After two days of rain, thunder and more than a little mud, Sunday at The Long Road Festival finally brings something everyone has been waiting for: sunshine. And according to Kezia Gill, we might have her late father to thank for it. “I had a little word with my late father this morning. I was like, ‘Dad, it’s a big day. I really need you to come through on this.’ And would you look?”
Gill is preparing for her return to The Long Road Festival stage when we catch up ahead of her Sunday set. The sunshine has finally arrived, but it is competing for attention with something considerably more sparkly. Gill’s outfit is covered in rhinestones. And, appropriately for an artist who has spent much of her career proudly doing things her own way, she has made it herself.
Kezia Gill @ The Long Road Festival 2026
Country, British And Made By Kezia
Anyone following Kezia Gill on Instagram or TikTok in the run-up to the festival has already seen glimpses of the outfit taking shape. What begins as essentially jeans and a nice top has been transformed by Gill into a rhinestone-covered celebration of country music, British identity and her own Midlands roots. “I had this idea of this very country and western inspired outfit, but with a real celebration of what it is to be British. So I have the Union Jack top, have the Union Jack rhinestones. And yeah, it’s just a celebration of all things country and all things British.”
The DIY approach feels particularly appropriate for Gill. Long before British country became the increasingly significant scene it is today, she was already doing it. “I’m very proud of where I’m from. I’m a working-class girl from Derby and Nottingham. And I have to say both because I grew up on the border. I was born in Nottingham, actually grew up in Long Eaton. So when people say, ‘Where?’ I’m like, ‘Look, both, man.’”
It is an identity she wears as proudly as the rhinestones. “No one was singing country when I was younger. And when I started sort of writing my own music, it wasn’t cool. And I just kept swimming upstream because I knew there was something worth getting there for. And I absolutely love how much country has exploded. And I love that we have this amazing British scene, and I just love to be a part of it.”
There is a sense that Gill has spent years waiting for the rest of the country to catch up. Now it is.
Keiza Gill @ The Long Road Festival 2025
‘There’s Just More People To Sing Along’
Gill has watched the British country scene change around her, but the last year in particular has seen things accelerate considerably. She has signed to Snakefarm Records, scored a number one album and headed out on a sold-out UK tour. With that success has inevitably come a much larger audience. For Gill, however, that does not require changing what she has been doing all along.
“It’s all part of it. You know, at the end of the day, it’s like you can sing a song a thousand times and one hundred people will love it. If it gets played once on national radio, suddenly a million people love it, and it only takes that very short period of time for things to kind of explode.
“I feel like that, particularly the last year, you know, I signed to Snakefarm Records, had a number one album, a sell-out UK tour. Things have really, really ramped up and now more people just know who I am. And that’s a great thing because it means that when I do go out to sing the silly little songs I’ve been singing for ten years, there’s just more people to sing along.”
That last line feels particularly revealing. For Gill, success has not changed the songs. It has simply changed how many people are there to sing them back. It is a long way from where it started, although she does not necessarily see it that way. “It’s the dream. And, you know, before any of this was here, I was a ten-year-old girl in front of the mirror with a hairbrush. So I’m doing the same thing. There’s just more people to watch.”
Kezia Gill @ The Long Road Festival 2026
‘The World’s Changed, I Haven’t’
For all the success, one of the things that remains particularly noticeable about Gill is how little of it appears to have changed the person behind the songs. Her explanation is simple: blame the Midlands. “Nothing will keep you grounded like coming from the Midlands. People often say to me, ‘You’re so grounded. You’re so down to earth.’ But I don’t know how to be anything else. This is me, like, working class.”
And despite the bigger stages, bigger audiences and increasingly impressive list of achievements, she still approaches things much as she did when the gigs were considerably smaller. “I’ve just never really changed. I think this is what’s happened: my world has changed. But I’m talking to you exactly the same as if I just finished a gig at the Dog and Duck and you were like, ‘I really enjoyed that.’ And I’m like, ‘Great, here’s a CD, five pounds.’
“The world’s changed, I haven’t.”
It is perhaps the simplest explanation for the connection Gill has built with her audience. There is no carefully constructed persona to maintain and no attempt to become somebody else simply because the rooms have become bigger. “I don’t know how to be anything else, so I need to be good at this. There’s no Plan B.”
