Sofia Hagberg on End Of The Road Festival

United Kingdom | by Ross Purdie | 04 September 2008

Not so though the Americana and folk loving creators of End Of The Road Festival, two friends who have successfully built their own modest gathering, literally out of the ground, to form one of the best new small festivals of the last five years. Relying heavily on the help of friends, volunteers and bands who love to party as much as perform in front of intimate yet adoring crowds, Sofia Hagberg and Simon Taffe have found their niche in applying the finishing touches to summer. 

Set in Larmer Tree Gardens in Dorset, the beau-boutique festival encourages expression in its rawest form, from nudging artists to tear up their usual set-lists in favour of something unique, to old Viking games and impromtu performances on an open air piano. It's a formula that's started to pay off with the festival selling out for the first time ever this year as others have struggled.

But financial reward has never been the issue, you just need to look at the amount of acts flown over from the States for evidence of that. If ever there was a complete labour of love in today's crowded festival arena, End Of The Road is it, and this year boasts easily its deepest line up to date, with Conor Oberst, Bon Iver, Mercury Rev and Dirty Three all making rare festival stops.

We talked to Sofia Hagberg ahead of her third and most challenging festival to date. End Of? No, this is just the beginning...     

VF: Do you feel you’ve pulled a bit of a coup getting Conor Oberst as a headliner this year?
SH: “Yes! Steve Strange, his agent, rang me out of the blue and said 'How about it?' He's one of the biggest agents around, he does Eminem and Snow Patrol – like, massive bands – so he's very hard to get hold of. I was quite shocked when he actually rang. We have tried to get Bright Eyes for the past few years so obviously he knew we were in to it, so that was quite nice.  Conor's done solo things before but I don't think he's done it with a proper band. We’re very grateful to have him.”

VF: And the other two headliners are Calexico and Mercury Rev, do you think they'll prove a good fit?
SH: “Yeah, I think they're just perfect. Calexico closed a festival in Greece and it was just absolutely amazing; I think they played for about two hours. We've been into them for many years as their vibe goes very much hand-in-hand with End Of The Road. Mercury Rev are the same. Simon saw them in Scotland years ago when this really tiny band at the time was supporting them. They were called The Flaming Lips! We love all these bands; we're so chuffed about it.”

VF: Would you say this is your best line up to date?
SH: “I think other people can say, "oh, that was better than last year", or "that was better than this year", but personally I love all the music that we put on. You can't really compare it – it's all a different experience and they're all amazing so I wouldn't really be able to say.”

VF: Fair enough. Putting it a different way then – there are two of you doing this line-up, you've obviously got to cater for your own tastes and that of a market to sell tickets to; how difficult is to come up with something you're happy with that will also sell tickets?
SH: “Well, to be honest we  just start out with a personal wish-list, and then we approach the agents and pick them off one by one because often certain dates might not fit. We do tend to have a passion for American bands, which makes the booking quite tricky because obviously they have to travel over here. I think we're quite lucky that the kind of music we're into is niche, and there’s quite a large crowd out there with the same passion, the same taste in music.”

VF: So have you got a formula behind you now?
SH: “We actually don't want to fall into the trap of being in a set way when it comes to music or the bands that we book – our tastes are quite broad; I listen to hip-hop, we're into electronic music. It's a real diversity and we want to feel that we can always have the freedom to book whatever we're into. Also, I think that our crowd is really open minded and curious as to what we're going to come up with. They don't expect us to stick to a certain formula.”

VF: I've never heard of a lot of the bands on your line-up , a lot of them I have, but End Of The Road seems to traditionally be very American and folk-based, although this year there seem more electronic acts coming in..
SH: “Probably not in the sense you would notice straight away by looking at the total line-up. Like last year we had Zombie Zombie play their first UK show and that was just absolutely amazing. Everybody in the tent went crazy.”

VF: They're doing quite well now, aren't they?
SH: “Yeah, we're just trying to stick a few in there that represent our other passions which might not be mainstream.”

VF: I've read somewhere that you got the idea of End Of The Road at Green Man after being completely blown away by that festival. They are quite similar to you - both festivals are a few weeks apart and in similar part of the country - do you see them as your main rival?
SH: “To be honest we love the Green Man Festival and we still go every year. The first time we went was 2005 and what made Simon come up with his idea for our festival was the fact that Green Man at that time was purely folk music, and we thought we could mix folk music with all the other elements we were into. In a sense, we're in competition but if anyone ever asks me about Green Man I'll say it's one of the best festivals in the UK. I think what we're trying to do is book as different a line up to what they've got, as is possible. But if a band has the chance to play End of the Road and Green Man we try not to stop them from doing that.”

