A wee Insider Film.

Richard Muirhead, as well as getting engaged, found the time to put this together.

Can I have my steering wheel back please.

So the Insider was a lovely party full of lovely people and it went off pretty much without a hitch. Except I hear someone pulled the aerial and badges off Billy Wood's car and I know my blue mazda mx5 at the top of the parking field looked a bit neglected but someone pinched the steering wheel and the stereo. Anyone who provides information about who was responsible can have free tickets and hospitality for next years party and a reward of £100.

The local police think it was a pretty crappy move too and have agreed to take my car (which is otherwise immobile) to the lab for a wee examination but if you saw someone camping out with a black leather steering wheel and a silver stereo please let me know and you could save them the trouble. There are a few likely names knocking about already and hundreds of photos from the party from which to identify whodunnit.

Thanks very much,

Walter.

The Insider.

It all got a bit busy for posting around Wednesday before the Insider so anyone who has been holding out here for an update should have just come to the festival.

I have put together a flickr group, imaginitively titled Insider 2010, and have put the photos from my phone from throughout the build into it, I'm sure they will get swamped with quality content before long and please add your photos if you know how. The Insider facebook group is also gathering great things.

We would like to give a big thank you to The Leader programme for the help they gave us putting on the Insider, Limelights for lights and sound, No Fuss for the Saddlespan, Red Kite for the Yurts and Grants for the lawn tent. A big burp goes out to Thistly Cross for letting us consume an unfeasible amount of their cider and thanks also to Cairngorm for the tasty ale and The Balvenie for the fine Scotch.

There are a whole load of other people to thank but Ross says it better;

That was mental awesome
Thanking you all....and to name but a few......
Squirell Nutkins for being The Guvna' and Water Bufallo for making sense of it all. Dead Badger for programming the biggest goddamn line-up you've ever scene and makin it happen, Legend! My Love Golden eagle for bustin'out the finest of gourmet pleasure and doin all that you do in sortin it 'all' out for everybody. Dave the Chef and Lucyloo and the Glue for lookin after us all and The Run Around for gettin anythin without question. The French Giant for steppin in and The Girls in The Dog House for keepin us right. Dave The Doo for doin the doo and Jenni Cocktail for temptin us all. Harry The Tweed for dishin it out and Richard The Stag for rockin the yurt. Iceman, Big'n'wee Craig, Jazzy and The Girls for bustin a gut. Andy The Farmer and Donny The Evil Badger for settin the scene.. A Girl Called Gwenni, Agnieska and Nick, Molly Molly and Rufus, Jilly Willy and Sam, Mirra Mirra on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?.. you all are.
That was Awsome, fuckin Awsome!
Whose Tired.... Legend! x
.Nice One Everybody.

Thanks for coming and thank you for leaving the place so tidy, it means a lot to us, see you next year

Walter, Ross, Polly, Gordy and everyone at the Insider xx

2 Days and Counting.

No Fuss Events brilliant saddlespan tent went up today. The Secret garden and the kids tipi have come together with treasure hunts, face painting, story telling and mask making, and the Tap Tap Circus have their brilliant horsebox alongside. Henry Fosbrookes woodworking tent is here with pole lathes, hand made drums, a coracle and a huge birch marimba. The Ooo-Arr Tractor bar is finished. Highland Spring just donated lots of mineral water and Balvenie have come good on fine Malt whisky. The layout for the Firewood festival is sorted, and the departure point for boat rides to the Old Bridge Inn.

Tomorrow a record number of yurts arrive, not to mention the staging, PA, generators and lighting.

What we need now is lots of corrugated iron, not too wonky, for the roofs of the The Henhouse BBQ Bar and Grill and the Backwoods stage. If anybody has a heap of it lying around we would love to take it off your hands.

The Big Build.

Its all go at Inshriach this week, more hardcore recycling and and some help from Ritchies recycling in Aviemore and a wee shanty shack for the bar at the Backwoods stage is nearing completion. Wait until you see the inside.


This morning a lovely marquee has gone up for the lawn stage courtesy of Grants tent hire of Elgin.

So that just leaves 3 days, 2 more bars and 2 catering areas to build. The 'Ooo Arr Tractor Bar' ought to be done tonight.

FULL INSIDER 2010 RUNNING TIMES

Click here to view full Insider2010 running times

No Fuss Events

Big thanks to No Fuss Events who are providing us with this remarkable saddlespan tent to use at the Henhouse stage and for the Firewood festival.



In the meantime the Backwoods groundwork team (Ross, Hammy, Harry and myself) have been preparing the huge bowl in the field where we are going to put it, taking down fences and flattening, strimming and mowing with a selection of domestic gardening tools wholly unsuitable for the job.

Bogbain.

This weekend was the excellent Northern Roots Festival at Bogbain Farm. Unfortunately we only made the last night but we did get to see Tim Edey being amazing on the accordion with Marc Clement, both Tim and Marc will be joining Charlie McKerron for Insider Sunday.

