One Hull of a Festival - Ed Faulkner - Festival Director, Founder of Tribfest - a podcast by Leon McQuade | Paul Longley

Ed (54) was born in Darlington but considered himself a Hull lad after moving here aged four. Husband to Jo, to whom he has been married for 30 years. Father to Dempsey. He attended Bransholme High School and then furthered his studies at Hull University. 

He founded 'Ed Entertainments Ltd' back in October 2006. Ed has over 25 years of experience in the entertainment business, from organising events and performing with bands and as a solo artist. Ed's original idea to create a Glastonbury style music festival for tribute bands began with Tribfest, launched in 2007. Ed ran Tribfest for several years while trying to hold down his day job as a qualified social worker. 

Managing and organising events is now his full-time job. He came up with the idea for Tribfest while touring with his own tribute band 'The Beautiful Couch' in honour of The Beautiful South. "We played to 10,000 at the Mathew Street festival in Liverpool, and I wanted to create a small festival in East Yorkshire". The first Tribfest was a year of floods with lots of tragic but (now) funny stories! Floating air beds, trench foot, crying in the middle of the wet field! Tribfest The Worlds Biggest Tribute Band Festival. 

The event was Held at Sledmere House, East Yorkshire. Talking about failure and learning from it, Ed says, "We had a designer kids clothes shop in Beverley, called it Snap, we owned it for about five years, designing clothes for kids. Getting all footballers in and stuff like that! All these shops sort of suddenly appeared wanting to offer the same. So, we had a good year, about 18 months. It started to slide. I completely lost interest in it. Consequently, we closed that". 

Ed tells us how he learnt from his past failure: "I think if I had become more focused on it a little more, we could have maybe continued. So a big lesson for me with the Tribfest in that first year was that I did some reading and research about business failure. I started writing things down. Writing things down was a big thing for me. That kept me focused if you just had it in your head. I get up now to write things down. So, it's about staying focused, but within that focus keeping, refreshing and looking for new ideas all the time, which we have to do in a festival." Tribfest is the summer's biggest tribute band music festival. Voted 'Best Entertainment/Leisure Venue' in East Yorkshire in the Best Bar None Awards 2018-2020 Take a listen to this week's fantastic Podcast with Ed. Learn more about the 'Man behind the Festival'. 

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