VF: What other festivals stick out for you as good role models?
SH: “There's a lovely festival in Sweden called Emmaboda, which has a really grass-rooty feel to it, and they often book bands you’ve never heard of, and then two years down the line they'll be quite big. There's also a lovely festival in Norway called Øya. I don't really know if there are any role models in the UK. Because we've gone to so many festivals over the years we just pick the best from all of them. Every festival has something good to offer – Glastonbury is a feel-good sort of festival, for instance."

VF: You've from Sweden and have tried to bring some Scandinavian elements to End of the Road. Why was that important to you?
SH: “I think wherever you're from you obviously want to support your country. Being in a Swedish band it can be really tough to break the UK, so it was mainly about trying to help Swedish music. I also think Sweden and England have a similar sense of humour and a lot of my UK friends who go over to Sweden completely fall in love with it, so it's quite nice to give people that taster of what Sweden's like, through providing Swedish food and playing a cool little Viking game – that sort of thing.”

VF: What do you think makes End of the Road stick out among other festivals in the UK? What's your niche?
SH: “I suppose the Scandinavian element doesn't exist at any of the others, but I also think our line up makes us stick out. There’s also our attention to detail; we spend so much time on the decorations on the site and making sure that what we have to offer is really special. Also I think it is the fact that we're quite small – only 5000 tickets available - and the fact that we're keeping it intimate and not growing. Plus, there is this really low-key and grass-rooty atmosphere; there's no corporate backing or branding going on.”

VF: How big is the team producing all of this?
SH: “I'm the only full-time member of staff as we just don't have the budget to have lots of people. We also have a production manager who does all the practical bits; contractors, site-management, that stuff. Obviously Simon and Philip spend time here when they can, but Simon has to stick with his decorating to make the money to make things go round, so that's it. In terms of attention to detail for site decoration, it's all our friends who get together throughout the summer. Last year in the back garden of Simon's house, they were building stalls, sofas, and signs, and they go down on Monday and start building the site. We had loads of little toys sitting having picnics on the tree branches and lots of tiny little things you might not notice at first glance.”

VF: You won the UK Festival Award for ‘Best New Festival’ in 2006. Do you now feel established or does every year feel like a fresh challenge?
SH: “I think you can never sit back and feel like, ‘Oh yeah this is going great, now we can relax’. You always have to be on your toes and strive to make things better and give it all you've got. The change has been amazing in the sense that, say in the first year I'd be sitting on the tube with my flyers and I'd start talking to random people saying, "Hey, you gotta check this out", and if I do that now or if I talk to random people at a party, people have actually heard of the festival which is amazing and we get a lot of the bands wanting to come back and play the following year. Even bands we haven't had any contact with will say to their agents that they want to play End Of The Road this year and that's all happened in just two years; it's a privilege to work with such an exciting project.”

VF: You mentioned you've got to keep on your toes and keep pushing forward - are you doing anything this year that's different from last year?
SH: “Yes, we're doing a cinema tent and we're going to theme the days. We’ll also try and get more involvement from the general public because basically we're going to launch a short film competition together with Little White Lies – one of the best film review magazines – so that's really exciting.“

VF: If you could pick out five of the bands that have played in the last two years, or are on this year's line-up, who would best sum up the musical ethos of the festival?
SH: “It's hard to remember them! I reckon Micah P Hinson; he played the first year and is playing this year, and he is just our kind of thing. Yo La Tengo for sure, Lamb Chop, Ryan Adams, that's four, so one more... we do like on the rock side of things? I'm going to say Super Furry Animals.”

VF: For anyone who hasn't been to End of the Road, how would you explain the festival?
SH: “It's just a feel-good kind of thing, it's all really relaxed and chilled out and it's really about spending time with people who are like minded and open minded, so you'll make lots of new friends. Also we only have three stages so it's not going to criss-cross too much; I find it quite frustrating when you go to Glastonbury and there's like 20 stages and the people you want to see always play at the same time. And it's really cosy and really friendly, down to earth, good food and lots of parrots and peacocks!”

VF: And finally, why the name 'End of the Road'?
SH: “It's kind of a long story. Simon's always been a big Bob Dylan fan, and he really liked 'No Direction Home', but then obviously the DVD came out so we couldn't have that name, and then one day Simon just along those lines came up with End of the Road - It was even before we had the dates for the festival. The name has kind of stuck with us and we couldn't really come up with anything else that would fit better. Then obviously when we decided on the dates, and we were one of the last festivals of the season, it just fit so perfectly.”

End Of The Road Festival 2008 takes place at Larmer Tree Gardens, north Dorset, from 12-14 September. It's completely sold out.