When the team behind Summer’s End announced that the festival would return in 2021, there was a rush to buy tickets and a genuine sense of relief. The live circuit was starting to go back to normal and we could see our favourite bands in-person once again. But as the UK emerged from lockdowns and the date edged closer, organisers Huw Lloyd-Jones and Stephen Lambe faced the challenges of running the modest-sized event against a backdrop of changing rules and regulations. Prog caught up with them at October’s event to find out how they did it.

Words: Jerry Ewing

Cosmograf’s Robin Armstrong on stunning form.

Images: Chris Walkden

“It’s been a ballache,” sighs Huw Lloyd-Jones, singer with Also Eden and one half of the longtime organisational team behind the UK’s much-loved prog festival, Summer’s End. “We lost every single overseas band, with the exception of one. We even lost UK-based bands who had members who lived overseas.”

While the return of Summer’s End Progressive Rock Festival to the gig calendar has given its organisers some relief, it’s safe to say holding a festival against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic has also given them a whole new heap of organisational headaches.

“I think the single biggest difficulty is we haven’t known what’s happening,” explains Lloyd-Jones. “Day to day, we haven’t known what the rules are going to be. Until a couple months ago we didn’t even know if we’d be allowed to run. Right up until two or three days ago, we thought we were finally on the home stretch, [when] the Welsh Assembly announced that venues must ask for Covid passports. Thank goodness we slipped through the net because we’re under 500 capacity and the rules aren’t going to come through until later. But just for those first five minutes when just the headlines were available and the body content of the report wasn’t available…”

“It’s a small venue. We’re doing what we can,” adds Stephen Lambe, Lloyd-Jones’ fellow organiser, author and the man behind the recent publishing phenomenon Sonicbond (whose bookshelf doesn’t have at least one of their hugely enjoyable On Track series?). “We’re asking people to wear masks. We’re asking them to wear masks to queue for the bar and the kitchen. The lounge won’t be open as it usually is, which is kind of a shame because there are a couple of our punters who actually come and sit in the lounge for the entire festival. We’ll have to make provision for them. But the kitchen and the bar will have a one-way system.”