RIVERfest (formerly The Burnham Festival) has its roots in an initiative jointly mooted in 1992 by the, then, Arts Minister, rock promoter Harvey Goldsmith and Rolling Stone Mick Jagger. Their idea was to institute an annual National Music Day throughout the country - a day when musicians of all ages and levels of ability and spanning every musical genre could come together to celebrate and share the gift of music-making.

Thousands of events were organised across the length and breadth of the country on Sunday 28 June 1992. The Burnham National Music Day concert, held on the Millfield, using an old marquee as a stage, was one such event. Peter Dale, Head of Music at St Peter's School and local GP, Herb Montague-Brown - an enthusiastic Rotarian - were the initial driving forces.

That first event involved local choirs, chamber music groups, music students, pop duos and, as a finale, a specially-assembled blues band. It involved about 50 or 60 performers and was watched by a crowd of about 200, who set the pattern for the future, bringing down picnics and bottles of beer and wine to help create a relaxed, family atmosphere in the June sunshine.

That first National Music Day was organised under the Burnham and Dengie Hundred Rotary Club's banner though, from the outset, Rotary made it clear it wished to turn it over to an independent organising group. That became the Burnham National Music Day Committee, headed by energetic journalist and musician Tim Aves.

In 1993 the concert was expanded by bringing in more performers, widening the range of music and making the whole thing more professional. The committee built a small stage inside the marquee, hired a professional sound and lighting company and arranged for a drum kit and backline amplification to be provided for bands to use. To achieve this, they had to seek sponsorship and grant aid. The result was a much better show, a bigger audience and the beginnings of a reputation for providing a really good, entertaining day out with a certain relaxed "vibe".

A couple of years later, Peter Dale decided to withdraw from the committee to pursue other interests. In his place, a number of talented and hard-working individuals were recruited from the town to help organise the festival and push out its boundaries.

In the fourth year, they attempted to involve every school in the Maldon district, via a "Kids' Choir" which they hoped would attract hundreds of youngsters. It was well-intentioned, but didn't work terribly well and was an experiment they didn't attempt to repeat!

What did quickly become clear, however, was that there was no shortage of other performers - the younger pop and rock bands in particular - keen for the chance to show off their talents. As word spread about what a good, fun event the show was, they started getting calls from all over Essex and even London and Kent - all this for the chance to come to Burnham and play for nothing!

By 1996, the one-day show had been expanded as far as the committee we felt they could take it. It was a continuous nine hours - bounded by Sunday lunch at one end of the day and the strict 10pm curfew imposed by the authorities (and their desire to remain on good terms with the Millfield's neighbours). Yet they still couldn't fit everything in!

How to accommodate more music and more performers was the problem - and a second day, the obvious answer. However, the Sunday Community Concert was so evidently successful and popular, they were reluctant to change it. Nor did they feel that simply providing two days of the same would be the answer.

Instead, a Saturday night show was added, with a strong emphasis on rock and pop. In order to make it different to the Sunday show - a professional "headlining" band was hired to close the show. Five local bands were also scheduled on Saturday, freeing up concert time on the Sunday for other kinds of music. At the same time, the committee also came under pressure to expand the event to cover many other events in the town in the preceding week, including art exhibitions, classical concerts in St Mary's Church and live music activities in the town's pubs and other venues.

With a week-long festival in prospect, encompassing drama, dance and the visual arts it was all to apparent that the "National Music Day" tag was no longer appropriate. This was now an Arts festival in the broadest sense, so the committee decided to rename the event, Burnham Festival of Music and the Arts - abbreviated to the working title, "Burnham'97".

Burnham artist Peter James was commissioned to design a logo and the committee renamed itself Burnham Festival Association, with a new constitution and a mission to raise more money to support the festival. However, they soon discovered that commercial sponsorship was not easy to find in a town where many businesses operated on such tight margins.

The Festival was, however, lucky enough to win very substantial cash sponsorship from Colchester Co-op, owner of the town's Fiveways supermarket, a relationship that has, happily, continued each year since. Many other local businesses have also supported the festival down the years in cash and kind. And practical support and funding from both Maldon District Council and Burnham Town Council have been crucial to our the festival's continued growth over the years.

