By this time Brian Sharpe has arrived to organise tonights music. We spend the next couple of hours getting ready for the 7am kick off, managing to slip out to Ryde High Street for food. Pete goes off to another late afternoon music session at the Solent pub.

The man who engineered our CD, Martin White is back specially from Brighton, he works all over and tomorrow morning first thing he'll be flying to Barcelona to run some electrical wiring somewhere. Tonight he's here with us and part of the house band tonight. Paul Armfield picks up his double bass, Martin readies the sticks over his incredibly compact set, looks a dead ringer for Spencer Dryden's in the New Riders of the Purple Sage.

Brian Sharpe leads them in with a blues playing a Fender electric as good as ever. This guy has never grown tired of music he's been kicking it out in the small bars and theatres of the Isle of Wight all his life. In June we have the great pleasure of the Total Acoustic Band which includes Brian, Martin White and Caryle Stone to play support for our Sharon Shannon gig at Medina.

The night is packed with stories and musicians making contact with people they lost touch with. The intent of the CD has been to focus on the Island's depth of musical talent. Hopefully that is exactly what it achieved tonight.

Martin White's 17 year old daughter Jenny came up to sing with her dad on a couple of his great songs with Caryle Stone on vocals too. Martin's got a pile of them cut in his studio in the wilds of the Arreton downs where we visited like going to Traffic's cottage all the time we compiled the CD. The evening just becomes a blur of musical talent.

Mike Jolliffe gets up with Jerry Cahill and JL and the house band and does End of the Season and a pile of other great songs that I hear from the bar between conversations, it was impossible tonight to catch all the music because this was less a concert hall more a bar buzzing with stories and familiar faces but it was also great to hear the energy and commitment coming from the flat floor stage tonight. Anthony Minghellas favourite Jolliffe song that reminded him of a Fellini film called the Layabouts, 'it would be fun to shoot a gun up the high street' suggesting to him what it is like to live in a holiday town out of season . . . Mike Jolliffe's been on Isle of Wight Radio this lunchtime with us explaining how places like Gurnard beach take the place of Route 66 et al in our songs.

Martinez are up next, Paul Athey and SG mixing gut string with steel string acoustic guitar, playing glorious Flamenco vamps with Mick Cuffe on bass and Dave Pontin on congas, they get sound problems but this gorgeous rich texture of rhythm flies all over the place.

Dick Taylor gets up with the Blues MD's front line of which he's a member and Martin White on drums. Dick the original Rolling Stone bassist before Bill Wyman, then the lead guitarist with the Pretty Things who he still tours America with them but is apparently banned from appearing in New Zealand.

Dick winds it up to full welly tonight, great long screaming guitar solos straight out of the John Mayall Bluesbreakers book of how to lay them down. All the bands get three or four numbers and the adhoc band of Dick Taylor, Paul Nicey (someone will have to correct my spelling) and a bass player I didn't know with Martin White on drums gave it some kick. When Dick Taylor puts his guitar down the room is screaming for more.

Donal O'Riain, the Irish violin playing vet with Paul Armfield on bass and JC Grimshaw on guitar was next. No drummer tonight, Rupert Brown left the Island tonight off to record with a major international artist . . . Paul Armfield asks if there are any drummers in the audience? 'Why?' Someone asks. 'Well there's a lightbulb at the back that needs changing . . .'

Donal does a phenominal set of Irish and Romanian gypsy tunes, Armfield slapping great wedges of double bass behind him, JC pulling chords out of his guitar and they are all rocking and dancing around the stage like the Marx Brothers on speed. The violin playing is searing and wonderful, like David LaFlame steeped in Guinness, Donal just tears off the most heart rendering stuff I've heard him do so many times, buckets of soul.

He stays on stage when Angelina joins them on guitar, Steve Smith on a semi acoustic behind her and big Doug Watson brings his frame behind the tiny drum kit. They do Well, Well Willy from JC's CD, JC centre stage leaping up and down while Doug explodes his kit and the solos are just the stuff to make me sink back agains the wall and smilef.

JC calls Mick Cooch up to take over on double bass. The original Chuff Train Hot Dogs back on stage. They fly into one of their own songs, Coochy told me earlier he hadn't picked up a double bass for over seven years maybe more but he's rocking his butt off out there and the solos are flying all over. Donals gone for a beer but he gets back in time to plug in again and join the choruses.

JC decides to take a flyer. 'Here's an experiment, we haven't played this together for nine years, this is from the CD, Adam and Eve' Vic's glasses mist up and my back goes against the back wall they just up and show what acoustic music is all about. Doug Watson has got the whole kit rattling and shaking like a steam train thundering under a restaurant (in fact St. John's Railway tunnel runs right under here . . .). JC's vocal has me by the throat and the solos are curling my toes. Can it get any better.

Paul Armfield comes back on double bass and they finally finish me off. He slaps that bass into line with big fat chords, Donal plays like Stuff Smith the great jazz violinist, JC lays some brilliant mandolin in, Steve Smith and Angelina under the chords and Watson rocks into a groove. Vic's never heard them do this but I have. Clap Hands, Tom Waits I grin at him. Paul has all the growl of Waits, all the gut bucket of Bubber Miley wailing with Duke Ellington and he does it with such ease and such passion. Tingles every hair on my body.

Later I'll ask Sandra O'Toole about the version. She goes to jelly over Paul Armfield's voice, in fact when I ask her about the entire evening she just rolls her eyes and lets her jaw drop. This afternoon she bravely sat in the rough house of the Calvert's Hotel, Newport playing solo to a beery young football crowd who aren't the bit interested in hearing her perform. 'They looked at me with that look, like what are you doing here, you should be at home looking after the kids . . .'

As the Chuff Trains come off the flat floor stage I notice Laura wandering in toting John Wroaths bass. The Sons are readying to play us out. It's nearly eleven, we should have finished at 11 but what the heck it isn't often that we get so many Island musicians in one room and they have savoured the chance to catch up with each other, something that doesn't happen very often.

Rolland Jones is on stage with his brother Duncan 'the voice' Jones. Wroath is in dark shades his big presence taking up the stage. On drums is ex Son Chris Phillips, on saxophone is another former son Dave Pontin. They start off with Rollands Simple Life then progress through a set of classic Son's tunes. They sound as good as I remember them from those great days of three years ago when they wiped the floor with Sam Browns Band at the Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth and never got asked back.

Duncan Jones has one of the great soul drenched voices I've had the pleasure of hearing and his guitar strings cut through me like razor wires. Wroath does Just A Lover, Duncan sings Looking At the Stars with those knicked from Oscar Wilde lines 'We may be in the gutter but we are looking at the stars' pretty much an anthem around here for this band.

Gung ho Wroath closes it down magnicently with a great long funk and soul, rap, hip hop trance thing with Dave Pontin blowing heads of steam on tenor sax, Chris Phillips rattling the bejabbers out his kit and one of the Blues MD's trying to outrap the big bull beat merchant Wroath. The dancers front of the band are grooving their butts off. It is way after 11.30 by the time it finishes, the Waywards want to get to the bar and sink some more Guinness, they run on the stuff like cars do petrol.