Booze. Music. Literature. Jazz? It’s true that Matt from Balloon is a massive jazz fan, but scanning the quite bulging line up for this event it becomes apparent that the only jazz present is in the venue’s name. A shame, but it’ll still feature the Balloon imprimatur of tunes, words and VFM though (their last event included the winning combination of a nerdy manchild giving me a free copy of his book minutes after Kong had finished a set of abuse metal), so be prepared for high quality readings, rather nice songcraft and, go on then, some nice new badges. The man pictured below will hug you too. I’d imagine.

In usual Balloon style we’ll be having a mixture of music and literature. This one is in a jazz club because it’s lovely and people can have a nice sit down.

Primarily this event is in association with Parthian Books and is the launch of Nigel Jarrett’s (yes, same surname, he’s my uncle) book of short stories called ‘Funderland’. We’re making it free to get in so you can spend all your cash on his book.

Just in case you don’t know Nigel, we’ve booked 5 (vidiprinter – FIVE) other acts too.

We’ll be splitting the night into two halves because we’re civilised and like the theatre. There won’t be ice cream but there might be cheese.

The first half of the evening will see Joshua Caole play some acoustic folky country tunes, Holly Muller (moonlighting from her band Hail! The Planes) read a short story and Kai Lena, who runs her own music/lit type night in Newport, playing her quirky, Kate Bush-y (lazy journalism, woman + piano = Kate Bush) type songs.

The second half will kick off with Rhian Edwards who is going to treat us to poetry AND song, both are excellent, star attraction Nigel ‘Mr Moonlight: Champion Of Justice, Defender Of The Innocent’ Jarrett reading from his book and generally being witty and we’ll finish up with a bit of Welsh but American West Coast influenced, man/woman harmonising, country rock band Zervas and Pepper.

For free. Did I mention it was free?