That honesty is part of the appeal. The artist who once stood in front of a mirror with a hairbrush is still there. The only difference is that now thousands of people are watching.
Kezia Gill @ The Long Road Festival 2026
Digging Back Into The Old Notebooks
With so many newer fans now discovering her music, Gill has not forgotten the songs that got her here. In fact, she still believes some of her best writing happened when she was only 19 or 20.
“Because you’re having these big things in life happen, you know, maybe your first heartbreak, really feeling homesick when you leave home. And even though my writing has matured massively, I was still writing big, big things back then.”
“I do often go through my old notebooks and think, like, ‘What can we rerelease?’ But then I’m always writing new stuff because life’s always changing.”
Her The Long Road Festival set does not travel quite that far back, with the current focus firmly on All On Red, but there are certain songs her audience simply will not allow her to leave behind.
“There’s a couple of singles from previous albums because we’re really celebrating the All On Red moment at the minute. But, you know, a song like Whiskey Over Ice, which was on the Misfit record in 2023, I feel like I’d get lynched if I didn’t sing that at a festival.”
“Whiskey Drinking Woman was on my 2019 Dead Ends & Detours EP. So that one’s like nearly seven years old now. And again, if I don’t sing Whiskey Drinking Woman, people throw things at me. So, you know, it’s got to be in there.”
It is a useful reminder that while Gill is very much looking forward, her audience has travelled with her. The songs are not simply tracks in a catalogue; for the people who have been there from the beginning, they are markers of their own journey alongside hers.
Kezia Gill @ Electric Ballroom
The Friday Night Crew
Calling Gill’s fanbase dedicated might be underselling it. “Hardcore is the word. Yeah, they are the best. I am so lucky. I call them the Friday Night Crew.”
Nowhere is that relationship more evident than at The Long Road Festival. Some of those fans were there when Gill played the Front Porch seven years ago. They have watched as she has progressed through the festival and onto increasingly bigger stages, returning year after year.
“I think they just, they’re invested in me. And a lot of them came to see me on the Front Porch seven years ago at The Long Road Festival. And they’ve been with me every step of the way.”
“Even my whole team, they’re friends and family because everyone’s just invested. Everyone wants it for me. And that’s why it works.”
There is something beautifully circular about Gill’s relationship with the festival. The Long Road Festival has grown, Gill has grown and the audience has grown with them, but the connection remains. At this point, a Long Road without Kezia Gill is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine.
She already has a plan for that too. “I feel like it’s gonna be like Glastonbury. They will be out for the legends slot. I’m gonna be out of my wheelchair when I’m eighty-odd.” Don’t bet against her being there.
Kezia Gill @ The Long Road Festival 2026
Just Be Here For The Capes
So what comes next? That is where Gill becomes considerably less helpful. “There’s always something coming. And the beauty of it is I can never talk about it.”
What she can reveal is that she is writing again. “Writing new music, there’s inevitably going to be a next album. We’ve got some really exciting shows planned for 2027, which is useless because I can’t tell you about any of them. But the best thing to do is just stay with me, follow along and let’s see what happens next.”
And then there is the outfit. Having documented the creation of her The Long Road Festival look online, Gill may have inadvertently created expectations for future performances. “I’ve kind of made a rod for my own back now because I’m going to just be known as the cape.”
There is talk of a future KG clothing line, a possible career as a fashion designer and even the prospect of attacking my own outfit with a glue gun, rhinestones and tassels. Perhaps wisely, we leave that for another day. For now, Gill’s advice is considerably simpler. “Forget the music. Just be here for the capes.”
The music might have something to say about that. Because beneath the rhinestones, the humour and the increasingly elaborate stage shows, Kezia Gill remains exactly what she has always been: a Midlands-born songwriter who refused to wait for permission to make the music she wanted to make. The difference now is that the world is finally listening. And while the world may have changed, Gill insists she has not.
“The world’s changed, I haven’t.”
Keiza Gill @ The Long Road Festival 2025
Interview and photography with Kezia Gill by Henry Finnegan at The Long Road Festival 2026 on 30th August 2026. Additional photography by Nick Allan. Instagram: @finneganfoto | Facebook: @finneganfoto.
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