Swansea & South Wales Live Music

I went along to Pearls Coffee Shop on Walters Road to see Natalie Jones play a gig. After speaking with owners Mike and Lucy, I understood this was the first non-themed live music evening. So rather than booking live music for Valentines day,  St Patrick's day  or Beaujolais day, they wanted to make a start to what will be a regular live music Friday evenings.  Unfortunately, I arrived at 6pm for the published 7pm gig start time, but soon found out this wasn't the case after speaking with Natalie who was told it was an 8pm start time. Like anywhere trying to start a regular event it’s understandable for there to be a few hiccups. However, this wasn't a major issue as Natalie set up and got started in a matter of minutes. Natalie’s play list of regular cover songs was expanded with new material which had the enthusiastic audience singing along. Natalie was even kind enough to play a few of the requests I threw her way. A sample of songs she played o...

The Hyst on Swansea's High Street hosted a Swansea Fringe Festival event GRL PWR, featuring some of South Wales finest female vocalists as part of a celebration of the contribution women have made to the industry. The list of acts appearing that evening included;  Lorna Rees Edie Bens Aiden Keryn Emi Mcdade & Claire Edwards Eleri Angharad Natalie Jones Laura Benjamin The Hyst was set up as per usual for the occasion with a great sound system and technicians on hand to assist all the acts, as per usual. The stage was bathed in a pink lighting to emphasis the female focal point of the evening.   Lorna Rees Lorna Rees started the evening off by singing some of her original songs. I had never encountered this performer previously, so I was surprised not to see someone like Eleri Angharad or Natalie Jones open the show. However, I was blown away by just how good Lorna was. There were times during her set I almost thought I was listening to Nata...

Dusty Road Saturday 29 th September 2018 - Diablo's SA1 Dusty Road is an established country music duo on the South Wales music scene Laura Jayne from Swansea and Daniel James from Port Talbot, have been   performing together as Dusty Road for some time now. Both have perfectly pitched singing voices for country music, Dan is a great musician, playing keyboard and guitar and Laura Jane supports the musical input with percussion and also occasionally plays guitar.   They are so comfortable with each other that they regularly interact with the audience during their set and don’t miss a beat musically. Country music is their forte, but are very adept at adjusting their set list to their audience and happy to play request, if possible. In my opinion Laura's voice is like a blend between that of Eva Cassidy and Annie Lennox, while Daniel's voice is similar to the likes of Ed Sheeran and George Ezra. Because to the late summer sunshine, at the request of Diablos m...