10 days and counting...

Boutique Festivals in the Caledonian Mercury.

This lovely article just came out in the Caledonian Mercury and the BBC have just listed us as among the top ten things to do in June in the Highlands and Islands.

DAY TICKETS.

You can now buy day tickets through the button at the top of the site.

Don't fancy camping?

Camping is free, campervans are a tenner, yurts range from £300 to £700 but if you dont fancy any of the above you could always book into the Suie in Kincraig. Mike and Wendy have been very supportive of us, they would make you very welcome and they have a great wee pub attached.

Anthony and Gabby Robertson

500 years of folk history, ballads and travellers tales, passed generation to generation, will be making a special Insider appearance on Saturday courtesy of Tony and Gabby Robertson. They are the children of the legendary storyteller and balladeer Stanley Robertson and therefore the next custodians in a remarkable oral tradition. You can read more about the family in Stanley's obituary from the Guardian.

Many thanks to Sam Lee, pupil of Stanley's, a fine singer himself and organiser of the Magpies nest folk nights in London for putting this together.

The Backwoods stage.

We have been totally blessed with the crew who have turned up this week. Chris from Tap Tap theatre (who you will meet at the Insider) turned up with Ben Hesling on Monday afternoon and others have dropped in along the way. These photos show what has taken place in the woods in a frankly unbelievable 2 and a half days. The Backwoods stage is a work of art...

Daimh on Sunday.

Breaking free mid way through their tune up tour to play for us on Sunday evening are the outstanding Daimh.

They will take to the main stage to finish a 3 way folk extravaganza, following Macmaster and Hay and Charlie McKerron and Friends into the action

Charlie McKerron & friends.

Sunday on the main stage is Trad as Folk. We are delighted to welcome back local fiddle supremo Charlie McKerron of Session A9 and Capercaillie fame. Charlie McKerron & Friends is a handpicked selection of some of Scotland's finest musicians brought together specially for the Insider. This year it is set to include Marc Clement on guitar and Adam Sutherland on fiddle (both Session A9), Bo Jingham on whistle and Ross Ainslie on pipes (Treacherous Orchestra). With any luck the outstanding Tim Edey will be joining them on the box.

The full Trad as Folk line up will be announced next week.

A big thank you.

The Insider wouldnt be feasible without the help of the Cairngorms Local action group and the Leader fund, the Highland council and the Cairngorms National Park. Despite being not for profit, largely recycled and dependent on the generosity of both volonteers and musicians the Insider is elaborately overproduced for its size and currently sports one musician to every two and a half members of the public. The ticket prices would need to be considerably higher to stand a chance of breaking even if these various bodies didn't think that we were doing something good for the area and helped us out both financially and in terms of our infrastructure.

Their support allows us to keep the numbers down, the prices sensible and the atmosphere intimate, all the qualities that made 2009 so special for the people who came along. We would like to say a big thank you to all of them for their progressive thinking, fast footedness and support.

The Backwoods Bar.

The Backwoods Bar is nearing completion which means we can get underway building an equally, if not more beautiful stage alongside...

The Sunday Times hottest acts in Scotland.

According to this article in the Sunday Times we are featuring 3 of the best - The Boy Who Trapped the Sun, The Stagger Rats and Alasdair Roberts, only Alasdair thinks it's the Outsider, which it isn't.

The Firewood Festival

Low Carbon Cairngorms have put this page up which explains a bit more about the Firewood Festival.

Earlybirds SOLD OUT (ages ago).

We are updating the website because the Earlybird tickets are long since sold out but for the time being you need to select the normal price tickets on the drop down top right. Its also still being a bit glitchy with earlier versions of Internet Explorer. Sorry about that, we are working to iron this out, if you still have problems drop me an email at insider@inshriachhouse.com and we can make a plan.

Also to clarify, we dont send out paper tickets, we have all your details on the gate, the P&P just covers paypal charges and the system compiling our names.

If you go down to the woods today...

Design a flyer.

You are about to see our ad (hoc) campaign go live. Some excellent people have been at work on this and among the pieces now going to the printers are a series of flyers with Glasgow in mind.

ICA awards.

So we didnt win, we came third, but Rockness won with 4 times as many votes as us and they have 100 times as many people, so we consider that a moral victory and have made a long winded and emotional acceptance speech to ourselves in the pub.

Medieval Knieval

Its not every day that you get a call saying 'Would you like a castle'...

The answer of course was yes and having borrowed a big trailer and raided the Backwoods pun bank we have a theme for this years woodland stage.

The Line Up.

Last night the Backwoods board got organised and pushed late into the night to cajole our line up (63 acts to date with only a couple of details to iron out) into place. Seeing it go from notebook to post it note to board was a pivotal moment. There is magic all over the Insider, runs of complimentary artists, dashes of theatre, amazing and unexpected collaborations, trad folk, new folk and not folk at all, brass, bass and reggae and somehow over 5 hours and a couple of bottles of wine it has been woven into 4 days of inspiring loveliness. Don't know about you but we are childishly excited.