Burnham'97 was a great success. There were buskers on the streets, duos and solo performers in the local pubs and top-notch classical musicians performing in St Mary's Church. The festival even took a full-blooded (and much to the delight of the kids, very loud) rock band into the local primary schools! The event on the field involved contributions from more than 400 performers, amateur and professional, of all ages and performing music of all kinds, playing to a substantial crowd. As usual, there was a significant youth involvement - school choirs and instrumental ensembles and pop and rock groups from the local schools. Saturday's rock show, featured leading international touring R'n'B band, Nine Below Zero, as the headlining act, while the Sunday show, saw another fine headliner - the marvellous 10-piece soul band, Soul Kitchen - bring the festival to a rousing close.

However, when the dust settled the organising committee felt that concentrating so many events in one week was not such a good idea: people might conceivably go out to concerts and other events on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday night - but every night of the week was simply asking too much! That is why they decided, in future, to spread the festival across the whole month, focusing events primarily on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.

Burnham '98 was memorable in a number of ways, both good and bad. Veteran stage, TV and film actor and Burnham resident SidLivingstone had joined the committee, after gamely agreeing to MC 1997's Festival Weekend show. Sid's energy, imagination and showbiz experience helped the committee - previously a group largely of musicians - broaden its horizons. And when he wrote, produced and co-presented a brace of marvellous fund-raising shows on nautical themes ("Yarns for Green Hands" and "No Sex Please - We're Sailors!") it set the scene for what was, in most ways, our best festival to date.

Burnham '98 was launched with a national "first" - The Festival Music Train. Monday 1 June saw blues band, The Rockin' Armadillos, playing aboard a moving train on the Crouch Valley branch line - apparently the first time in the UK a band had played on a moving train, using power drawn via the overhead lines to run its amplifiers and equipment. The Music Train became an established annual fixture and very popular opening event of future festivals.

Other high spots included a highly-successful art exhibition and some truly excellent concerts in St Mary's Church, featuring artistes including leading international pianist Benjamin Frith and the Choir of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Festival Weekend brought another innovation - a Saturday afternoon Youth Showcase concert on the Millfield, featuring hundreds of young people from the district's schools and youth centres.

For all that, the festival weekend was marred by two things. After seven years when the weather ranged from reasonable to glorious, 1998 was that thing we'd all been dreading: The Year It Rained. And for the organisers the weekend was dominated by terrible news... On the Thursday before Festival Weekend, Andy Cater, drummer with local band, Double Vision, died in a motorcycle accident. Andy was a fine musician, a very popular character and a close friend to many of the team which made the show happen. The previous year, Andy been one of that team.

True to the rock'n'roll ethos, the show did go on. What's more, the drum-kit played on-stage, by every drummer on the Millfield that weekend, was Andy's. He had lent his drums to the festival for the previous two years and his family was adamant it should be played this time, too. (They later donated Andy's drums to the youth centre at St Peter's school.)

Burnham '99 saw another fun-packed month of events with Andy Cater's old Band, Double Vision invited back (with a friend sitting in on drums) to close a very poignant Saturday show in some style. On Sunday the show was brought to a close by one of the festival's best-ever headline acts. The sensational young blues-rock fusion act, The Hoax didn't so much raise the roof as ignore it. They decided that the whole day's festivities had the ambience of a garden party so they joined the audience outside the covered stage, setting up their equipment in the open, on the grass in front of the stage and turning in a thoroughly memorable night's entertainment!

The first Burnham Festival of the new millennium saw still further innovation and the hardy festival organisers continuing to take music to places it had never been before. Having put music on a moving train, it seemed a logical step to have live music on the famous river Crouch, which is how they came to send a band afloat on a raft on the estuary on the hottest Sunday of the summer. The event was quickly christened "Water Music" (with apologies to Handel!) and has proved another favourite.

That year the festival also moved into a number of local venues. Through the year, good use had been made of the beautiful wood-panelled surroundings of the waterside Crouch Yacht Club to host a very popular series of Friday night concerts, bringing top quality, largely-acoustic roots, blues, and jazz music to a discerning and eager audience.

