We Are Here
By Plymouth Culture Community Reporter Joshua Edwards
On the Saturday of Mayday weekend, Leadworks in Stonehouse played host to We Are Here 2025, a one-day music festival that showcased bands predominantly made up of women and underrepresented genders.
So, who better to document the event in words than me; a straight, white, middle-class man approaching middle age? Anyway…
It’s the second year I’ve been to the festival, but the third year it’s been going. Last year’s event was a fantastic experience, partly because it was an all-ages event and I took my eleven-year-old daughter with me. It fell on the weekend before her SATs exams, so in between bands she was revising from text books, a surreal set of circumstances that had me wondering whether I was a fantastic father or an awful one. But she did pretty well in the tests and discovered a band (Saltash’s own Leonard and the Zombies) she loved so much that they dominated her Spotify plays for the year and launched her in to the top 0.5% of their listeners, so I think I’m absolved of bad Dad status.
We (joined this year by her mum and younger sister) got there on time because I’m old and uncool, and we waited for the first band to start. There was a buzz there, people were happy and celebratory. Everyone, performers and punters alike, greeted each other warmly, hugging and smiling and being excited to put this thing on. There was a palpable feeling of community.
One of the bands I saw setting up were the openers, The Slimy Girls. Not only did they open the festival with aplomb, they then spent the whole rest of it dancing like maniacs at the front of every other band’s crowd, like a friendly gang; like the Red Hot Chili Peppers before they got all mainstream and your mum started listening to them.
Speaking of Your Mum, that’s the title of one of their set’s standout tunes. Lea, the singer, growled the lyrics out scornfully and she paced around the stage. There was a sneer to her delivery and it added a menace to the repeated phrase of “Does your mum know yet? Does she know?”
There’s another song that I think may just be called Slime that also struck me as the whole band shouted the word “Slime” in unison before abruptly pausing and catching up with themselves musically a half a beat later than was comfortable. It was jarring, but I mean that positively.
Guitarist Elliot was a constant source of energy on-stage and every time I saw him during the day. Drummer Ashe kicked the hell out of her kit, playing it whilst holding her sticks in a sideways jazz style making the animalist intensity of her playing all the more impressive. Naomi on the bass struck me as the bands anchor; she held it together and never stopped smiling. She’s also the one my youngest daughter approached after they’d finished to tell her that she thought they were great. My kid is seven and had watched the whole set whilst sat on my shoulders, bouncing and dancing and having a blast. Naomi took her compliment like it was the sweetest thing she’d ever heard.
The positive interactions for my young daughter didn’t stop there. During Varicosa’s set, they played a song that required the audience to shout the name Mildred “at the top of their lungs.” We mostly obliged as they sung “Mildred I love you” but my kids, and those of my friends who has also brought theirs to the event wanted to know who Mildred was. My daughter took a note that simply read “Who’s Mildred?” and held it up at the front of the stage. Their lead singer/screamer/trumpet player/self-proclaimed final boss of laser quest stopped mid song to explain to her that Mildred is the mammoth on display at The Box calmly and politely. This was in stark contrast to the ghoulish face paint they were wearing.
The gig started with the band members throwing a small knitted pasty back and forth to the crowd and progressed into some lovely slices of noisy punk with keytar, the aforementioned trumpet and dueling vocalists. Dude, the singer, has a voice that makes my vocal cords hurt. They spent the whole show screaming like a Howler monkey, utilising a technique that seems to unhinge their bottom jaw in a pythonesque manner.
One of the highlights of my day was watching my two daughters dancing extatically together during Varicosa’s song, Dance, Bastard, Dance; part of my joy came from the fact that both of my kids were born out of wedlock. You can’t beat a couple of dancing bastards. Obedient little dancing bastards.
And down the front, swirling and jigging like little natural disasters? The Slimy Girls. MVPs of the festival for sure.
The rest of the line-up was made up of Seizure Salad, No Feathers, The Dollies, Oh the Guilt, Tiger Empress, the Other Woman Band, the Cosmic Something and Pussy Liquor. I enjoyed every set I saw. But the takeaway was the feeling of togetherness that the event fostered; from the supportive compere work in between acts to how excited the promoters and venue staff seemed by the whole day, let alone the audience. Wholesome isn’t the most punk word to use, but I can think of no substitute. A festival I’d recommend anyone take their kids to.
