If you spent some time at Old Market over the weekend, you might have seen people running around with big, colourful vegetables, handing onions to strangers on the street. You might have wondered what all this is about, as guitars blast out of pub doors. Welcome to the fifth year of Outer Town, one of the most creative and DIY fests you can find in Bristol.
Held across pubs and venues around Old Market, from Trinity to the Elmer’s Arms, this is where you find out what the underground scene is up to. There’s folk music, there’s punk, there’s quirky art at the makers market. It’s a space that inspires you to be creative and to celebrate the creatives who are making Bristol more fun.
Harry, who is one of the organisers behind Outer Town, said one of their secrets to success is always keeping a number of slots open until close to the event.
“This allows us to capture some of the most exciting emerging artists at an early stage in their careers. Artists can rise incredibly quickly, and if you miss that moment, they can be out of reach by the following year,” Harry told me.
He adds: “Our core aim has always been the same: to bring Old Market to life, support new music, and support grassroots venues and creatives.”
And come to life, it did. In the Trinity garden, I watch as people dressed in costume juggle onions. A woman comes over to ask if I want to play a game of naughts and crosses on her potato.
And there’s the music: I start the day watching a set with Myer U Clark at to the moon. Fully improvised, at one point he starts singing Kumbaya, My Lord, the crowd joining in. I spoke to Myer about his set and he says it went well, but he didn’t realise how much time he had to fill. I ask him about the music video he released recently, of his song Make A Bet, produced by the Bristol group Below The Belt.
“I really like really clean music but I also like messy, scrunchy music, badly recorded. The song is about infatuation,” Myer tells me.
“The video came about because I was working with this Bristol bunch, they all work in hospitality and did the video for free, it was very generous. I said, could we do it in the countryside? I’m from north Devon so it was nice to go back to the countryside. I’ve been in Bristol for about five years.”
Myer says he gets a lot of inspiration from old songwriters from the 30s, like Al Bowlly.
“It’s the sounds. I connect to them emotionally. That’s how I hear music, through the melody and how it makes me feel,” he adds.
I see that in his Outer Town set, how close he is to his audience, how despite the band he works with, it’s still mostly him and his guitar.
I spend the rest of the day trying to catch as much music as possible and taking in all the quirky Old Market venues. I catch Wyatt, a band from Manchester, at Elmer’s Arms, people squeezing into the tight space to watch. The Slow Country at Ill Repute next door impress with a violin and a Black Country, New Road sound.
The headliners Honeyglace and TTSSFU close off the day with a flourish. I go away from all this feeling inspired, and happy to be part of Bristol’s music scene, which seems to be booming despite all the challenges. It’s something to feel happy about.
// Words: Clara Bullock // Photography: Ash Evans and Hazel Blacher //