That year also took the festival into the town's only regular live band venue, booking a marvellous selection of top bands from all over the UK to play June dates in the Anchor Hotel.

The month came to a fittingly spectacular end with another very successful Festival Weekend on the Millfield, featuring around 20 local bands with a marvellous roots-reggae band, Promised Land, headlining on Saturday. On Sunday afternoon, the family atmosphere was enhanced by Burnham Town Council's first ever town picnic in the field adjacent to the festival site. With jugglers, magicians, Punch and Judy, candyfloss, wagon rides and much more this was a hugely enjoyable afternoon for family picknickers. Then, in the evening, by way of something completely different, headliners were country/honky-tonk band Los Pistoleros, featuring top session man BJ Cole (straight from an appearance the previous night in front of tens of thousands at Glastonbury!) and 'Clark Gable' look-alike - legendary singer and fiddle player Bobby Valentino

2001 was full of promise and very grand plans indeed were being laid only to be shot down in flames by the local licensing authorities who vetoed proposals to convert a riverfront boat shed into a temporary concert-hall for orchestral and other concerts. They also prevented use of the Crouch Yacht Club as a venue for a planned range of jazz, cabaret and comedy events. All the same, it was an exciting month which, again, was not without its innovations - notably a "scratch" orchestra session, in which local musicians were given a chance to enjoy the fun and thrill of playing in an ensemble regardless of their past experience or level of playing ability. The committee also staged a critically-acclaimed recital, featuring the marvellous all-female Aaron String Quartet as well as the usual range of festival events.

The Festival Weekend shows on the Millfield were probably the best to date. Saturday's headlining act, nine-piece ska and bluebeat band The Topcats, held a crowd of several hundred dancing in the pouring rain, while Sunday's mellow jazzy blues act, Connie Lush and Blues Shouter were the perfect way to wind down a brilliant weekend.

October 2001, brought another innovation - the first of a series of visits by the wonderful Eastern Angles Theatre Company. Live theatre of any kind is as good as non-existent in Burnham, so professional drama of the standard achieved by Eastern Angles was a welcome addition to the area's cultural life. Grant support from Maldon District Council helped support this enterprise.

2002 was another eventful year, which included further visits from the excellent Eastern Angles touring theatre company in April and October.

The June festival month began with two showcase gigs at the Maldon Prom Fantasia. On each night, a range of the Burnham Festival's favourite local musicians had the chance to show off in front of a 10,000-strong crowd - and plug the month's events in the process! The Festival also helped Burnham to mark the Queen's Golden Jubilee with a memorable evening of music on West Quay, by the Crouch, where a 1,000-strong crowd enjoyed a fine performance by local band The Swamp Cats, using the sun-deck of the barge Innisfree as an impromptu bandstand.

The regular floating band provided two fantastic days of music on the quay in glorious weather. This was followed, on one of the days, by the Superior New Orleans Jazz Band marching up and down the Quay - and in and out of the local pubs and yacht clubs (whose clientele showed their appreciation by plying the musicians with very welcome drinks!).

Thursday evening concerts at the Anchor Hotel continued to go from strength to strength. The delightful Two-Timers (ex-Dr Feelgood) thrilled the audience with their unique act whilst Holland's Mike and the Mellotones were possibly the loudest band ever to play in the venue!

The layout for the Festival Weekend had to be changed due to the addition of an expanded children's playground on its usual Millfield site. Fortunately, the general consensus was that the new-look site was better for all concerned. The weather was a touch cool for Festival Weekend, but some great bands - both local and from some distance away - made up for it. Highpoints were the utterly mad Lush, the reunited Automatic Slim, the excellent Swamp Cats and Birmingham singer-songwriter Niecey Mann, plus an impromtu Sunday night set by the amazingly talented singer-songwriter David Hughes. Saturday's headliner was the irresistibly funky American soul singer Marcus Malone, while on Sunday Welsh psychedelic folk-rockers the Bluehorses had the crowd jigging.

