🌿✨ Black Deer Festival is coming to Tobacco Dock, London!
🎟️ Tickets are live – grab yours here: www.blackdeerfestival.com/tickets
Kate Willis
Hi Gill. How are you?
Gill Tee
I’m good thank you. You’re not in Nashville then?
Kate Willis
No, no, I like to go to Americana fest, but this year with all the politics and everything, I just decided not maybe next year.
Gill Tee
It kind of feels as if it would have been so nice to have been there, but you can’t do it every year as it’s expensive as well, isn’t it?
Kate Willis
Yeah, it’s expensive. The last time we went was 2022 and it was fabulous year. We saw 49 Winchester, Charles Wesley Godwin, Joshua Ray Walker, Brent Cobb, lovely Dylan and Willie and all those guys, it was a good year.
Kate Willis
We’d better get on with talking about Black Deer!
What inspired you to create Black Deer Festival right in the beginning and how has that original vision evolved over the years?
Gill Tee
I’ve been involved in the music industry for a long time, so I was Head of entertainment at Capital Radio way back. One of my last projects was Party in The Park in Hyde park. So I had this background of an opportunity to get involved with lots of these amazing events. I employed the production company, because it was my baby basically. I employed a production company and a whole team of people. The production company were the people responsible for building the whole thing and I just fell in love with that. I looked at that and used to go there everyday to Hyde Park and watch it being built. I loved all the characters that come along, I just kind of thought, Oh my God, I love this so much. So I went and packed my job in, which nobody could quite believe it because it was a really nice job I had at Capital with a big department. But I kind of knew that I needed to do something else.
Gill Tee
This was something that I really wanted to do with my life, so I went back to my boss. They gave me a two-year contract to continue managing Party in the Park and I started a production company and with a two year contract which was great to start my new business with.
Gill Tee
I then set about learning how to actually produce from nothing, so that sort of evolved and evolved and I went on and built a successful business in production and was involved in lots and lots of events with different artists.
Gill Tee
I then worked with Vince Power, who is a well known UK promoter who wanted to start a new festival called the Hop Farm.
Oh, yes, in Kent.
Gill Tee
The Hop Farm festival had a lot of artists over the five years that I absolutely loved because it was my music. It was a mix because, you know, you’d have Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Mumford and Sons, but then you’d have something that was totally indie. So it was a mix.
Gill Tee
There was a lot of Vince’s love which was country music, old country music and Americana. But for me, my passion about the music stemmed from when I was a little girl, because I grew up with this music.
Gill Tee
I grew up with Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash also Marty Robbins and, you know, Waylon Jennings all those artists that were of a time, a different era. But I was a little girl growing up with that music and the reason it was such a big thing in my life was my brother.
Gill Tee
Chris could pick up any interest. He’s older than me. Quite a lot older than me. He could pick up any instrument and play. Music was his world and his mates were always around our house. They’d always gather there’d be harmonicas playing , writing music and all of that kind of stuff. So as a little person who I just loved it. I loved the buzz of all everyone together and it was always that kind of atmosphere. And then when my brother was 19, he was murdered.
Gill Tee
So our whole world came to a grinding halt and music being played was a really difficult time for many years because it was so part of my brother and part of my mum and I mean we were happy family of my other brother Steve and the dog. We were just a joyful family in a lot of ways, you know. We didn’t grow up with loads of money but we had a massive love of for each other and then our whole world changed and the sadness that came from that was huge. It went on for many years, but gradually the music came back in our lives and become a joy to listen to because it was Chris’s music.
Yes because you almost feel guilty at the time as well, don’t you? For being happy? When I went to Americana Fest last in 22 and we had buried my dad the week before. I spent a fair bit of that time it crying at the. I mean, my dad had been ill for a long time, so we’d sort of said goodbye before that. But a lot of the time I was there, I did feel guilty because I was enjoying myself, but I was enjoying myself and crying. Music is so evocative isn’t it?
