2000 Trees 2026
Second on the festival agenda was 2000 Trees; a festival we look forward to each year, as it’s a time we get to meet up with our favourite festival buddies and have an absolute ball no matter what the lineup is saying. Thank god, because the lineup this year was rather poor!
Like Bearded Theory, 2000 Trees was a scorcher this year again, so we’d taken precautions and bought ourselves a swanky gazebo. This ended up being the hub of our hangouts for the duration of the festival as the shade was very much welcome and we had Bingo play - let me explain…
It all started at Download 2023, where we met up with our mate Chloe and she introduced us to Alex and Gem. The five of us were sitting around camp one morning, and got talking about what bands we were there to see. Given that I’d just dragged Tora along to the festival despite having no interest in rock/metal, they didn’t exactly have a huge list on the itinerary. After explaining this, someone asked what their ideal festival would be if it could be any type of music - Tora’s answer: Balladfest. And so, Balladfest was born. Our imaginations spiralled, as we came up with our target market, a perfect lineup, the facilities we’d have in place such as prosecco delivered on golf carts to the glamping tents, etc. it was all going on. Bingo was a definite must at Balladfest, and so for the following years we’ve brought along a travel-sized bingo game where we’ve each bought a prize, and we take it in turns across the weekend to be the Bingo caller and give out our prize to the winner.
The first band of note has to be Hyphen. We have loved Hyphen’s music for the last couple of years and we watched him last year at Trees which was one of our highlights. He’s political, he’s punky, he’s fun and he famously “wears the shortest shorts in punk rock”. I would generally describe the theme of his music as very anti-Reform. If you can think of anything Nigel Farage stands for, then Hyphen has probably got a song going against it - which, of course, I’m very much here for. The gig was a lot of fun despite our faces saying otherwise (see picture below)...
Being the first day, we did have a lot to drink and to be honest with you, the rest of the day was quite a blur! Hardly got any photos and my memory is hazy. I know we saw Lake Malice, who we enjoyed (I think!), so I’ll have to leave it there for day one.
Day two, we decided to have Alex’s pre-birthday birthday party! His actual birthday is the week after Trees, but we wanted to have a little celebration during the festival. Chloe had bought birthday bunting for the gazebo, balloons, party hats and candles, and we’d bought a birthday cake (football as it was the World Cup at the same time) and birthday cupcakes. Going back to the night before, I did drunkenly decorate the gazebo with the birthday bunting and blew up some balloons when we got home - I thought I’d done a mint job until I woke up and they were as disheveled as I felt that morning. Not to worry, I managed to fix this up before Chloe and Alex arrived at base.
We pressed on with our first game of Bingo, and the first prize to give away was Alex’s - Chloe was the winner of the excellent “Team Bride” hand fan, which was actually such a useful prize as it was over 30°C most of the time. In fact, Chloe had been a legend in her own right and bought each of us a hand fan ahead of time, knowing there was a heatwave coming our way. I don’t think we would have survived the festival without them to be honest!!
Equipped with our new fans, we strolled into the arena to meet Alex’s mate, Jaffa. Jaffa was hilarious from the beginning despite “holding back” in case some of her jokes caused offense to us new people… but no, I think we all share her dark sense of humour and pretty much as soon as we met her, we knew she would be a solid new member of Balladfest - she just didn’t know it yet.
We had a few drinks together in the arena area and it wasn’t long before the gravitational force of Balladfest sucked us back into the hub for another round of Bingo, and this time, some birthday cake! It was time for Alex’s birthday celebrations - and Jaffa was a very welcome addition to camp. It didn’t take long before she was fully invested in Balladfest, and bought into the whole idea. We popped on a classic Ballad playlist and sang along to those iconic tracks of the 80s. It was during this singalong that I announced the tragic death of legend Bonnie Tyler who’d passed away just the day before. Needless to say, the playlist shortly changed to Bonnie’s greatest hits, as we listened intently with heavy hearts. RIP Bonnie Tyler.
Given the circumstances, there was only one thing for it - BIRTHDAY CAKE!! Out came the cake, decorated with the 4 and 0 candles for Alex’s big 40th birthday bash, and we sang happy birthday to him - much to his delight!
