It's increasingly hard to be both an indie rock band and new parents amid the ongoing collapse of many of the institutions that once supported both of those enterprises. The married British musicians Chloe Little and James Taylor (not that James Taylor) are trying to do both at the same time. They're the parents of an infant who's only a few months old, and they make music together as Wings Of Desire. Last weekend, their band was booked to play a festival called Valley Fest, outside Bristol, so they packed up their baby and Little's mother, who came along for childcare, and drove for hours before finding out that the stage they'd been booked to play didn't exist.
Valley Fest went down this past weekend, with the bands Big Special, Friendly Fires, and Cast headlining. Through their agent, Wings Of Desire were booked to play the festival's Yard Stage back in February. When they arrived at the fest, though, they learned that they'd been moved to a different stage. They wandered around, unsuccessfully trying to find that stage, and the band and their agent's calls to bookers went unanswered. They never ended up playing the festival, and they posted about their experience on Instagram:
Walk around with all our gear + baby, use the pram as a trolly, get turned away from every tent. The number of the production contact we have keeps going to a Giff Gaff voicemail.
Finally arrive at the infamous not-on-the-site-map stage that we are booked to play, a PowerPoint presentation about property development is going on.
The curator of the stage confirms he hadn’t booked us and the lineup had been in place for months. He tells us of a good place in Ecuador to buy frankincense.
Baby is crying, needs feeding. We all need feeding. Luckily we have a meal ticket we can use at one of the food vans. We wait for a call that doesn’t come. Back to the car, pack up the stuff, nappy change on the back seat, more tears, drive 2 hours home.
Sounds extremely shitty! The band says that they shared the story as "a lovely example of how the music industry treats artists." After that Instagram post, Wings Of Desire member Chloe Little spoke to the BBC, saying, "We didn't end up playing our set, that's never happened to us before... We're used to no dressing room, but there was nowhere to go with the baby, and that added to the stress."
In response, festival founder Luke Hasell told the BBC that he was "really sorry to hear about Wings Of Desire's experience." He went on:
Ahead of the festival, we made the decision to merge the Yard Stage with another venue, with artists due to perform there being reprogrammed across the weekend.
Unfortunately, it appears there was a breakdown in communication around Wings Of Desire's performance, which meant they weren't given the information they needed ahead of arriving on site...
We'll be reaching out to the band's management to apologize, better understand their experience and make sure this doesn't happen again.
In a follow-up Instagram post, Wings Of Desire say, "We have of course heard nothing from them and have not been compensated. We do not appreciate being gaslit into being told it was a miscommunication. We have all the receipts."
Wings Of Desire are currently releasing a new song during every new moon of the 2026 lunar calendar. "The Way You Feel," their most recent single, came out last month.