You can click on this picture to make it larger if you can't wait for us to type it up and post it on the website.

Last FM and a really amazing stage.

I ought to have posted this weeks ago but I only just discovered how utterly brilliant the radio player on the Insider Last FM page is. Really everyone should be listening to it all the time.

In the meantime we have found a magnificent main stage, it's just like this one but has no chairs and lots of incredible bands...

The Firewood Festival

The Firewood festival deserves a little explaining.

The Insider proper and its line up starts on Friday but we are sharing some of the infrastructure with the National Park to organise a Festival of Firewood, woodworking and renewable energy. Its a free public day with talks, demonstrations, some yurts, good food and a few tunes. We will have schools in until 3 doing mask making, storytelling and friction firelighting so unless you are 12 or part of our crew we ask that you don't arrive until 4, after which those activities will continue but you can try your hand at pole lathing, woodworking and splitting and we will have some serious and some irreverent solutions to heating with wood, plus Ord Ban will be cooking on wood, Henry from the Woodland Orchestra will be conjuring up some rhythms and Bruce Luckhurst (who makes amazing stoves) is doing a fireshow. Its a good cause. And perhaps the electric car will offset my belching Land Rover a little.

If you hold an Insider ticket you are welcome to camp Thursday night but we are required to close the bar at 10pm in accordance with our license. You can stay up late on Friday.

A wee Interview

Here on Peenko's Scottish music blog is an interview I rattled off about the Insider. I ought to have proof read it a bit better but it gives you an idea of what we are up to.

Trouble buying tickets?

A few folk have got in touch saying that the Paypal link was broken. It isn't, it just disagrees with certain versions of Internet Explorer.

Try another browser and if that doesnt work send us a message at insider@inshriachhouse.com and i will sort it out.

Scooby Campers.

The lovely folks at Scooby Campers in Edinburgh have offered 15% off the cost of renting one of their fleet of classic VW campers for Insider ticket holders, bringing them in at £290 for the weekend.

So come on, get a fleet of them together and hit the highway...

Adding to the line up we have...

The line up just keeps growing, its got to stop somewhere but in the meantime we keep squeezing them in. We are extremely pleased to welcome Foxgang and The Little kicks to the fold.

Some very cool camping.

The tastiest yurt to grace the Insider is already in residence and what do you know - the papers got a hold of it...

Then a nice man called Pete came by and we have arranged to have some of his Kabooses at the Insider, we havent worked out what to charge for them yet but if you are interested in a yurt or one of these let me know.

Line up.

We probably wont finish working on the line up until the party is well underway but to whet your appetite these are the acts we have confirmed so far;

Sparrow and the workshop, jo mango, admiral fallow, mary Hampton, mike and solveig, mike heron and daughter, donna maciocia, the banana sessions, horndog brass band, joe acheson quartet, three blind wolves, adopted as holograph, matt Bennett (kinky afro), the injuns, claes cem, rachel sermanni, woodenbox with a fistful of fivers, charlie mckerron&friends, king arthurs men, john langan band, feis spe, jack sandison and the holy ghosts, the stagger rats, over the wall, Alasdair Roberts, kill it kid, oldwick, bonfire band.

Dont know about you but we are very excited indeed.

Full On John.

Thanks to John at Full on Adventure we will be offering boat rides down the Spey (last stop the Old Bridge Inn) for anyone needing to do shopping or visit the sprawling metropolis that is Aviemore during the Insider.

Kill it kid.

We are very pleased to announce Kill It Kid will be making an appearance at the Insider, Check out their myspace page.

Insider 2010 tickets are on sale!

Today is the Sunday you have been waiting for - the website is up and tickets are on sale...

http://www.insider2010.com


The first 100 are earlybird tickets at £60 (plus a 5% booking fee to cover bank and card charges) and once they are gone a weekend ticket will be £70. Under 12s go free provided they spend big at the bar. There are only 500 tickets because we like to keep our parties personal.

Big thanks to Henry for another splendid website.

JAQ

Thats the fantastic Joe Acheson Quartet on board. Excellent.

Have a butchers at their myspace page.

ICA awards.

Last years Insider has been nominated in the best live music event category at the ICA awards. If we win we promise to drink lots of champagne and make a very silly acceptance speech so vote for us here.

Facebook Page

I put together a Facebook page for the Insider last night and now, 16 hours later, it has 63 confirmed guests. There are 117 days until the Insider and if it continues at that rate we will have 7371 people who want to come. Heck. Please don't tell anyone else.

Insider 2010

A decision has been taken by the board of Backwoods Productions - the Insider 2010 is on. The big brains at Inshriach House, Ord Ban Restaurant and the Old Bridge Inn are whirring away to put together something really special, and this time we have 6 months to play with.

18th to 20th June, £70 weekend ticket, including camping. Capacity 600.

Line up TBC. Tickets will be on sale within the week. Maybe.