Gill Tee
Yes, everyone has got music in their lives. Everyone’s got a memory from a piece of music. So for me this whole genre was always in my life. It wasn’t something that I suddenly decided to do. I just felt that there was so much more to do in the UK for the music and the grassroots artists. I go to any gigs, I love watching live music so.
Gill Tee
When the Hop Farm finished the five years Vince went bust, it owed me quite a lot of money and I paid everyone and I remortgaged my house because I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, not paying the people that would work for me.
Gill Tee
So it was fine, but it was a bitter pill and I decided I’m never going to get involved with a festival ever again. I learned so much from Vince over those five years. It was he and I working together. But I kind of thought no, I can’t do it. So I continued with my business and I was producing other events and doing other thing. I was then asked by Eridge Estate to go and oversee an event for them and also to get them bigger licences because they wanted to have a festival there eventually and because of all my contacts with like the UK promoters I could help them with that.
Gill Tee
I knew how to do it, but I also knew a lot of people, so I kind of opened my black book and I was working with Eridge Estate for a while, getting their licences, which we did, and encouraging promoters to come and look at the site. My business was plodding along quite nicely.
Gill Tee
Five years later it was my daughter’s birthday and I decided to do a little mini festival in the garden, with a wristband exchange and the little kids were doing things. There was lots of different things going on. I also had a VIP area and a stage there and all kinds of stuff going on. And then my friend who lived next door to me asked if her uncle could come. ‘He’s retired? Is it that all right?’ OK. I think I saif of course he can. So this guy walked in very statesmanlike, a gentleman in his 70s. We started talking and he talked about music and we were having a general conversation. He said “You used to do a work at the hop farm? You promoted the hop farm?’ We started talking about that and he talked about some of the artists that had played there and also talked about his love of country music. He loved country music.
Gill Tee
He had an advertising agency way back in London. Very successful. Colin Lloyd.
Kate Willis
My cousin used to work for him in PR years ago. It would have been in the 90s. into her at the last Black deer festival. She’s not a country music fan so I asked her why she was there. She said she was a guest of her old boss Colin! What a small world.
Gill Tee
I love that. Colin started talking about the fact that he’d been out to America a lot. He loved country music and through his advertising he brought in Budweiser and Marlboro cigarettes into the UK. So he was a real country music fan. I then started talking about my love of Americana, old country and how I’d grown up with it. We were having this great conversation and he said to me, Gill, would you ever do a festival again? He said, because there’s nothing around the Kent area that you can go to and listen that that that’s actually doing it at the moment. And I said the only way I would ever get involved with a festival again was if it was funded properly, it was a genre which I believed had got a lot of growth potential and it needs to be in people’s awareness more than it is. I said that it has to be in a place that I think is the most beautiful place to be because it’s magical and that was Eridge Estate. So he then he said to me ‘Well, Gill, I’ve retired now and said if I offered up some seed money, would you be interested in looking at, you know if it would be possible to set something up?” So I’m going from saying I would never work on a festival again to within half an hour I was shaking his hand saying right, I’m going to do it. So that’s kind of how Black Deer started.
Gill Tee
It was that chance conversation, a friend bringing an uncle to my party and our mutual respect and love of the different genres. He liked more Bro’ Country music, Toby Keith and people like that. But nevertheless, he had a love and passion of the music and that’s kind of how we started the journey, and it kind of progressed from there really.
Gill Tee
Six weeks later. I called Deb Shilling who is no longer on the Black Deer journey. But
I called her and I said look Deb’s I’m going to investigate this opportunity to do this festival. Do you want to join me?
Gill Tee
Festivals wasn’t her background. She was more corporate events, a really great creative but much more on the corporate side. So, she had to think about it for a bit. She come back and said yes.
Gill Tee
Six weeks later Colin, Deb and I were on a plane going out to Nashville to meet with agents out there. I was lucky that I had been introduced to Iain Snodgrass, who is an artist manager. He’s Roseanne Reid’s manager.
