“Live everyday as if it’s your last. Today is the day you were worried about yesterday.” So how and when did you take that leap and create Humber Street Sesh? I’m a night bird so I stay up late most nights and ponder life as most people do. I knew that The Sesh was coming up to its tenth anniversary and I wanted to do something special. I didn’t just want to put on a handful of bands at The Linnet on a Tuesday night or even make a full day of it there. I felt like it deserved more recognition than that because it’s quite a challenge to keep that consistency and continuity every week. Over the past twelve years, we’ve had over one thousand bands play at The Sesh and that’s special. I’ve been involved with Freedom Festival over the years, be it comparing or programing stages. I just felt that at Freedom, as fantastic as it is, it didn’t quite represent the creative brilliance of Hull. So I thought The Sesh could take over Humber Street and we could use some of these warehouses and businesses down here and put on some great stages of live music and maybe get some other creatives involved like: artists, photographers and graffiti artists. In 2012 we decided to go for it so I went to see Dave Mayes at Fruit and I remember speaking to Ali at Thieving Harry’s. I showed her this rough little drawing. I said, ‘I’ve got this idea for a festival, what do you think?’ and she was like, ‘You’re mad, you’re absolutely nuts!’ So from speaking to Dave and involving people like Ali from Thieving Harry’s and Mike Wilkinson from ITSL, it’s really come together. As well as speaking to Stew Baxter who’s an absolute icon. Let me get it straight right now for the magazine! It’s so important that everyone backs Stew and especially Warren Records. If anyone can take the city forward musically, it’s Stewart Baxter. Getting these people on board and working together has been incredibly important. I’ve sort of lived by this cliché over the past two years that, “individually we’re all great at what we do but collectively, we’re awesome”. I think we proved that in 2012 with the first Humber Street Sesh. To do it again last year with forty thousand people coming to watch one hundred and sixty unsigned, under the radar bands and acts alongside all the art was just phenomenal and I think it’s pretty unique to the country. I’ve done a lot of research into festivals all across the country and I haven’t seen anything quite like what we’ve done with Humber Street Sesh so I’m quite proud of that. Proud of the creative brilliance the city possesses.
The festival is clearly incredibly important for the city and it’s music scene. What needs to happen to ensure the long-term future of Humber Street Sesh? It’s building on the trust we’ve developed over the past twelve years from working with all these bands and acts. I think people trust us now to put on good events, promote them and do it for the right reasons. It’s not a financial thing; it wasn’t the case of putting a festival on down here to make a quick buck. It never has been. But we’ve got to make it sustainable this year and we’ve got to make it feasible to run year on year whether it remains down Humber Street or it goes citywide. Could we turn it into a camping festival? I don’t know right now but we’ve got to make it sustainable. We’ve also got to put a value on the musicians, artists and the production team as well. Hand on heart, I can’t commit to this eight months of the year, year on year, without taking something from it because it does affect not just your work but more importantly, your family. Anyone that organises an event of this scale should be receiving some sort of income from it and that goes down to all the production team. Everyone deserves to be paid on the day. If we can put a little concession fee on of three pounds, which is absolute peanuts for what’s lined up then it should definitely become sustainable. If you could say anything to the people of Hull right now, what would it be? Believe. Just believe. Believe in yourself. Believe in the city and together we can be beautiful. I know it sounds cliché but honestly, individually there are so many great people in Hull. Not just musically but artistically as well. You know, people from behind the cameras to the graffiti artists to the street illustrators; all of these people are individually brilliant but collectively, when we all work together, we’re awesome! So all I’d say is just believe. We can do this! And if you could give a message to a younger Mark Page at the start of this journey, what would it be? Live everyday as if it’s your last. Today is the day you were worried about yesterday.
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