AFTER a summer of touring festivals across the country, this weekend the mighty Dingus Khan are back on home turf.

And what a homecoming gig to play – headlining the town’s biggest musical event of the year, the Colchester Free Festival tomorrow (Saturday, August 24).

Last year the eight-piece band rather spectacularly played Colchester’s Castle Park in between sets at the Reading and Leeds festivals, where they were introduced on stage by BBC 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq.

Lead singer Ben Brown explains. “He introduced us at Reading, although he very nearly didn’t.

“The BBC have this caravan where they have all the lists of the stages and who is playing on them. Next to our name someone had scribbled Steve Lamacq.

“I suppose we thought he might come and see us, but Reading is a huge festival so we weren’t really expecting him to.

“And then when we’re just about to start our set and I’m about to say who we are, someone points to the edge of the stage and says ‘wait a minute, someone wants to introduce you’ and Lammo comes up on stage.

“It was incredible, he really got the crowd going and even during our set he was jumping up and down and singing all the words.”

The band have now completed two headline tours of the country, playing such venues as King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, in Glasgow, where Oasis were discovered, and Dingwalls in London, where Dingus Khan officially launched their debut album, Support Mistley Swans.

And this summer they have criss-crossed the country, playing a number of festivals such as Belladrum Festival in Inverness, the Fieldview Festival in Wiltshire, the Y Not Festival in Derbyshire.

It was just over two years ago Dingus Khan got signed to Fierce Panda’s in-house label Fandango, with their debut single Knifey Spoony promptly getting picked up for some high profile national radio airplay.

As well as Steve Lamacq, for whom they did a live session at the BBC’s legendary Maida Vale studios, Rob Da Bank played another of the band’s songs, Made A List, on his show, and Tom Robinson played a number of the band’s other songs on his BBC 6 music show.

As well as the tunes, what makes the “Khan” so wonderfully unique is the make-up with two bass players in Adam Toms and Tom Armstrong, three drummers/percussionists in Nick Daldry, Gareth Burney and Paul Miller, ukulele player Josh Court and of course their charismatic frontman and guitarist Ben Brown.

There will be two opportunities to catch them this weekend as after their festival headline set they are performing again in Tin Pan Alley.

Ben says: “After the festival we’re probably going to want to do something a little different so I’ve been thinking about a Dingus hoe-down with us all wearing dungarees and straw hats.

“What I like about the Free Festival is looking out and seeing all those familiar faces.”