Author: Kate Crudgington

Founded in 1999 and celebrated as an inimitable showcase of heavy and experimental music, Roadburn Festival has been on Get In Her Ears’ radar for some time. Although we’ve never attended the Netherlands festival in person, each year we take note of the eclectic line-up and kick ourselves for not organising a trip to Tilburg to see the unique presentation of new and established artists from alternative music scenes.

This year, GIHE favourite American multi-instrumentalist and audio engineer Madeline Johnston aka Midwife is one of the festival’s Artists in Residence. She will perform three different sets across the weekend (17th-20th April), including a premiere performance of her collaborative EP, Orbweaving, with slowcore/shoegaze visionary Vyva Melinkolya. Other GIHE faves on the line-up include Penelope Trappes, LustSick Puppy, Faetooth, The Body & Dis Fig, SUMAC & Moor Mother, Tristwch Y Fenywod and Witch Club Satan.

Whilst we are enamoured with the idiosyncratic and unusual sounds of each of these artists, we were also curious to know how the team behind Roadburn put together these immense line-ups every year, as well as their side programme of Q&A events and discussions. Originally attending the festival as a fan back in 2013, Becky Laverty is now a key member of the Roadburn booking team. Her enthusiasm for showcasing experimental and heavy music is evident from the moment we begin speaking on Zoom and so is her unwavering dedication to the Roadburn community..

“I’ve met so many people through Roadburn who have enhanced and enriched my life in ways I could never have imagined,” she shares. “Of course people might think that’s an obvious thing to say – this is my job – I spend hours, weeks and years of my life thinking about this festival. But I felt this way even when I was just attending Roadburn. I would meet people and make connections with them and it was always a magical experience to be at the festival. Now that it takes up more of my life, I feel that even stronger.”

Originally from East London, Becky now lives in a town called Glossop on the edge of the Peak District. “I’ve started putting on shows here which is madness,” she laughs. “The Saturday before Roadburn, I have Thou playing in a pub in Glossop. When they announced the tour dates, people were losing their minds. They were like ‘Where the fuck is Glossop? Why aren’t they playing somewhere normal like Leeds?’” We joke that she’s determined to put Glossop on the map and with her extensive experience in booking and press communications, she’s the right person to do it.

Taking a leap of faith like this is something that has fortunately paid off many times for Becky. Before she became a freelance music publicist, she worked in admin at a University. She would occasionally help friends who were in bands to organise shows and tours, but she had never seriously considered a career in music. It was a brief conversation in the back of a tour van that effectively started it all for her.

“I had booked a tour for two UK bands – a grindcore band called Narcosis and a sludgy band called Mistress – and I went on tour with them,” she shares. “The drummer from Mistress is a guy called Mick Kenney, and he was setting up his own record label with his long time friend Shane, who is the bass player in Napalm Death, and he asked me if I knew any journalists.” Becky laughs as she recalls reading the press release that Mick had drafted and telling him it was “rubbish”. She ended up re-writing it herself. “I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I did know some journalists just from being involved in music and meeting people in bands. So basically I just started emailing people. Then other bands started approaching me and offering to pay me for this work and I said yes and kept going.” Since then, Becky has worked for Earache, Relapse and various other labels as a freelance publicist over the years too.

It’s this combination of tenacious music fandom and learning on the go that led Becky to meet Roadburn’s Artistic Director, Walter Hoeijmakers. She’d been attending the festival in a work capacity for a few years by this point, which led to the pair being introduced. Shortly after that, Walter came to London for a Roadburn related trip and asked if he could crash on Becky’s sofa. “He hung out with my cats and we went to see Godflesh together,” she remembers, two things that cemented their early friendship. “Then a couple of weeks after that, he called me and asked if I would be interested in working for Roadburn, and I was like ‘YES, I would!’ – so I went and told my partner and they were like ‘a job doing what?’ and I realised I had no idea. Hopefully it was something I knew how to do, because I’d already said yes.”

The role that Becky had accepted was that of International Press & Communications for Roadburn. “I’ve always said that the ‘communications’ part of that title did a lot of heavy lifting. It basically means you can be emailing anyone about anything,” she laughs. “So although a big chunk of my job was publicising the festival and inviting press, I started to take on more things every year. I started to arrange the side programme, which consists of artists Q&As and panel discussions and things like that. I was in close contact with Walter throughout, and he would ask my opinion on bookings. It was a quite natural process where my role just got bigger and bigger. It was a bit of a fuzzy time during the pandemic, but it was around then that my role [as a booker] became more formalised. So I’ve been doing that for a few years now.”

The core booking team for Roadburn now consists of Walter, Daan who is the Head of Music at the O13 venue in Tilburg, and Becky. When asked what kind of process the team undertakes for selecting artists to play the festival, Becky insists that most of it is based on intuition and a “gut feeling,” as well as Walter’s artistic overview of what he wants to do. “Sometimes he has an idea for a band, or an idea for a direction he wants to go in, or a particular scene that he wants to explore a bit more, then we build the festival around those ideas,” Becky shares. “So that does vary year-on-year in what direction we’re going in.”

