By Jonny Bakes
Right, before I really launch into this review, if you’re just here to read about the Massive Wagons set then I suggest you skip towards the end as I can’t do this justice without first addressing ‘Dave Day’ as a whole.
Barrow-in-Furness can definitely be described as a remote location, being about 45 mins drive from the nearest motorway and is famous, mostly, for submarine building. But Barrow is proud of its exports, with some big sporting personalities over the years, and most importantly a certain Hairy Biker! Now, I’ve lived in Barrow for ten years and while it’s been in the news a few times over the last decade, it’s very rarely been for positive reasons. That all changed this weekend though with the arrival of ‘Dave Day’…
Unless you’ve been living under a rock recently , you’ll likely know that Dave Myers unfortunately lost his battle with cancer back in February. But what you may not know is that Dave was fiercely proud of his hometown of Barrow and now he has most certainly put the town on the map! An idea was hatched to organize a memorial ride with his close friend Jason ‘Woody’ Woodcock taking charge to try and pull together a couple of hundred bikers to take the pilgrimage from London to Barrow. I don’t think anyone could have predicted just how many would take the ride out though, with over 45,000 bikes reportedly being involved in the convoy that grew to epic proportions as it travelled north up the M6 with his two “other halves” – the other “Hairy Biker”, Si King, and his widow, Liliana – leading the pack. In fact, there were so many bikes that although Si arrived at Barrow Town Hall at 15:45, the last bike and the marker van arrived at 18:15!!
They arrived into the town along Abbey Road to pass Dave’s former house and were greeted by hordes of local residents cheering and waving flags, banners and all manner of other things. The whole of Barrow town centre had got into the spirit with many of the shops hosting Dave posters and tributes in the windows but most of the daytime action was focused on the town hall itself. It was here where I got to witness the Mayor present Liliana Myers with the posthumous award of the Freedom of the town followed by very moving speeches from Si, Liliana and Woody leaving not a dry eye in the house with their expressions of love and gratitude.
With that wrapped up it was time to head over to the rugby ground for the ‘Dave Day’ gig, a 5,000 capacity event with the mighty Massive Wagons as headliner! We arrived (after trying to get in the ground through the wrong entrance) just in time to catch most of the set from tribute band Maiden Cumbria who put on a decent performance of Iron Maiden classics. They may not have had the same stage presence and theatrical stage show as the real thing, but musically they were pretty close. They even had their own Eddie take to the stage (who I’m pretty sure was local promoter Rob Wheeler, but let’s not ruin the magic). By this point, the size of the crowd was a little disappointing though. I’m not sure whether there’d been a big turnout for the local bands on the early bill or whether people had just nipped out to get some food to soak up the freely flowing beers… but things did perk up a bit for the penultimate band.
Blue Nation took the stage to bring some bluesy rock to the event but to be honest they didn’t do as much for me as they did for the small crowd gathered in front of them. While the music had a nice vintage feel to it, it just didn’t give me the level of excitement I was looking for in between a Maiden tribute and Massive Wagons. I appreciate that I may have been a minority in my expectations for the lineup though as this whole event was intended to appeal to a broad cross section of tastes, and for that I think Blue Nation fit the bill just right! I took this opportunity to sneak off and grab a bite to eat but still managed to catch special guests Muddibrooke joining the band on stage providing additional vocal talent to channel the Fleetwood Mac vibes.
After this, we got to see Si, Lilliana and Woody take to the stage again for a brief auction which raised another £20,000 for the chosen charities of the day before it was finally time for Massive Wagons who had set off at 1am from Germany to bring their energetic rock to the sleepy town of Barrow!
Barry brought buckets of energy to the stage as the band launched into ‘A.S.S.H.O.L.E’ and it was immediately clear that only a small portion of the crowd were here specifically to see Massive Wagons, so the boys had a job on their hands here. This song gave a great opportunity for some crowd participation though by splitting the crowd in half and assigning them vowels and consonants to try and chant out the letters of “asshole”. There were varying degrees of success across the crowd, but it definitely succeeded in getting everyone involved!
The band blitzed through some of their big hits to keep the crowd engaged, with ‘Fuck The Haters’, ‘Back To The Stack’ and ‘Banging In Your Stereo ‘ all played with great enthusiasm from the band and greeted with the same response from the crowd. They even threw in a cheeky cover of the Scorpions hit ‘Rock You Like a Hurricane’ with special guest Susi Webb, who sang on the original album. The smoke machine on stage did seem to struggle a bit with the Barrow wind though, with most of it being blown back into Barry’s face, but he seemed completely oblivious as he poured his effort into entertaining the crowd.
Determined to make the event a special memorial for Dave and to please the fans who had never heard of them, Massive Wagons were joined on stage by Thunder guitarist (and closer friend of Dave Myers) Luke Morley. Belting out great covers of ‘Cum On Feel The Noise’ and ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’ together to close out the set was a fantastic tribute!
For me, it was a fantastic day, although I was a little disappointed with the turnout for Massive Wagons. Considering it was a sold out 5,000 capacity event, it felt like the majority of tickets had been snapped up but logged to watch the local bands earlier in the day and then head out for their regular Saturday sesh. I know people often complain about fans not supporting the undercard and only turning up for the headliner, but to see the opposite was a very strange experience! That being said though, considering a few years ago Massive Wagons were playing small pubs in the towns outside Barrow, it was great to see them back on a big stage! Still not quite as impressive as when I saw them at the Download Pilot and I think there was a missed opportunity for ‘All In This Together’ to really bring it home. But cutting this in favour of the covers to keep the interest of a crowd where most had probably never heard of them was the right decision in my opinion!
All in all, I’m glad to say that ‘Dave Day’ was a massive success. I like to think that the thousands of bikers and the town of Barrow-in-Furness really pulled out the stops to celebrate the life of Dave Myers and finally made some ground to paint the town in a good light. There’s already calls to do something again next year too… could we possibly see another major event in the local area? We already have Funeral Fest in the town and Darkness Over Cumbria nearby: maybe it’s time for something with a more popular following? Only time will tell…
- Photos © Simon Dunkerley/SD Photography.
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