weather Channel.

Obviously we cannot guarantee the weather though, so do come prepared for the vagaries of the British climate- and please remember to pack your sun cream!

Special Occasion

Are you celebrating a special occasion at the festival? Birthday, Anniversary, Hen/ Stag to etc. We’d love to know, and we’d love to mention you from main stage. Do tell us by emailing us, special@wychwoodfestival.com. Don’t forget to include your mobile so we can contact you on the day.

BBC Download

One final note on the BBC Introducing artists playing, there is now a download album available so you can sample the bands before you turn up. Do download the album now.

http://www.wychwoodfestival.com/bbc-introducing-bands-downloads

That’s it for now- we wish you all safe journeys to Wychwood, and we look forward to welcoming you to all that’s in store this coming weekend.

We are offering a free download with tracks by the BBC introducing bands playing at Wychwood this year. You can listen to the tracks and download them by clicking here and entering your details.

Welcome to your Wychwood Newsletter- just 14 sleeps to Wychwood! We start building the site next week, and we are starting to get very excited! We have more programme news to tell you about – more comedians and authors and news on our Cinema programme this year.

MORE COMEDY

In association with eFestivals.co.uk, we have even more comedians to tickle your funny bones. Dan Smith has been making people laugh for the past decade and with over 800 gigs under his belt it’s not surprising that he has a finely tuned performance! Russ Powell has been shortlisted for the FHM Stand Up Hero competition and has beaten the gong at the London Comedy Store and the Black Bottom Club.

A former professional wrestler, Wil Hodgson turned to stand-up a few years ago and hasn’t looked back, spinning hilarious and memorable yarns of bizarre West Country rednecks, Care Bears and big women. Wil was also recently on Russell Howard’s Good News. Christian Steel is not just a comedian, but a trained actor to boot. Between TV work, and performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company he has taken a successful show to the Edinburgh Festival and gained rave reviews. The comedy line-up is completed by emerging comedian Tom Toal who performs heartbreaking but ultimately heart-warming material about life, love and what it is truly like to be Tom Toal in this crazy world.

We also welcome our house band Thrill Collins, a trio on a mission to revive the genre the world forgot; skiffle.

http://www.wychwoodfestival.com/line-up/comedy-with-efestivals/

CINEMA

The film tent at this year’s Wychwood Music Festival is programmed by Whirlygig Cinema; a London-based project working to expose the talents of new and exciting filmmakers through short film events. At Wychwood they will provide a host of short film showreels, features, documentaries and live AV events, celebrating in particular the exciting interplay between music and film. Highlights include Exit Through The Gift Shop directed by Banksy, The Mighty Boosh On Tour: Journey of the Childmen, The Little Shop of Horrors and many more, plus live music sound tracks and performances by the likes of Oly Ralfe of Ralfe Band. For full details, please click here.

http://www.wychwoodfestival.com/line-up/cinema/

HEALING GARDENS

As always you are assured a warm welcome at the Healing Gardens where our lovely therapists and healers are once again offering a fabulous selection of relaxing and beneficial treatments for your body, mind and soul.

This year the Healing Gardens will include Reflexology, Indian Head Massage, Holistic Palmistry, Thermo Auricular Therapy (Hopi), Homeopathy, Reiki, Crystal Healing, Chakra Balancing, Osteopathy, Swedish Massage, Seated Massage and Thai Massage. For more information on our healers, please visit the website, where you can also contact therapists direct to make an advance booking.

http://www.wychwoodfestival.com/line-up/healing-gardens/

MORE AUTHORS

We have added more authors to our Kids Literature Festival. John Dougherty author of books including Zeus on the Loose will be performing readings from some of his books along with poems, songs and silliness.

