Come Bye is a 400-person festival held at Three Pools, a permaculture farm and event space founded in 2017 near Abergavenny in Wales. I had heard about the festival before from friends and watched the video of last year’s annual Miss Come Bye competition, the highlight of the weekend’s packed schedule of somewhat cultish non-music activities. This year I was invited to play as part of a Magic Carpet showcase on Thursday night and, following the highs and lows of Kala (here), Waking Life (here), Honcho Campout (here) and Dimensions, I was curious to see what kind of note Come Bye would leave me on as I entered the now all-too-familiar “post-partygirl summer” lull.

As a child of 90s Britain, the words “come bye” instantly conjure visions of the television show One Man And His Dog, a competition to find the best shepherd + sheepdog duo in the UK & Ireland. In sheepdog training, “come bye” is the alliterative instruction the shepherd gives for their dog to move in a clockwise direction around the herd of sheep, as opposed to “away” for anticlockwise. I just looked up the show again on youtube and, uh, it’s really something. If middle-aged men saying things like “…and then from County Tipperary we’ve got John Brennan, and he’s got a red and white bitch, and she’s a little smasher, she is” is your thing, dig in to this episode from 1999.

Anyway, I was expecting that level of bucolic realness from my weekend on the farm. And it delivered.