Best Fit’s secret sessions return to End of the Road Festival this week

From midday on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the festival we’ll be bringing 15 names from across the festival line-up together on the piano stage for a series of stripped back sets, exclusive covers, collaborations and conversations.

We’ve been staging pop-up shows at the festival for the past 15 years and if you’ve ever been to End of the Road, you might have stumbled across Patti Smith reading from Just Kids, John Cale from The Velvet Underground chatting to Ezra Furman, Laura Marling and Marika Hackman covering The Foo Fighters or even a now legendary performance of “The Modern Leper” by Frightened Rabbit.

More than 100 artists have taken part in the secret sessions - from modern music legends such as Big Thief, Wilco, The Magnetic Fields, St Vincent, Future Islands, Yo La Tengo, Kurt Vile and Perfume Genius to Best Fit favourites Kurt Vile, Lucy Dacus, Soccer Mommy, Courtney Barnett, Yard Act, Kara Jackson, and Moses Sumney.

Nothing will be announced ahead of the festival - but we’ll be posting over on Instagram before each set and you might also find the odd note posted on a tree here and there around the site at Larmer Tree Gardens if you look hard enough.

You can also watch an exhaustive playlist of filmed performances from the secret sessions over on YouTube.

The festival kicks off on Thursday, 28 August with a headline set from Sharon Van Etten and the Attachment Theory and runs through the Sunday, 31 August.