Stevenage Old Town Live 2026

I keep trying to support my local all-dayer, Stevenage Old Town Live, as Stevenage has very little live music. Given how much local music I see in elsewhere in Hertfordshire, I feel I should make the effort to support the most visible attempt at bringing live music to Stevenage. However, next year, I am not going to bother with this event. It doesn’t need my support. It has an audience and that audience, isn’t me and I’m fine with that.

I’m writing this on the train after bailing mid-afternoon, heading into London to see Opus Kink. Like previous years, so far, there had been very little original music. Safehouse, put a shine on the early afternoon and I’m happy to pay the reasonably priced festival ticket, just to see them. But there appears to be very little else worth staying around to see in the evening. The rest of the lineup was almost entirely cover bands. The few original artists still to play, I had seen a few times. So I quickly booked a ticket for Opus Kink’s album launch show and bailed.

This isn’t a slight on the organisation of the festival or to suggest it isn’t successful. There was a buzz around Stevenage. Lots were clearly enjoying the music on offer in the glorious sun, across the well run stages in pubs gardens and on the high street.

It just is not for me. I don’t find cover bands particular interesting, and in an event like this, they often cover songs from the same popular artists. It becomes boring after a while.

All I want to see is a few stages of local bands being given a chance to put their music in front of a larger audience. After seven years, I think it is safe to say that’s not going to happen and I’m not really sure the audience would make the effort to listen to them either.

So next year, I will give this a miss. They won’t notice that I don’t turn up and it is not a slight on what the organisers have been created. They have done an excellent job of creating a festival for the Old Town that brings people into the pubs. But it’s just not for me. I will leave this event to for people who are happy to sit in the sunshine having a drink listening to covers of music they are comfortable with. That after all, is what the pubs who support this event really want.