Music Booking Policy

Fire in the Mountain explores and promotes The Folk Music of the World. We define Folk Music as the heritage music of any given culture - a music that is ancient, timeless, and which has been passed down through generations, thus being part of the oral tradition and benefitting from the folk process. Our mantra is New Folk, Old Folk and No Folk - we seek to represent music from the older generations, newer and younger musicians rooted in the tradition, and bands and artists influenced by the tradition taking it in new directions. We aim for gender parity across our programme, as well as representation from musicians of the LGBTQI+ community in the folk scene . Music is Life, Music is Expression, Music is Culture, and our ears are open to all voices.

Core Music: The core of our music programming will always be the music born in the Appalachian Region of America in song, on fiddle and banjo - we unapologetically love a fast fiddle tune!

Music from Wales Our festival takes place in Wales, and we're committed to presenting the music of our fabulous country, at a local and national level. The Main Stage on The Friday of the festival is dedicated to showcasing bands and the music of Wales.

Applying to perform at Fire in the Mountain Festival

The Line Up for our festival this year in 2025 in complete - there are no more slots available, and all budget and tickets have been allocated.

We now get SO many applications to perform it’s become a massive job. We’re having to set a full rules and timescales to help us. We get just under 1000 applications for 40 slots at the festival. It’s insane, thanks everyone.

Application for our 2026 event will open on 1st October 2025.
Applications will close on 30th November. We will spend October, November and December listening to lots of music and choosing our bands.
Confirmations will be sent out during December.
The Line Up will be announced early January.

A few rules to help us.
We are a TRADITIONAL MUSIC Festival. Please only apply if you play the traditional music of your country or heritage!
For paid and booked slots on our stages, we will only accept applications artists who have recorded and released an album or EP of material. This needs to up on Bandcamp, Sportify or another streaming platform. Sorry, but with so much to listen to, we just can’t do soundcloud demos.

Personal Note on the Festival
We are a festival put on by musicians for musicians and music lovers. We’ve been doing it a while… It’s flattering so many people apply to play now. We must encourage everyone to keep at it, organise shows, promote other bands, set up folk clubs, trying running a small festival. Book the upstairs room of a local pub or village hall.. make it happen. We did it. And lastly, if you don’t get a slot, please consider coming and supporting the festival in the most important way - buying a ticket! It’s tough to make all the ends meet and we really do need the money to keep it going. We have jam sessions, busking stages, workshops, session tents and loads of opportunities to play with other musicians.

Much Love
Fire in the Mountain Music Team.