The Frockers have always been big fans of festivals, but these days our personal preference is for smaller gatherings rather than giant events like Glastonbury and T in the Park. Much as we love live music, we no longer possess the coping skills for pitching tents, queuing for chemical toilets and wearing mud covered clobber for several days in a row – but we take our floppy festival hats off to those who do. At least the toilets are a vast improvement on the vintage facilities we remember from the 1970s when we were young (and/or inebriated) enough not to care!

So instead of squelching our way around vast outdoor festival sites, we are increasingly tempted by small music festivals which attract an array of local talent and do not involve camping! We especially enjoyed the Montrose Music Festival and Dundee Blues Bonanza this year, but we have been reserving most of our energy and excitement for the inaugural Isle of Skye Blues’n'Boogie Feis which takes place on 22/23 July with the inimitable Wilko Johnson headlining on both nights.

The Kyelakin event is the brainchild of  Skye-based campaigner Robbie the Pict, who is auctioning his precious Runrig gold disc to get the festival off to a flying start. As well as being a great opportunity for partying (and coincidentally celebrating both Wilko and Robbie’s 64th birthdays over the weekend), he believes it will help breathe new life into the local economy which was so badly hit by the (now abolished) Skye Bridge tolls.

Read more about it here and we hope to see some of you at Saucy Mary’s!  Now we just need to decide what festival frockery to wear.