All Together Now: Organisers promise more improvements for 2024 event
All Together Now Festival, at Curraghmore House, Portlaw, Co Waterford. Picture: Joe Evans
As All Together Now gets ready for its return to Curraghmore House, festival organisers have revealed their plans for this year's festival, including preparations for any extreme weather conditions.
The Waterford festival returns to Curraghmore House for the August bank holiday with a range of artists and acts including rock band The National, English singer-songwriter, Jorja Smith and noughties star Natasha Bedingfield.
Marking its fifth year in 2024, ATN combines music, theatre, comedy, spoken word, food and more across its 18 stages.
Following the announcement of 50 new acts, festival organiser Will Rolfe says they are “really happy with the line-up” for 2024, and like other years, attendees can expect a host of “incredible Irish talent”.
“We find anyone who sees themselves as successful contemporary artists seems to want to play All Together Now,” Rolfe says, adding that this is something they are “really proud of”.
Last year, the Sugababes brought something different to the festival and Rolfe reckons the inclusion of Natasha Bedingfield — whose 2004 hit ‘Unwritten’ recently enjoyed some time in the charts — will deliver a similar dose of nostalgia to Curraghmore House.
However, the girl band’s performance at the festival last August was met with some criticism online due to what appeared to be issues with sound.
Ahead of ATN 2024, Rolfe assures that they are undergoing “a big study and change” in terms of their sound systems for the stages.
“We also have to work with touring bands and their own technicians and sometimes if they're on a system they're not familiar with, they can have challenges.
"I think that's one thing we need to just tighten up on and make sure that for every artist who performs across the festival, that they have the best quality performance that they can have,” he explains.
Stormy conditions and extreme levels of rainfall also threatened to dampen the spirits of festivalgoers in 2023. Rolfe says these conditions have prepared them for “worst-case summer weather” with some changes due to be introduced for 2024 including “more hard-standing paths” around the festival site.
“It's just better for preparation in terms of how to logistically make an impact before the rain rather than after because after rain, it's very challenging when there are 25,000 people on site to implement significant change,” Rolfe says.
While there can be challenges every year when it comes to booking acts, there have been reports globally of a shortage of headline acts for festivals as of late. According to Rolfe, this is happening at the top level and has a “knock-on effect on everything else”.
“I think that's been well reported with places like Coachella. I think there's an expectation that the biggest acts in the world that don't usually play festivals should probably be headlining festivals at that level and that's not happening at this moment in time.”
Despite this, Rolfe maintains that they are happy with their line-up for ATN 2024 which will include Irish debuts for acts such as Yaya Bey and a festival debut for 17-year-old Muireann Bradley.
Rolfe, who started in the festival business when he was a student, also teased an exciting new stage set-up that is yet to be revealed.
“Every year I think we try and evolve the festival in some way or the new stages, moving things around on site. Since year one, we've never really wanted to keep it the same, we always try and improve it, make it better,” he says.
“This year, we're working on a couple of new stages. We haven't revealed them yet but there is one in particular which we're quite excited about.”
As for the future of the festival, he hopes it will continue to grow.
“With ATN, it definitely feels like the most exciting thing I've worked on. It's grown from year one when it was probably half the size it is now, and it's gotten up to 25,000 people and the feeling is that it could turn into something really special over the next 10 to 15 years.”
- Tickets are on sale now. See alltogethernow.ie