In 2003, the Burnham Festival was given the snappier name of RIVERfest. By now, the pattern for festival month was pretty well established with the Music Train at the beginning of June, the weekend music extravaganza at the end and a diverse range of events in-between, including perennial favourites such as the Scratch Orchestra and the Water Music. 2003 saw some more memorable evenings at the Anchor Hotel, including the Spikedrivers - one of the best-loved bands on the European blues-roots circuit - and former BBC "That's Life" presenter Doc Cox (a.k.a Ivor Biggun), infamous for his underground hit "The W**kers Song!

Other events during the month included walks, open gardens (courtesy of the local RNLI fundraising guild) and a charity Celebration of Seafood evening at Burnham's famous Contented Sole restaurant. It was also a good year for drum workshops! Two hugely talented professional drummers - Russell Gilbrook (Van Morrison, Alan Price, Black Sabbath) and Windsor McGilvray - treated an amazed audience of drum enthusiasts to a virtuoso display of percussion, then attempted to impart some of their knowledge. Then, later in the month, there was a chance for beginners to have a go at African drumming in a workshop led by WOMAD stalwart and Senegalese sabar drum master Modou Diouf.

This was also the year that the music weekend got more comfortable! After a number of years where cold winds blowing off the the water had kept attendance down, the Committee decided to surround the festival site by open-fronted marquees to provide protection from wind, rain - or even too much sun. A much larger marquee and proper stage also provided a better view of the musicians. And what a diverse range of musicians! There was Automatic Slim (back from the dead yet again!), Simon Smith on his ironing board, Caliber - a young female grunge band from Oxford, jump-jive/swing with the Zoltans and the inimitable scratch superband Rage Machine - formed just to play at RIVERfest. All this and excellent headline acts - the fabulous American funk band Third Degree LeBurn and - a great favourite with the audience - Amor.

And great music didn't end in June. November saw Tango Siempre, the UK's leading tango ensemble, in Burnham with a stunning performance of the world's most passionate and evocative music.

An undoubted highlight of 2004's festival month was Folding Backthe Years - Rock 'n' Roll memories 1963 - 1966, an exhibition of previously unseen original photographs taken between 1963 and 1966 by Burnham resident Brian Bignell. The new gallery beneath Burnham Museum was hung with nearly 50 stunning black and white prints of major '60s Rock 'n' Roll icons, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Tom Jones, Cliff Richard, Jimi Hendrix and Cilla Black. The exhibition was opened by Brian Poole who enjoyed reminiscing about the 60s with Brian Bignell in front of a large photograph of his youthful self with his band The Tremeloes, with whom he had just returned from a tour of Australia.

Thursday night specials at the Anchor Hotel included Australian guitar virtuoso Geoff Achison at one of a handful of UK concerts on his 2004 European tour. Illness prevented a planned visit by The Wanderin' Soles but one half of the duo, Jonathan Potts, gamely agreed to do a jam session with a few members of local band the Swamp Cats and managed to delight the audience with his vituoso fiddle playing.

Festival weekend included nearly 30 great acts, including the recently-signed nu-metal band Vero and veteran Del Bromham, formerly of Stray. Headliners were The Wildcards, and Saltdog, veterans of Glastonbury and many other festivals. Rage Machine returned with another outrageous act in which front man Jon-Paul Bertorelli Lindsey (having flown in from Manhattan just to play at at RIVERfest) smashed a guitar in front of a delighted audience!

2005 - the 13th festival - and more firsts, including an art trail and a beer festival. The inaugural Burnham Art Trail featured the work of 20 contemporary local artists exhibited around town at a wide variety of local venues with exhibits including paintings, sculpture, jewellery, textiles, photography and mixed media work.

In place of the usual Scratch Orchestra event, Maldon Youth Orchestra gave a concert at St Peter's High School. The Scratch Orchestra - where young (and not-so-young) players of classical music get together for an instant concert - had its part to play in the success of the Maldon Youth Orchestra, now numbering around 40 young musicians.

Water Music was as usual provided by local band the River Rats and friends, but this time playing from the deck of fishing vessel Maverick, their raft having finally been consumed by real rats!