Kate Willis
Oh wow! Gosh, six weeks later!
Gill Tee
Iain worked for Universal Music in the country music sector, and he had lots of contacts in Nashville, so he kind of opened his black book for us. We took him with us and the four of us went on, went on a big Black Deer search for artists which wwas great and what proved really fortuitous, was my expensive education into festivals. It came into itself. As I’d been in charge of producing the Hop Farm a lot of the artists agents had had artists play the Hop Farm, so it was just a moment of
them immediately feeling the trust that they knew it would be a quality production. So yeah, that’s kind of how it all began.
So this year, a big bold move to Tobacco Dock. So what’s led to the decision to move from the country to the city?
Gill Tee
Ha ha, well no one can escape the fact that building a world on a Greenfield site is challenging. Don’t forget we had quite an up and down journey with because of COVID.
Gill Tee
We started to build our site on 2021 and then Boris decided to extend the ban and we were already on site.
Kate Willis
I remember that that was the last straw of COVID to me. I wanted to sit on a blanket in a field with a glass of wine with my friends. But I couldn’t do that. But I could go to football or horse racing? It was an unbelievable deision.
Gill Tee
Yes, I know. It was horrible because the TV had got involved with it and they wanted to film me when Boris made his announcement . We were on site because I’m the builder of the festival. I’m on there from day one, right until the end.
Kate Willis
Gutting.
Gill Tee
Can you imagine the atmosphere on site because nobody had worked for a year and a half? This was the first festival off the blocks in 2021. That’s why it got a lot of media coverage because it was the first festival and all my guys had turned up on site and the joy that there. It was just like the best feeling in the world. So when he announced he was going to extend the curfew. Everyone was shocked. No, it can’t be, it can’t be. The TV people came and wanted to film my reaction.
Gill Tee
I kept thinking, no, he can’t be doing that. He won’t do that. He won’t do that. Then suddenly the announcement happened and I just cried on TV.
Gill Tee
It was so emotional. But I brushed myself down because all my amazing people that were on that site, all those guys that gave everything to it a lot of love to Black Deer. It was like someone had died. I was having to comfort them all because I saying” No, no, no. It’s all right” Or they’re saying “Oh, Jill”.
Gill Tee
It was for everybody. We really fought to try to do everything. Our festival was the safest place you could have been in the UK at that time with all the provision we’d put in place. But the next day sporting events were still allowed to happen, and it was just like how the hell? And we lost over £1,000,000.
Kate Willis
I know. I know. It was mad decision, so sad.
Gill Tee
So with 2018 and 2019 we were building this amazing festival that everyone was loving and it grew, it doubled in size the next year and all our tickets you know were selling really, really well for 2020.
Gill Tee
What was so amazing, so many people rolled over their payment for the following year. They didn’t want their money back. They kept it in the park, which we were so, so grateful for. So we had two terrible years. And then we had 2022 and we had the electric storm.
Kate Willis
Oh yes, I remember that. I got. I almost got hypothermia at the bus stop.
Gill Tee
So we’ve not had the best journey. We lost a lot of money along the way and we had fantastic investors, investors who’ve given so much. Other investors have got involved and it got to a point where we are throwing money away at something because it’s so expensive, all the fuel costs to bring transport, getting artists to get there and all the stuff that it’s involved, the logistics. So we said look let’s look at taking a year out. But in the meantime, we’d started the radio station and we were doing the one day shows anyway, and decided to tread water with that.
