Hey, how’s it going? What you been up to?
I’m Well. Feeling a little delicate following the opening night of A Fistful Of Fandango, which was great. The last three months have been a bit hectic getting it together.

Are you excited about the festival?
Yes, I am excited. Putting on an independent festival basically equates to about 3 months of nausea and insomnia; worrying about whether tickets will sell; wondering if headliners will cancel from swine flu (which no insurers will cover); trying to get funding from sponsors (which is usually a pretty demoralizing and fruitless experience); getting the promotion and ticketing right. But then you get to the actual event and you think ‘I’ve done all my worrying and what will be will be, so I’m going to really enjoy myself’.

It’s a great line-up… How did you go about putting it together?
We put a wish list together compiled by all the people in the office, then we check availability via artists’ MySpace, etc. If acts seem available then we just need to work out if we could we can afford them. Our budget is dictated by likely income from ticket sales (which is very hard to predict) and a bit of sponsorship money so it’s pretty tight and we need to be realistic about who to approach. Generally we’re looking for four headline acts who could sell out a 800 capacity venue.

How did it all begin?
I’ve been promoting for about 15 years, but the festival is in its third year. With Fandango if we think of an idea for an event it doesn’t usually happen unless we have a good name or pun for it; in fact sometimes we get the pun first and then have to create the night around it. With the festival it happened because we needed a challenge. We were doing lots of smaller gigs and felt like we were treading water a bit and then we came up with the name ‘A Fistful Of Fandango’ (it was originally five nights) and ‘Eureka’ we had a pun, so it had to happen. Its not a festival, its a fistful... Boom boom!

Oh right… We get that now. Any plans to take it outdoors?
With the British summer I think we’ve hit on something having an indoor festival. It’s become our ‘Unique Selling Point’. In fact, last year with that terrible summer, one reviewer said ‘what a genius idea: an indoor festival’ and we thought, ‘hey we’d never thought of it like that’. Now that we have embraced it though, we have began to use ‘The Indoor Festival’ as a strap line. We have been approached by one site to go outdoors but it seems like there’s enough outdoor festivals.

What’s the ethos behind the Fandango label?
Label Fandango is the release process stripped to its fundamentals, and was inspired by the driving DIY dynamics of fresh-eared labels such as Transgressive, Marquis Cha Cha and Dance To The Radio. The slogan for our label is the eminently catchy “no frills: all thrills”, because in the true orange-arsed spirit of easyJet, Label Fandango is a bring-your-own-sandwiches operation with generic sleeves, a gently unhinged disposition and a genuine passion for helping bands reach somewhere else.

Any bands you’re really excited about right now?
Lots. We love Eugene McGuiness. He played last night and I don’t know why he’s not bigger. Also, Goldheart Assembly play on Friday. They just signed to Fierce Panda and they can write a decent tune. We have Cherry Ghost doing a one off at The Borderline next week so we’re excited about that too.

What’s coming up in the future?
We’re re-launching Fandango in October with some new venues: Buffalo Bar on a Tuesday night, 229 on a Wednesday and then various other monthlies like our ‘Labelled With Love’ label showcases at The Borderline. We also have a new night upstairs at The Garage, and at The Lexington.