Amy Odell - Byline Festival 2018
I met Amy a few years ago at a Discovery 2 gig that she performed at. To be honest, I didn’t even meet her there, I messaged her a few weeks later when I was listening to her SoundCloud and editing a video of Amy at that gig.
Not long after, we met up just before I was headed out to Jordan for the first time.
We hit it off talking about everything and anything wrong and right with the world. What was originally intended to be a short meeting to talk about collaborating became a morning of hanging out with what felt like an old friend. Amy has that charm and energy about her that has you instantly at ease around her. She doesn’t command a space as much as she allows things to flow around her.
We stayed in touch over the next few months before meeting up again to try out a video idea I had for her, just before I headed off to Australia. For someone I’d met twice in person and shared a handful of messages with over the span of a year, Amy kept in touch when I was half a world away.
That spoke volumes to me.
I like building these relationships with clients and other creatives, the fact it’s more than just a job you’re doing, you’re making something that lasts as long as that digitally-delivered product does.
The next time I saw Amy, it was August 2018. She asked me, last minute, to document her performance at Byline Festival. Byline is like no festival I’ve been to before, having just spent the day filming a wedding up Oxford way, I then caned it to the Surrey area to get to Amy’s midnight performance.
It was summer, but it was cold.
I was stood in the middle of a forest, layered up, with the two batteries I’d managed to charge at the wedding, not actually 100% I was in the right place. Then out of the shadows came Amy, her guitar, and her entourage of close friends and family.
As chilly as it was, it added to the atmosphere of the tent that Amy was playing in. Everyone was chilled out on hay bales with blankets ready for her performance, as she walked on and cranked out song after song. It wasn’t until the penultimate that you could see the cold was getting to her hands - which she apologised profusely for.
After her performance, Amy stayed and talked to those in the audience that dropped by to say something. She was incredibly gracious to everyone who wanted to talk, which was reflected in the people that she brought with her - her mother, friends, other relatives. All incredibly welcoming and friendly.
I had to head home to get up four hours later for the last date of Sarah Darling’s festival tour, but Amy’s set was definitely worth the three hour extension/detour to my day.