We will also be joined by Chris Bradford, author of the award-winning Young Samurai series and non-fiction works, including an illustrated series of music business books for teenagers. Andy Briggs works as a screenwriter on movie projects with Warner Bros and Disney. Andy is the author of the HERO.COM series and the VILLAIN.NET anti-series for Young Adults.

http://www.wychwoodfestival.com/line-up/kids-literature/

TICKETS

If you haven’t purchased your tickets for Wychwood, there is still time, but don’t leave it till the last minute. As always, full information on how to buy can be found on our ticket page on the website. You can also call us on 01993 772580 to buy yours now.

http://www.wychwoodfestival.com/tickets

Plus don’t forget to visit our website where you can find details of all the wonderful things on offer to you at Wychwood 2011- music, workshops, comedy, cinema, kids literature, Headphone Disco, healing gardens, sculpture gardens; there is something for everyone at your Wychwood 2011.

If you are planning to come by car to this year’s festival then have a look at our friend’s Go Car Share. It won’t come as a great surprise as to what they do (name on the tin time) but it could save you money and of course it’s very eco-friendly

We catch up with Bluetones drummer Ed Chesters.

Welcome to Wychwood Ed. So after 6 studio albums and 17 years of touring you’ve decided to call it a day. Without sticking our big, fat noses in too much….why? There’s a die hard following of a thousand or so fans who wait exitedly for the next new song we write, but it used to be fifty thousand, and I just can’t kid myself anymore. Don’t get me wrong, the whole writing recording process is very rewarding and I’m very proud of everything we do, but we can’t afford the studio time anymore, and the endless nostalgia tours that some bands do don’t appeal to me, we’ve had a taste of that and it becomes too much like a job.

You’ve promised to ‘sign off with a bit of a bang’ – what can the Wychwood audience expect from you on stage? It’ll be our first gig this year, so it will be interesting, fresh ears for the songs and all that. Don’t expect all the guitar solos to be note perfect, but the soul will be there in abundance

Any plans as to what you’ll do next? Already started my new job as an osteopath at info@healthinmotion.org.uk in Maidenhead (shameless plug – good man) I started training six years ago ju and st to prove to myself that I could do something else and to satisfy my enquiring mind.

What have been the major changes you’ve noticed in the music industry since you entered the business? Top of the Pops, where’s the chart, who’s No.1? I can’t stay in touch with what’s going on. I don’t even know if there is anything going on.

Give us the biggest ‘high’ of your career? Flying to a gig in Blackpool after a TOTP performance, that was pretty high, at least 30,000 feet.

If you HAD to pick one of your songs as a favourite what would it be? Slackjaw

Here’s a question submitted by one of your fans Sahp Ng Yi…. Being a Left Banke fan as well as a Bluetones fan, I see that you recorded their song “Pretty Ballerina”. Did it make it onto one of your CDs? Yes it’s a b-side to someing and it’s on the compilation album

You’re playing Wychwood on Saturday 4 June…anybody else’s act you fancy catching? Yes I intend to get there on friday and watch the Travelling Band

Finally….give us your fave, family friendly joke? What’s the difference between a rock guitarist and a jazz guitarist? A rock guitarist plays 3 cords to 20,000 people, and a ……..

Great stuff, thanks Ed. The Bluetones play the Mains Stage on Sat 4 June.

Josh from Headphone Disco is getting in the mood for Wychwood.

Just over two weeks away, and all of us at Headphone Disco are very excited to be returning to Wychwood Festival! Last year was a blast, with hundreds of you partying with us through until the early hours, after the main music programming finished.

If you’ve never experienced a headphone disco, you’re in for a real treat this year at Wychwood. Marvel at a pair of DJs battling it out simultaneously over two wireless channels; using a switch on your headset that you’re given on the way into the big top you can choose which channel you want to hear and sing and dance to your hearts content!

Take off your headphones and you’ll see a sea of people enjoying fantastic tunes that only they can hear. This year we will also be wowing you with our Discovision show, with live video mixing on big screens too, so it really will be a real treat for the senses! See you at the festival

Thanks Josh….now I’m 4? em…something and went for the 1st time last year and thought it was utterly fab….but don’t expect to be up too early the next day – Ade