Dancing the day away at Corbridge Festival

The dancing pit at the main stage was full throughout, the older generation and teenagers sharing the space as Cheryl Durkin and her group of helpers provided something for everybody to enjoy.

For many, North-East rockabilly four-piece Bessie and the Zinc Buckets were a highlight, as their enthusiastic and charismatic set won them many new fans as they firmly got the party started.

Former frontman of The Specials, Neville Staple, and his band rolled back the years and had audience members young and old on their feet, while hip hop act Too Many T’s had the teenage section of the crowd pogoing in front of the stage.

As expected, Grandmaster Flash played a memorable set, even if it was very different to what many were expecting, his hour-plus stay behind the decks on stage creating a great atmosphere that had a wave of people waving their hands!

While the pre-festival talk centred around appearances by the Grandmaster and headliners The Coral, it was an act closer to home that stole the show.

Bessie and the Zinc Buckets can be seen playing community events throughout the region, and their entertaining and energetic stint went down a storm.

Their take on hits such as Motorhead’s The Ace of Spades and songs from Johnny Cash got the crowd singing along, while an interesting, and explicit, version of Oops Upside Your Head had people grinning from ear to ear.

A large portion of the crowd had paid the admission fee to watch the Neville Staple Band alone, and were slightly disappointed when he announced he couldn’t perform at full capacity due to a very raspy throat.

Yet this didn’t detract from his performance as the ‘Original Rude Boy’ had the crowd hanging on to every word he could manage, while letting his fans take over for household songs from The Specials, including A Message to You Rudy and Ghost Town , believed to have been written about Staple’s home town of Coventry, and not as a result of the current Hexham bridge closure!

There was a lot of excitement about the capture of Grandmaster Flash; it was a real a coup to get someone of his stature to play the Tynedale festival, and his slot warming up for the headline act was the most notable in terms of crowd reaction.

While some were disappointed that the pioneer of hip hop played a set with very little hip hop at all, a larger proportion were in their element as he rattled through well-known songs from throughout the decades to get everybody in the party mood.

It was a huge surprise when the Bronx resident arrived on stage to Dexy Midnight Runners’ classic Come on Eileen , but it set the tone of the set as he ran through a mix tape of 1980s smash hits before sampling soul and funk classics.

The crowd were now fully warmed up for headliners The Coral, famed for top 20 singles In the Morning and Dreaming of You , who justified their billing at the top of the festival with a brilliant set.

Frankie and the Heartstrings were a great addition midway through the day with their toe-tapping brand of pop rock, while Mark Morris, the former lead singer with The Bluetones, slowed things down with a catching acoustic set.

Hip hop act Too Many T’s raised the tempo more than a couple of notches, and their rapid fire rapping may not have appealed to all, but scored highly with teenage festival goers.

The prestige of Corbridge Festival is such it can attract big names of years gone by to the small village in the west of Northumberland, but it also provided a platform for two upcoming North-East singer/ songwriters to impress.

Both Fletcher Jackson and Cortney Dixon, very akin to Paloma Faith, took the opportunity to make themselves known to a larger audience.

Completing the large variety of music on the main stage, Hexham’s traditional band The Cherry Pickers were a quirky choice to open the festival.

While most of the action was on the main stage, there was plenty of entertainment on the Ubeat stage, with Twister, Bre Musiq, Charlotte Yanni, Kosoti and Lauren Lowes among the highlights.

Although the music is the main ingredient of the festival diet, there was a lot of fun to be had away from the stages, with children’s activities, a fun fair and regular performances from the brilliant Astral Circus, which included a fire-eating belly dancer, acrobats and jugglers.

For more pictures from the festival, see the 'latest galleries' section on the home page.