Homegrown First
Local bands lead the bill. Touring acts join them. We book by ear, not by chart position.
Bring It Home.
A love letter to the spirit of Truck — the muddy fields, the unsigned bands, the homegrown stages — and a new chapter for the music that lives off the map.
The journal
Shows worth caring about.
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AFI Decide Sing the Sorrow Wasn't Enough
A back catalogue thick enough to be a coffee-table book — and a band that still refuses to phone it in.
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The Menzingers Are Still Writing Songs About the People You Forgot
Two months of dates, theatres a size too small, and a band that turns regret into a singalong.
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Two Bands That Refused to Mellow
Not a nostalgia trip — both bands still write songs that mean something.
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The story so far
An idea that wouldn't sit down.
Truck Festival began as a stubborn rebuke of the festival-industrial complex — and somewhere between 1998 and now, it grew into a quiet institution. This is a tribute, and a continuation.
- 1998
It started on a farm in Steventon, Oxfordshire. Two brothers, one weekend, a few hundred friends.
- 2005
The BBC Introducing stage gave the unsigned a microphone the size of a county.
- 2011
"Bring It Home" — fourteen years in, the tagline became the ethos.
- Now
A new home for the same idea: small bands, big rooms, no algorithm.
Artifact
The 2011 bill.
Acts confirmed at the time of the original site: a roll-call of indie, folk and oddballs that still reads like a great Spotify playlist.
Gruff Rhys. Bellowhead. Graham Coxon. Saint Etienne. John Grant. The Young Knives. Philip Selway. Electric Soft Parade. Edwyn Collins. Benjamin Francis Leftwich. The Go! Team. Johnny Flynn. And many more.
From the archive
The illustrations.
The 2011 site was full of these — silhouetted goat-devils, rainbows over Oxfordshire, hand-drawn clouds. We kept them.
What this is
Three rules we won't break.
Small Rooms, Real Sound
No corporate sponsors on the kick drum. A stage is a stage if you can see the guitarist sweat.
Festival as Place
Field, tent, fire, sleep. The space matters as much as the lineup. Camping is the point.
The new chapter
The programme is being written.
Come and write it with us.
This site is the start of it. If you played a stage at Truck in the early years, ran a tent, slept in a van, or just remember it — get in touch. We're collecting the lore, and looking for the next bands.
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