When the organising committee learned that the date which they had fixed for the music weekend had also been chosen for Bob Geldof's Live8 concert, they almost decided to cancel. Instead, they managed to obtain permission to screen Live8 in a separate marquee on the RIVERfest site. This turned out to be a great success - whole families brought picnics and sat in the June sunshine watching their favourite stars on Live8 then strolling over to the main tent to sample RIVERfest's own live music. The many highlights, included a rousing performance from Sunday's headliner, American funk and soul diva Taka Boom - sister of international chart-topper Chaka Khan.

Sadly, at the end of what was probably the most successful weekend in the the festival's 13 years, Tim Aves - main driving force behind the festival since its beginning - announced his decision to leave the festival committee in order to devote more time to making music with his band The Rockin' Armadillos. He will be a hard act to follow.

Sadly, RIVERfest 2006 was robbed at the last minute of its backbone - the music weekend which had taken place each year since 1992 and out of which the whole festival grew. Just four weeks before the event was due to take place, we learned that Maldon District Council funding would be very much less than in previous years and only 1/5th of the amount that we really needed. So, despite the offer of continued generous support from Burnham Town Council and the Co-op, and the fact that so many musicians and helpers were prepared to give their time for free, we just didn't have anything like enough to make ends meet. Needless to say this was very disappointing to the organisers, everyone who was looking forward to this event, and the many excellent bands who were hoping to play.

Despite this disappointment, the RIVERfest events which did take place in Burnham during June were a great success. The first really warm Sunday of the summer saw the River Rats in fine form aboard their floating stage - fishing vessel Maverick. This was followed by the first visit to RIVERfest of the Essex School of Samba who treated revellers outside the White Harte and Anchor hotels to some lively Latin percussion. Throughout the afternoon The Quay was packed with happy people enjoying the sunshine, music and relaxed family atmosphere.

The second Burnham Art Trail was an even greater success than the first, with people from all over Essex coming to Burnham to view (and buy) the work of 19 local artists. A diverse range of artwork - including paintings, digital imagery, textiles and sculpture - was on display at venues all around the town, including Burnham Museum, various shops and a garden. This was the second event in 2006 to showcase the work of professional local artists: in March, an excellent BBC Anglia series called Coastal Inspirations looked at the work of Burnham artists, including Tracy Saunders, Sue Spiers and sculptor Mike Barter, all of whom had work in the Art Trail.

Thanks to the generosity of several new sponsors, RiverFest 2007 was a triumph. Even the bad weather that accompanied most of the events didn't stop everyone having a great time.

The weekend of music on the water saw loads of happy Burnhamites and visitors enjoying music from the festival's very own scratch band, The River Rats. On Saturday, most of the water seemed to be coming from above so, rather than cancel the event, the band persuaded Kevin to let them play in the Anchor Hotel. We were even treated to a spot of music from The Curly Circus with their energetic and unique act. On Sunday, the River Rats were back on the deck of fishing vessel Maverick, even continuing to play while the boat motored to the other end of the Quay to help in the 999 day's simulated air-sea rescue.

The following weekend saw the launch of the Art Trail with David Hughes entertaining visitors while they admired exhibits in Burnham Museum's gallery. This year's Art Trail was even bigger and better than before with 27 artists exhibiting at 21 venues throughout the town including, for the first time, an artist's studio.

Having been forced to cancel the Millfield music weekend in 2006 due to lack of funding, the committee pulled out all the stops to ensure that 2007's event was better than ever. Several heavy downpours did little to deter the spirits of the crowds or performers and there was a relaxing party atmosphere throughout the weekend. A particular delight was the wealth of home-grown talent who appeared on both days alongside professional and amateur musicians from all over the country. On Saturday, headliners Bad Influence were preceded by up and coming band Purplemelon featuring Burnham guitarist Owen Barry (Rockin' Armadillos, Rage Machine, Fakie) who were followed by a film crew making a documentary about the band. And Automatic Slim, with Burnham frontman Tim Aves, stepped into the breach on Sunday night, taking over from headliners Tom Allalone and the Great Expectations who pulled out just three days before the event. This was a fitting finale to a great weekend with Tim, who organised the festival from 1992 to 2005, being able to relax and enjoy entertaining the crowds in 'Slim's silver jubilee year.