Bellies full of cake, we were about ready to march back into the arena and see Mariachi El Bronx - a mariachi band (shock, given the name). They definitely brought the energy with their elaborate variety of instruments, upbeat tunes and lots of dancing. We ended up in a huge conga line, weaving between everyone in the crowd as more and more people joined on.
The next big event on the list was Delilah Bon, but as we had a few hours, we just grabbed some food and milled around for a bit. Delilah Bon is an iconic brat-punk artist (she invented the genre herself) and she is also heavily political; standing against the patriarchy, against violence against women, and standing up for the rights of women and minorities - particularly members of the LGBTQIA+ community. She is a true force to be reckoned with, and isn’t afraid to speak her mind. The first track that caught my attention was “Dead Men Don’t Rape” - I had goosebumps listening to it. Lyrics rang so true for me, such as
“They get so offended when I say
Dead men don't rape
But where is their anger when I say
Women are, women are, women are dying”
And it only takes one look on her social media to see the exact types of men she’s talking about, in the comment sections like disgusting little cancerous cells. Another poignant part of a verse is:
“It's never been pro-life, only been pro-white
Black mothers fighting for justice
And what about babies? You wanna save them?
You only care when they're unborn”
These lyrics hit hard because they are so true! It is so frustrating to see these predominantly straight white men dictating what happens to women’s bodies, and our unborn babies, while giving no help to the mothers once they’ve been forced to give birth and have to deal with the consequences of the situations men have put them in. Anyway, I’ll stop because I could write a whole other post on this topic, but we’re here to talk about the wider festival, and not dissect each and every one of Delilah Bon’s lyrics.
Delilah came out and was badass as ever - putting her message out there and influencing young girls to stand up for themselves and their rights. She sang one of her songs right at the barrier while holding the hand of a young girl. Delilah struggled to hold it together because she wrote the song specifically for young girls like the one who’s hand she was holding, and I think it just made it all feel very real in that moment.
Don Broco was up next, who I was particularly excited to see! I’ve seen them before but I didn’t know them at that time, whereas now I knew their music and remembered how fun they were the first time I saw them so putting the two together, I knew we’d have a ball. It was every bit as good as I imagined. In fact, better. Me and Chloe decided to crowdsurf, but rather than go one at a time, I thought the crowd was big and dense enough to support us both at the same time, and it was!! We glided hand in hand, over the heads of hundreds of people and it was glorious! It felt like we were up there for about 10 minutes, whereas in reality, it was probably only a couple. We were so excited when we got thrown over the barrier and ran out back into the crowd. It’s honestly little moments like that at a festival, where you know you are exactly where you want to be. Experiencing it with friends is the icing on the cake.
Morning three was a very slow time. Annoyingly, I had a bout of anxiety which I don’t think is uncommon for people in a festival environment drinking from morning ‘til night for multiple days in a row… so I planned to take it easy. By this, I meant wallowing in my own self-pity and doing absolutely nothing. Chloe had other ideas. She fancied seeing a band called Prodigal at 11am, and as much of a wildcard idea as this was, she told me it was heavy and therefore I joined her. It turned out that 30 minutes of being brutally screamed at was exactly the medicine/therapy I needed at that moment and I came out feeling loads better. Clearly my emo phase was not in fact a phase.
Back at camp we were all feeling rather lethy again, and just flopped around under the gazebo for the majority of the afternoon; slowly munching away at the remainder of Alex’s birthday cake and cupcakes, VERY slowly getting through any drinks we could stomach, and the chat was minimal to say the least. That’s when Jaffa came bounding in to save the day! She brought a whole new energy to camp as she greeted us with a fresh face and plenty of laughs. We got stuck into a game of Bingo, and this time I was the lucky winner of Chloe’s prize, which was an epic collection of nostalgic toys - we had an etch-a-sketch, touchable bubbles and other fun stuff that at the time of writing this, for the life of me cannot remember! Soz Chloz.
We were all back on it by now, and well in the flow of chatting shite and having a good laugh, then I realised The Scratch was due to start imminently and we hadn’t even made an attempt to get ready to go back in! Again, Chloe came to the rescue and jumped up with me and off we went, bounding back into the arena. “The Scratch” are an Irish band who do a great job of blending their traditional Irish roots, with heavy metal, punky vibes and a bit of folk thrown in for good measure. Whatever genre it is, it was a great gig and most definitely worth the rush back in to see them. Chloe enjoyed them as well which I was so relieved about as she’d never heard of them before but trusted my judgement.
