 If you look into the distance I'm Tom Walker, I am a singer-songwriter slash artist from Manchester and I'm here at Great Escape It's one of those for new artists and new emerging talent I just think it's a wicked platform, it's really cool I love playing guitar and I've been playing guitar since I was like 12 years old so I've incorporated a lot of that in the live show because if you can play guitar you might as well show off a little bit and I would manage to get people to join in and that was kind of the earliest memory of me like getting into music and being like, I should go and do this live If you're having a bad day and everything's going down the toilet I'll normally try and write a song about it because it's just like a little therapy session You get everything out in the lyrics on the page and you can just go through it and then just take your mind off it while you're thinking about it, almost like subconsciously it's a bit crazy I want to be known for good songwriting, I think, yeah Just good songwriting and good tunes and a good live show I just want it to keep my steadily getting bigger and bigger and better and better I'm Villot, I'm from Germany but I live in the Netherlands at the moment and I write songs and make music I think one of my first places I ever performed was at like a food truck festival and it was one of my, I think, favourite experiences ever performing because it was a very intimate kind of a setting and you get to be very close to the audience and you get to share that kind of like love for music in a different way than you would in really big festivals so I think it's really important transferring what you have in the studio out on the stage and being able to connect with fans in that way I always felt like my music should be for me and should be to help me kind of like get outside and be able to express my feelings and my thoughts and all that kind of stuff but having people show their support and that they relate to you in the same ways really comforting feeling and that they kind of experience the same things that you do I just try to be in the present I think that's really important it's not like thinking too much about the future and really being in like the now embrace the now I love that just being able to live in the moment My name is Saweetie and I'm from California I'm from the Bay Area but I live in LA and I'm an artist I rap I always felt like I was supposed to do music you know, as an emerging artist festivals are so important because you never know who's watching I always felt like who's really an artist like can you perform live can you have choreo like can I dance can I rap live while dancing and it's the energy like people don't realize it because they're used to watching like videos but when you're in a room with an artist like it helps them to get to know me I think that's really important because it creates that connection if it's a great performance you can feed off of that so I think these venues are extremely important especially when they're smaller I want my music to be known for making people feel good I like my audiences to have fun I'm there to you know put on a good show and just have a good time Where's the regrets? From Los Angeles playing a festival like this is such a great way to like be introduced to a lot of people that have never seen us I think an intimate show is so important for bands and for bands just because connecting with your audience is like the biggest part of playing shows and it really makes you want to work harder It's really cool to just like be able to look into someone's eyes and see that they're enjoying what you're doing It's the only way to start I mean I think without these small venues the only artists who are going to be able to gain traction are going to be huge money-backed artists who pop up really quickly out of nowhere and so I think without them music will shift a lot and change and it's kind of scary You know when you listen to a record there's multiple takes everything's chopped up and kind of pieced together and it's very controlled and a live show is very unpredictable