Down By The River – Colorama from Kieran Evans on Vimeo.

This year’s Port Eliot Festival in glorious Cornwall is starting early and, embracing the new start day means we have a few additions to our previously announced line-up next month. So, things kick off on Thursday (21/7) when we open the bar at 4pm and us lot and friends will be playing records until closing time (aka last man drops). Along the way, there will be a load of ace live music. At 7pm we have Peter Bruntnell, a previous winner of Mojo magazine’s ‘Americana album of the month’ award who will no doubt be playing songs from his new record, Black Mountain UFO. Peter’s fans include Kurt Wagner of Lambchop, who has been heard to say on many occasions, “I fuckin’ love Peter Bruntnell”.

Following Peter at 8.30 is James Walbourne. James is known in the business as a guitar for hire, a job that he loves cos it gives him fan boy kicks playing alongside Ray Davies (as he just did at the Meltdown festival), the Pretenders, Jerry Lee Lewis and, er, Peter Bruntnell. James also writes and plays his own stuff as can be heard on The Hill, his recently released album on Heavenly.

At 9.30pm, Colorama bring their pastoral Welsh psychedelia to sunny St Germans. Colorama are one of those once-heard, never-forgotten bands, we love ’em to bits and can’t think of a better band to ease us into the weekend. We’re currently loving the Colorama remix of John Stammer’s ‘Idle I’m’ which you can hear via Soundcloud here. Friend of the River Kieran Evans has made a beautiful film with Colorama’s Carwyn which you can watch at the top of this post.

In other Port Eliot news, on Saturday at 1pm the inspirational, visionary Jo Bartlett will play acoustic songs. You might know her as one half of It’s Jo and Danny or as one of the Yellow Moon Band or possibly as one of the geniuses behind the Green Man Festival. The previously advertised Music Book Reader launch will now not happen.

The full line-up for the Caught By The River stage can be found HERE