Chris (Chris Russell-Fish) our M.D. who I employed early on in the Black Deer journey, because we I needed somebody who was able to work with shareholders do the grown up stuff. Chris is still with me working you know as as our MD. He and I had hatched up other ideas of what we could do with Black Deer to minimise the risk, but still do something of quality, keep it alive, but in a bigger way than the one day shows and the radio station. But to not have a year of not having anything and coincidently Patrick Donovan, who’s the CEO of Tobacco Dock, had got in touch with me, he’d been following my LinkedIn journey of Black Deer and how it had gone from the beginning to the whole journey. He loved what I’ve been doing and what we’ve been doing. He asked me to go to a meeting with him and asked me if I’d be interested in getting. Involved in building something at Tobacco Dock. I said look, Black Deer is already a ready made brand let’s look at how we can make that work. I introduced him to Chris. Chris met with the management so we all met together and we come away with it saying let’s make this work. We’ve got short period of time to do it, let’s see if we can make this happen. And lo and behold, that’s where we are. We’ve got Black Deer in the city with a plan to do it as an annual event. So continue every year but also take it to other cities because we’ve had interest from other cities who really like the whole idea, but we’d always want to do it in quite unusual buildings that felt the home of black deer.
Kate Willis
Oh great. Tobacco Dock is cool, isn’t it?
Gill Tee
Oh, it’s like the perfect home for it. It’s beautiful, and it just fits so well. That’s kind of how we’ve got, where we’ve got to.
Kate Willis
Black Deer Festival is obviously deeply rooted in Americana and outdoor culture. How does the change in venue influence your approach to curaitng the line up and the sort of live experience or overall experience?
Gill Tee
Well, it’s a very different from the festival in terms. You can’t camp and you have to think about what things can you bring to a venue like Tobacco Dock that still maintains, I always call it the big hug because someone described walking into Black Deer as walking into a big hug and that means so much to me because, you know, I’m a big hugger, so it feels it felt like the best compliment ever. So I wanted to bring all that that love and feeling into into the venue. So we said “What is our heart?” “What’s the heart of Black Deer?” and the heart of it is all the different areas that we’ve created that have made the whole of the festival. So what can we, transfer into an environment with a roof over it. It’s not going to rain and not get rained off and it will be in the centre of London. So when I spoke about my brother, the tragedy that happened with my brother and his love of the music? We created Hayley’s bar. I don’t know if you know this is dedicated to my brother Chris. So Hayley’s bar has always been special. It’s always had its own special feel to it, and it’s always had this beautiful picture of my brother and his friends on the wall of any Hayley’s we’ve ever done, whatever configuration that is, it’s always been there. And so we were, you know, Hayley’s had to come. We have to bring Hayley’s bar, and Hayley’s is where a the lot of the grassroots artist play.
Gill Tee
It’s always magical because it’s always fun and it’s got that spirit about it. So Hayley’s is coming with us. We’ve also bring in live fire, which is always that great. You know, that all the long and slow cooking and Dr BBQ, who came with us the first two years.
As soon as he knew we were doing Black Deer again in the city, He said. I’m coming. I want to be there. So Doctor BBQ is going to be there as the host with John and Ben who’ve been the curators of that part of it with all the celebrity chefs coming. We’re doing live fire. We’re also doing Roadhouse, which is bringing the heavier side of the music, with bikes and you know all the bits that go with that and we’re bringing the mainstage which we’re calling the Black Deer live stage this year, but the capacities are reduced. Mainstage is 2000 capacity whereas we could get 10,000 people in front of our stage in Eridge Park. Our artists have to therefore reflect that.
This was something that was really, really important, and Jim Walker, James Walker from Brighthelmstone, he’s our lead Booker for the whole of Hayley’s and Mainstage. Reese Tee from Desertscene music, who’ve got a whole festival of their own. He just happens to be my son. He is curating the Roadhouse and has done many times over the years. So we have different parts of the festival.
Always has been big heart thing for me is Superjam, which is which is the students from four colleges now which is for students who’ve fallen through education through being neurodiverse or having difficulties and have a different way of being educated and are amazing and they’ve been included from day one. I used to mentor these students prior to me starting Black Deer. So one of my first calls I made to was to David and Nick, who started the colleges from six kids a in a room that they created like a studio. I said I need to have the Super jam stage. They’ve always been part of it. SuperJam are going to be hosting the songwriter circles there, so that’s going to be a lot of lovely part of the event. And then our other area we’ve got is the emporium. So the emporium is going to be clothing. But we’re also going to be having it as a showcase for the Half Moon, Putney, who’s going to curate a stage in there. So you’re going to have clothing, you’re going to have the Half Moon with artists performing. But also, I had this thing in my head about people love clothing.