We caught a few more bands for the rest of the afternoon and bopped between the arena and camp, but there isn’t anything really to call out… That is until the silent disco happened. First, it was “Battlesnake” silent disco set from 23:45 - 00:45 - this was incredible. Honest to god, if you haven’t been to see a live band doing a silent disco set through a headset, you need to. It’s the weirdest experience. They were on stage absolutely thrashing out on their instruments and mics, but take away your headphones and it looked like you’re looking through a teenage boy’s bedroom window while he’s got his mates over trying to be the next Tenacious D! The costumes, the actions, everything - it was such a laugh. We had a ball there, and decided we’d continue on the night into the actual silent disco in the various tents. We tuned into the different channels and danced the night away until the early hours - a lot can change in a day!! Compared to the state of us that morning, to how we were that night, our moods were worlds apart. The silent disco was such a good laugh - loads of nostalgic throwbacks, singing at the top of our lungs to the likes of Avril Lavigne, thinking we were actual pop stars. We were even having Jagerbombs at one point, and if you’re in your 30s, you know you should know better! Me and Chloe got so overly confident that we took ourselves off to the barrier for a dance, giving it socks, then I stood on a solid plastic cup and absolutely stacked it. Never have I ever been humbled so quickly in my life. Anyway, the night came to an end and we grabbed ourselves a pizza - I was so excited to take some pizza back to Tora, that I went bursting through the van door proud as punch shouting “Torrrrrrr, looooook, I’ve got pizzaaaaaaa!!” - needless to say this wasn’t met with my anticipated reception, but they appreciated it nonetheless and tucked in.
The final day finally came, and if we thought we were wrecked yesterday, we had another thing coming today. The energy levels were on the floor. However, as we’d so loved Battlesnake during their silent disco set the night before, we plucked up enough energy by 1pm to head into the arena and see their set through actual speakers. I wish we had more energy and less of a hangover, because they were honestly so so good, but we just weren’t in the right frame of mind for their silliness.
I need to insert here, the other Bingo results and prizes because I cannot remember where these games came into it over the rest of the weekend… but Jaffa went out and purchased a prize during the festival, as she’d only become privy to the game whilst at the festival - I won her prize which was a cap that said “Thinking Cap” on the front. It was a thing of sheer brilliance. Birthday boy, Alex, won two prizes (quite apt) - he won my prize which was a fossil of a dinosaur tooth, which I thought was pretty cool and I know he and Chloe love that sort of stuff… and he also won a pair of Lucy & Yak socks courtesy of our wonderful Tora.
The final event came… the moment we’d all been waiting for… absolutely nothing to do with music, ballads or bingo… it was of course, the World Cup quarter-final! England vs Norway. The organisers had been so well organised, that they’d put a giant screen up at the main stage straight after the headliners that night, Neck Deep, so we could attend with our silent disco headsets and watch the second half of the match. We watched the first half of the match at the van and to be honest, we had a better view of it on the small tablet atop our table, than we did for the second half on the big screen. I don’t quite know what I was expecting, because of course by day four of binge-drinking and flailing around in crowds, people aren’t exactly going to be standing still, keeping an eye out for people behind them in case they’re blocking anyone’s view… and that’s exactly what it was like. Drunk people swaying side to side, some turning their headsets to the actual silent disco and dancing garishly to whatever was being played, standing right in front of you so you had their literal ponytails to stare at rather than the match you’re genuinely interested in seeing… god, I sound old! Anyway, the second half finally finished - I’d moved away to stand in the vacant spots next to the bins by now, because smelling the sweet scent of leftover tacos was actually better than standing in the crowd - it’d gone to extra time, so we collectively decided enough was enough and we bombed it back to the van to catch the last 30 minutes. It was a nail-biter but we got there in the end 2 - 1 to England - happy days!
And that was that! Another year, another Balladfest. Sad to be leaving the gang, but excited for next year and hopes are high that we won’t actually leave it a whole year before getting together again (but we say that every year!)