“There’s months and months of conversations about the artistic direction and what will and what won’t work. It’s a lot of gut feeling. Of course we have to sell tickets, so we have to look at what people want from the festival, but it’s definitely based on an artistic vision much more than what’s commercially viable at any given time. One of the things that we really draw inspiration from is the underground, and a lot of the bands that play Roadburn, even on the main stage, have come up through the underground. It’s very rare for a band to come crashing out of nowhere and appear on our main stage.”

The marvellous Chelsea Wolfe played the main stage at last year’s Roadburn, but she had originally played the festival ten years prior on a much smaller stage. Becky explains that Midwife, who first played in 2022, has had a similar journey. “Her music is so gentle in a lot of ways, so delicate and very intimate, it’s almost like she’s singing just to you,” Becky recalls. “So we knew that she was a special artist from that show, so to have her back as an artist in residence this year is fantastic.”

Something that Becky and the Roadburn team are particularly proud of is how the festival has evolved and shifted the idea of what “heavy” can be. Whilst stylistically it can be argued that Midwife’s musical style is not necessarily “heavy” – it’s often sparse and ambient – the emotional gravity that permeates her music is – therefore making her the perfect candidate for a Roadburn performance. Becky explains that there’s no “formula” that can be replicated when it comes to defining what specifically constitutes a “Roadburn band” – it’s based on that important “gut feeling” and a well established level of trust and respect between the members of the booking team.

“As individuals, not just in the Roadburn team, but as music fans, most of us have very eclectic taste,” she shares. “Last week I went to see FKA Twigs, who I love and who is amazing. I’m sure if she came to Roadburn she’d have a lovely time, but I’m not sure that her performance would work at Roadburn. We have this saying that we’ve said amongst ourselves for a long time but it’s become a bit of a slogan to describe Roadburn now, which is ‘redefining heaviness’ – and I think that’s one of the core things that we’re looking for. So whilst I think FKA Twigs has a certain kind of heaviness and some of her music is quite bleak in places, I’m not sure that it fits the type of heaviness that works at Roadburn.”

Becky goes on to explain that a specific set that she feels was a “turning point” in redefining what heaviness in music could be, was when Emma Ruth Rundle played the festival as solo artist on a smaller stage back in 2017, and returned to play the main stage in 2022. “Emma performed, just her and her guitar, on what is now called The Neck stage, which is a 700+ capacity room,” Becky recalls. “It was rammed, but she just held everybody captive for an hour. For me, this was also as heavy as something with big riffs or blast beats or screamed vocals. This had an emotional heaviness to it. So sometimes, whilst there’s no fixed guidelines, that’s one of the sets that I often have in mind. It was undoubtedly heavy and it was also very gentle and very beautiful.”

Something else that Becky feels is unique and important to Roadburn is the specially commissioned projects and one-off collaborative performances that the festival presents to its attendees. This year, SUMAC and Moor Mother will present their album, The Film, on both the 17th and 19th of April. The piece is described by Moor Mother as more than an album or a collection of songs, with the core focus being to “create a moment outside of convention…in an industry that wants to force everything into a box of consumption.” Accurately promoting and celebrating eclectic projects like this is something that Becky and the Roadburn team feel especially passionate about. The team takes great care in capturing the essence of these performances through the language they use in their promotions and the aesthetics they adhere to across all areas of press and communications.

“To expect people to turn up and watch something entirely new from an artist that they don’t know for an hour and to be completely captivated by that – maybe we are asking a lot,” Becky reflects, “but I think people come to Roadburn knowing that that’s part of the experience. If you want to experience something totally brand new and see where this music is going to take you, then that opportunity is there. It’s really special.”

Something else that’s special to Becky are the curated playlists that fill the venues between artist’s sets at Roadburn. Walter originally created these playlists himself, but he has since handed this responsibility over to Becky and her colleague Joel.

“I always say I have no musical talent, but Emma [Ruth Rundle] said to me ‘that’s nonsense, your talent is your ears,’” Becky beams. “I’ve always been a music fan, I would say to the point of obsessiveness as a teenager. When you’re a teenager, did you not just want to pick the music that people listened to and tell people about the artists? That’s essentially what my job is now. Sometimes on our socials people are asking ‘does anyone know what that song was that played just before so-and-so came on?’ and I can be like ‘I do know actually, because I made that playlist!’ so I get to be that obsessive music fan. I think there’s loads of people out there like that and now I have an outlet for it.”

The passion, excitement and dedication from Becky and her team to making sure festival goers get the full Roadburn experience is something we admire profusely here at GIHE. We joke that we’re considering booking a last minute flight to attend this year’s edition and Becky is quick to support this decision. “It’s a slippery slope though,” she laughs, “because once you’ve been, you will want to come again. I know everybody says that, but it’s true. Most people come and are immediately like ‘I want more of that!’ Once you’re addicted – that’s it.”

 

You can find the full line-up info & tickets for Roadburn via their official website

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Photo Credit: Nona Limmen (Official Roadburn 2025 Visual Artist)

Kate Crudgington
kate_getinherears