An interview with: No Saviours Fest

Last Saturday saw the inaugural No Saviours Fest, a new Northwest heavy music festival which this year took place in Bolton's The Alma Inn, attracting incredible up-and-coming talent from all over the country.

While we sent Josh down to capture the event, we were also fortunate enough to talk to Jake Bennett, organiser of the day and bassist for Only the Righteous, about his experience creating the festival, how it came together, and the future of No Saviours.

Only the Righteous, No Saviours Fest 05/08/23 - @josh_captures_work

What made you want to create No Saviours?

I think No Saviours Fest kind of spiraled out of control from an idea to… I just wanted to put on a gig for Only the Righteous, play a bit of a longer set, play some songs that we don’t usually get to play, and play with some of our mates as well. It just kind of got a little bit out of hand. We wanted to go back to The Alma (Inn) in Bolton, it’s one of our favourite venues and one that we used to play a lot before the pandemic, but for one reason or another just haven’t been back to since 2019, 2020. So yeah a couple of factors went into that, we just thought it would be exciting to put together an all day lineup with some great bands, some great mates, and see what we could do with it really.

How did you choose the bands?

Choosing the lineup was really…it was probably the most fun part of it to be honest with you, you know, I wanted to put on bands that I liked, for the first time I could choose exactly who we get to play with, and I knew that I would be proud of the lineup and that I would enjoy it. There’s lots of bands that we’ve already played with on there, bands that are our mates, bands that I have seen and I have seen and have thought have been great…lots of bands from the Unearthed Music roster who are our, Only the Righteous' management company, Liam who is our manager, so trying to share the opportunities with those guys as well.

[We] tried to build it around a headliner and went through a few, trying to get a few headliners in and Black Coast were the guys that came back with a yes. I’d seen them at Tech Fest a couple of months before, I was really impressed with their set, so I'm really pleased that those guys could come and play for us.

Black Coast, No Saviours Festival, 05/08/23 - @josh_captures_work

And the venue?

Choosing the venue like I said before it’s a venue that I’ve had a lot of experience with previously, played some great gigs there before the pandemic…I just love it. The guys that work there are fantastic. Lewis on sound is great, the new landlords Sam and Emma and the old landlord Matt who I started speaking with when I first tried to set this up, they’re all really sound, really understanding, great to work with. The venue space itself has a great PA system, it’s nice and intimate so you can really… you know you can pack it out quite easy and it feels like a really great event, so yeah it was a pretty easy choice.

How did you find the experience of organising it all?

I mean… overall it was fun, you know I wouldn’t have done it, I wouldn’t have continued to do it pushing past some of the problems that I had if I didn’t enjoy the process overall. It was very stressful…you know putting together the lineup, having bands not being able to make it or pull out for one reason or another which obviously makes life difficult…trying really hard to push those ticket sales, presales and things like that. At the end of the day money has come out of my pocket and I want to make sure that most of it goes back in by the end of the festival, so there’s a lot of anxiety around it going well, around people coming, around people enjoying themselves, the bands, the punters…I think that was the thing that caused me the most anxiety and stress was just trying to make sure it was a good event that people enjoyed and that was maybe something that if we did another one people would want to come back to.

Overall I really loved the experience and I had a lot of support from Liam Barlow from Unearthed who I mentioned earlier, the one and only, so I don’t think I would’ve got through it and done it all without his help so that was a massive… a massive support to me. But I enjoyed it…I think I’m a bit of a control freak so having my own gig to put on and doing what I needed to and what I wanted with that was probably quite satisfying to be honest with you, and seeing all of it come together on the day definitely made all of the stress and all of the pain worth it.

Will there be another No Saviours in the future?

Yeah, I think probably is the answer. If you’ve seen posts on my personal or the band [Instagram] account I’ve already alluded to trying to organise things for next year already. I’m so encouraged by the turnout on the day and the bands and how it all went, that I’m confident that I could do another one next year and it could be just as good if not better. So absolutely I would do another one. I’ve been complaining about being stressed for the last month, two months, and like nagging people to come and everything else and I’ve given myself two days worth of break and I’m straight back into scouting out venues and thinking of lineups and emailing bands, things like that, so yeah there’ll be another one.”

What have you learned from the experience?

I think it’s…it’s giving yourself a bit more time to do everything really which is what i’m trying to do at the moment, like I’m starting now. Securing the headliner is the first thing after finding a venue, that’s probably a really important one. It’s much easier to build a lineup around a headliner than it is to build a lineup and then find yourself a headliner for a fact. Probably a little bit more on the promotion, getting some posters up and about for a good month if not two or three before the actual date itself. I’m thinking about hosting it in Manchester this year rather than Bolton, nothing against The Alma I absolutely love The Alma, it’s a fantastic venue and if I could lift it up and have it in the centre of Manchester it would be perfect, but just in terms of trying to get people to come down, making travel for bands and punters easy and accessible I think that’s a thing I’m going to try and do. Try to push it a little bit further with bands on the lineup as well, maybe spend a little bit more money, try to increase the capacity of the venue, and we’ll see.

There’s a few smaller bits and bobs, having wristbands on the door, making sure you’ve got enough staff and things like that, planning in bands being late or overrunning sets as well which we did do this year but not enough. I’m excited for next year, I think it’s going to be good, it’s going to be fun, if I can get the bands that I want to get then it’s going to be great, if they’ll reply to my emails. It’s been a great experience and I can’t wait to do it again next year and hopefully it’ll snowball into something bigger. We’ll see, we’ll see if my wallet can take that kind of pounding.

A huge thank you for Jake for taking the time to speak with us, and if you want to show some support then make sure to follow No Saviours Fest on Instagram at @nosavioursfest.

Stay tuned for our full coverage of the event in the coming days!