Craig Hodgson was not trying to build an award-winning music event when EH32 Live began. He was just trying to get musicians back on a stage.
The pubs were closed to bands. As the COVID restrictions started to lift, outdoor performances became one of the few ways left to play in front of people. Hodgson, who has been in bands since school, saw an opportunity close to home in Port Seton.
“I play in bands. I have done since I was at school. And we often played locally in pubs and whatnot, and when COVID hit, there was no musicians able to play in pubs. So when the restrictions started to get lifted… this was a loophole, you could play outdoors to restricted crowds. So that’s why we started EH32 Live.”
He had driven past Cockenzie House countless times without ever setting foot inside. He emailed Marietta Di Ciacca, director of the trust that runs the house, and arranged a meeting. She and her team were keen from the start. The idea found a home in the gardens.
Six summers later, EH32 Live is still there. It has weathered licensing difficulties that at one point left its organisers wondering whether it was worth continuing, drawn thousands of people into a campaign to save it, given young musicians a stage of their own, and collected two Scottish Event Awards along the way.
We met him in the gardens as he and his team prepare for the final stretch of their sixth summer. Hodgson still plays himself in The Lost Boys and The Tones, who were due on stage the next day.
“It grew arms and legs,” he says. “It was something to get the local musicians playing again. And something to get people out and mingling and socialising again, and that’s what happened. That’s what we done. We achieved that.”
It grew into more than a gig. EH32 Live now funds a summer youth music project that helps young bands form and gets young people playing, paid for by sponsorship from local businesses. It works with ELJam, East Lothian’s youth music network, giving young acts early slots on Saturdays and Sundays. The event also lends musical equipment free to young musicians starting out so they can begin gigging without having to buy their own kit first.
“We’re able to help local groups,” Hodgson says. “We’re able to help charities, run charity events… local businesses sponsor, which we put all the sponsor money into activities like youth music.”
Between June and August, EH32 Live raised around £6,800 through its charity days, sponsorship and donations towards its music project.
EH32 Live hit difficulties in 2023.
Licensing issues and complaints about noise brought the event to a halt for a spell. Hodgson and the team behind it, people giving up their summer for something they believed was good for the community, found themselves asking a much simpler question.
“Is this worth it?”he says. “We almost gave up.”
Then came the public response. Thousands signed a petition to keep EH32 Live going.
“That was probably actually the turning point. We’ve seen that there was that many people that actually wanted the event to go ahead, and who liked coming along.”
The recognition came later. EH32 Live won Best Small Festival at The E Awards in 2024, then Best Community Event at the Scottish Event Awards, run by the same organiser, this April.
Hodgson credits Karen Kidd, from the Walk With Scott Foundation (the Tranent charity the event has run an annual fundraiser for), with helping put the entries together, along with colleagues at Stepping Out Mental Health Project, where he works during the week and runs a music project of his own. One participant from that project, Jamie Byrne, DJed at EH32 Live this summer.
“There’s a lot from the outside people don’t see,” Hodgson says.
Much of what people do not see is the team. Many of the bar and event staff have been there since year one. What began as an event team has become, in his words, “family and friends.” Some are former youth music project participants who now work the bars and can step onto the stage themselves if a booked act pulls out.
When a booked act cancelled at short notice in the final weeks of this summer’s programme, people were soon offering up replacements. “We’ve managed to find someone… a lot of our bar staff… if we’re ever stuck, or if someone phones in sick, we’ve got a musician pretty close by that can just jump on.”
The event runs under Hodgson’s company, Rambling Stage Events, which grew out of a trailer hire business he sold at the start of COVID. It now supplies PA hire, bars, entertainment and function bands for weddings and other events around the area, alongside EH32 Live.
Booking an entire summer is, he admits, a tough job. For themed events such as Northern Soul Day he books specifically for that sound. Otherwise the line-up mixes returning local acts with new names he scouts by visiting venues in Edinburgh and Glasgow. This year an open mic gave artists who missed out on a full booking another chance to get on stage, and gave Hodgson another place to find new talent.
One name from this summer stuck with the whole team.
“We had a band called High Tyde that played… I was actually in France at the time, so I didn’t get to hear them, but everyone had said that they were really sticking out, and that they were great. We’ll need to get them back.”
The sixth season closes on 29 August with a Country and Western Day. There are still a few surprises to be announced.
“It’ll be good. It’ll be a good one to finish with.”
Afterwards the team who make EH32 Live run will go away for a weekend together, funded by the tips collected over the summer. What began as a staff night out has, like the event itself, grown arms and legs.
Six summers on, Hodgson has no ambitions to make EH32 Live bigger. The gardens hold around 500 people, and he says the current setup suits what they do.
“I think this size, this capacity, everything suits us and suits what we do… I think we’ve done what we set out to achieve.”