When A Duke / Former Rolling Stones Roadie Sets Up A Festival

Jug blowing, pedal steel playing and banjo plucking: Step into the Suffolk countryside and relive just seven of the genres packed into Red Rooster Festival

Gimme Shelter: Red Rooster Festival is hosted on the grounds of the Palladian historic Euston Hall on the Suffolk/Norfolk border

“Once a sound guy asked me if the ‘keyboardist’ could play something,” begins renowned pedal steel player Joe Harvey-Whyte opening up the main stage before his later performance in cosmic outfit The Hanging Stars. Red Rooster is not a festival that would ever confuse the two instruments. Now in its tenth year, the June weekender has made a name for itself in the country music field, fuelled by founder (and self-pegged music nerd) the Duke of Grafton, or as he’d prefer to be known, just Harry.

Grafton happens to be the custodian of Euston Hall, the 17th-century country house set in a 10,500-acre estate on the Suffolk/Norfolk border near Thetford. But that’s not his only enviable gig. He also had a spell as a roadie for the Rolling Stones on the band’s 2005 A Bigger Banger tour, although he wasn’t immediately welcomed into the group, as he recalls with local rag the EDP¹. "On my first day of the tour, there were 300 of us at Heathrow Airport at 5am and before you fly, there is a big list with everybody's passport name on it. I was queuing up and suddenly Keith Richards' guitar tech shouted 'Who the f*** is Viscount Henry Oliver Charles Ipswich?' I'm like 'Hi, it's me!” Richards proceeded to bet on how long Grafton would last on the road but smugly, the Duke says, he lasted the full 18 months.

Keith Richards' guitar tech shouted 'Who the f*** is Viscount Henry Oliver Charles Ipswich?' And I'm like 'Hi, it's me!”

- Harry Grafton, the Duke of Euston Hall and founder or Red Rooster Festival

Despite comfortably grappling with shows in New York’s mighty Madison Square Gardens and three nights at London’s O2 Arena, the scale of Red Rooster Festival is pleasingly intimate at just 5,000 attendees across the site. (Contrast that against my beloved End of The Road’s 15k capacity and Glastonbury’s 200k visitors each year.) This means that rather than being forced to listen to half a band’s set in the snaking toilet queue half a mile away from the stage in question, you can happily shuffle into the main stage with no issues and even bag a helpfully placed hay bale if your legs are waning.

Do the plank: The basin on-site at Red Rooster Festival as landscaped by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown

It’s not just the live music experience that levels up Red Rooster though. Remember we’re on the grounds of a Palladian historic home built by Lord Arlington in 1666 (!). Jolly swan pedalos can glide you around the serpentine broadwater basin. A quick dip in the weir, as landscaped by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown², can cure the Bourbon Bar-endorsed hangover. While streams of dogs roll around on picnic blankets with their families, tongues lolling under the centuries-old cedar trees.

As Grafton mused in the same article, “East Anglia [is] like Britain's version of America's Deep South. Great food, great farming land, and great coastlines." So without even leaving your sofa, let me take you down to the jug-blowing, pedal steel playing, banjo-plucking fields of the Suffolk countryside to relive just seven of the genres jam-packed into this year's Red Rooster Festival lineup.