They love to dress up. So we’re going to have a two catwalk shows a day. One of the catwalk. Yeah, one of the catwalk shows are going to be presented by Vera Black.
One of the things I’m really really excited about is I want people to dress up to be picked out each day to be on our catwalk at 4:00.
We will find people and say “OK, you look amazing”. They will come and then they talk about their influences and we’ve got the Black Deer radio are there so we could be doing interviews so that’ll be quite a hub and the palce to be.
There’s lots of all these lovely bits of ideas that are coming to fruition that make up, you know, Black Deer in the city.
Kate Willis
So do you, do you see it as a new chapter for the brand? You said that obviously said that this you’re looking to do hold it in other cities. Does that mean that it may not ever go back to Eridge Park?
Gill Tee
No, no, no, no, no. What it means is we’ve taken time out to really think about building our audience. In order to do a festival well you need numbers to make it viable and in order to build an audience that want to come and support what the brand you’ve built is, you have to be out there in different parts of the UK to say that this exists.
Gill Tee
Otherwise, it’s just Kent and London and there’s not enough people to make it a viable proposition, to have all that infrastructure and do it at the quality that we’ve always wanted to do a Black Deer. I promise you it’s the hardest thing. It’s not for the faint hearted. This journey. It is a bit like going back to house you grew up in, the memories. We have so much support from the locals that really want Black Deer to come back to Eridge Park. We have a real desire to make that happen next year. But restart it as more of a boutique idea so that it will have all of the loveliness and the beauty of what we have grown but it is financially viable and see if we can grow it each year. We would grow as our audience grows.
We’ve got to sell the tickets for Black Deer in the city. We’ve got a lot of support and our big push is from now until the event because August is a month where everyone just doesn’t want to even think about anything until they get the kids back to school.
I can’t have worked harder with the team of people that we’ve always had. We couldn’t have given it more passion, more love, more commitment than we’ve all given it to be a success. Success for me personally, I was hoping that Eridge would be the little Glastonbury that went on and on, because that’s what the Eridge estate were up for, you know, a heritage festival. I wanted to funnel artists from the grassroots and give them a platform, a bigger platform that become even more each year. I was hoping I’d find some sort of a really benevolent rock star who’d made all his money through music and decided, do you know something? I’m not looking for the end game. I’m looking for how I can help make this work and be
that vehicle for artists and for it to continue. But hey, life ain’t like that, is it?
Kate Willis
I’m sure I’m sure it’ll be really successful. Country music’s bigger than it’s ever been now.
But look, you know, so Jim’s done a great job with getting us a really good balance of artists. We sat down really picking our Hayley’s bar artists for the people that have shown so much support over the years as well. The good thing about Black Deer in the city is we will change our artists year on year and if it ended up being like four Black Deer’s in the city, that gives all the artists an opportunity to be at one of them wherever it is. So it’s kind of like it can be that funnel.
It’s work in progress. I haven’t lost my passion. I haven’t lost my love for it and it’s in my heart. So I will continue with the support of our investors and everyone involved. Chris is in the same boat as me, we give a lot of time and heart to this. So fingers crossed it will be a success.
Kate Willis
I’m sure it’d be a great success. I’m looking forward to it. Well, thanks for giving me your time. Would you be potentially up for a a podcast interview after the festival, maybe as a as a follow up. Amy would do it from Nashville?
Gill Tee
Just say when, it would be a pleasure, of course.
I’d love to do that. It would be lovely. Let’s hope we’re talking, talking about next year and the and the years to come.
