Friday Strummer of Love headliner Seasick Steve watches Bragg preach to the converted

Strummer of Love was a one-off festival celebrating the life of Joe Strummer, who sadly passed away 10 years ago. It was the brainchild of Strummerville, the charity set up by Strummer's wife Lucinda after his death to support up and coming musicians. With it being a fallow year at Glastonbury they decided to create their own festival with all profits going to the charity.

We arrived at the site (situated on the Blackdown Hills near Taunton) on Friday morning, just in time to put up the tent in driving rain and heavy winds. Once we'd set up, the sun came out and we went over the bridge to the main field where the Clash City Rockers stage was. This was the main stage and was complemented by three other stages - these were the Johnny Appleseed tent which was the second largest stage, Sunset Disco which was a small set up in a wooded area, and the Campfire Stage. This latter one being the heart of what Strummerville is all about and very similar to the campfire area they have set up at Glastonbury, with a small stage and settees around a campfire for people to chill out.

The first act on Friday was the folk punk Strummerville favourite Frank Turner. He started the Friday off with a rousing performance which seemed to energise the small but passionate crowd. He seemed genuinely disappointed that he couldn't hang around the festival after his appearance as he was heading straight down to Devon to headline Beautiful Days.

We then did a tour of the unexpectedly large site considering the small amount of features they had in it. There was a lot of dead ground that seemed wasted and in my opinion the whole thing could have been more compact. This would have also helped make the place feel busier, as at times the place seemed really quiet. We headed up to the Healing Field first which was a nice mini version of the Glastonbury Healing field. After that we walked to The Johnny Appleseed tent to catch the North London 4 piece The Supernovas. They started up with maybe 10-15 people watching, but their lively guitar-led sound soon had people enticed into the tent and by the end of the set a now respectable sized crowd left, having been entertained by this surprisingly still relatively unknown band.

Next up we set off back to the main stage to catch Sonic Boom Six and then Reverend And The Makers, the latter being one of the highlights of the day for me. They got the crowd dancing and singing along and really put on a good set finishing off on a high with "He said he loved me". As the evening drew in it was time for some left-wing activism interspersed with a few acoustic rock songs from Billy Bragg. He went down well and the politically suited crowd lapped up his rants. Even the Friday headliner Seasick Steve joined the main crowd to watch Bragg preach to the converted.

The night finished on a high note with a polished rousing performance from 70 year old Californian blues musician Seasick Steve. The festival favourite performed superbly and defied his age with his energy and enthusiasm. After a great first day it was now time to sit around the campfire for a few hours before seeing what the next day would bring.

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