The Barney Jam will return after successful debut

A ONE-day music festival is to return to Barnard Castle in 2017 after a successful launch this year.
The Barney Jam saw 21 bands perform across seven of the town’s pubs in an 11-hour music marathon in September.
The festival proved popular with performers and attracted packed houses at all the venues.
Organisers are planning to stage The Barney Jam on Saturday, September 2, next year.
Toni Sidgwick, a member of the organising committee, said one or two tweaks were being made to the festival.
“We are keeping it to one day and keeping the same number of venues, however, we will have 14-16 bands this time so people can get from one venue to the next and see all the acts.
“At this year’s event, there was some overlapping of acts.”
Also new for 2017 will be a host at each of the venues to welcome visitors and present the acts.
Ms Sidgwick added: “We learnt a lot from the first Barney Jam and after all the positive feedback and how successfully it went, we owed it to ourselves and everyone else to do it again.”
She said the venues were keen to get more involved with the second festival which will again raise money for the Teesdale branch of Cancer Research UK.
“We have already had bands and musicians emailing and contacting us through Facebook asking about performing next year.
“We are starting to ask for applications and when we get them all in we will sit down and look at them.
“Hopefully, there will be a few surprises next year, but we are in the early stages of planning.”
Anyone interested in getting involved in next year’s Barney Jam can contact the organisers by email at thebar neyjam@outlook.com or find the festival on Facebook.