Next up in our #COVIDCREWSTORIES we’re all aboard the Hurly Burly café bus. Shout out to PILKI’s for sharing his tale of how the kindness of strangers from afar inspired a whole album!
First of all my artist name is PILKI and I’ve been the in-house sound engineer/DJ for the Hurly Burly for the last two years. Prior to that, for the last 10 years, I’ve been working any job I could at as many festivals as possible to try and get as many sets on my downtime.
2020 was planning out to be a good year for me. I had a few applications to finally have my own stage at a couple of festivals and felt I was going it the right direction. Life has changed for us all and now and even though my plans have been put on hold, the silver lining for me is that the pandemic has ignited a fire within me to keep writing.
In January 2020 me and my girlfriend set off in our van to Morocco – it was a trip we had been planning for nearly 2 years! To cut a very long story short we ended up stranded in our van in Portugal during the first lockdown. I started writing some songs about the situation, release tunes telling our story. Here’s ‘Stranded With A Dream’…
Like I find myself doing a lot in life, when I look back to our time in Portugal now I tend to only remember the good parts. One of the biggest highlights was making friends for life with Ben and Sarah. They amazingly gave us a place to park up and spend the whole lockdown there even though we didn’t really know them.
The few weeks prior to us arriving at their place was pretty intense, avoiding lockdown in Gibraltar and Spain just so we could stock up on food, gas and grab a solar panel. It all happened so quick. We rushed to get all these provisions and then realised that we didn’t actually have anywhere to go. All the “park4night” spots were getting really full and as we had no toilet or access to water I was starting to get worried! When we asked for help on social media it was amazing how many people got in contact. In the height of all the panic at the time it was amazing to feel so much love, our friends and family were amazing.
The last highlight was adopting a beautiful Portuguese rescue dog. We have now brought her back home with us. Her name is Kida and she’s become the centre of our lives! Kida means drumming in Hausa, and apparently it’s also slang for cutie in Portuguese!
Check out PILKI’s vlog from the van
here.
