The Tubs are a Welsh indie rock band from Cardiff, formed in 2018. The band was founded by Owen Williams (vocals, guitar) and original guitarist George Nicholls. Along with Max Warren (bass) they were previously members of Joanna Gruesome. The current lineup is completed by Dan Lucas (guitar) and Taylor Stewart (drums).
Their music has been described as influenced by 1980s college rock bands such as R.E.M., Pylon and The Chills and British folk rock, in particular Williams’ voice has been likened to Richard Thompson.
If a country is nicknamed the ‘Land of Song,’ you can be sure that the quality of its folk repertoire and the talent of local songwriters are hard to match. Thus, standing out in the Welsh songwriting scene is no easy feat. However, since 2022, when we had the revelation of listening to Edyf, her second full-length release, we would have very few doubts if someone asked us to suggest an up-and-coming Welsh artist…
Cerys Hafana‘s sound is deeply rooted in the Welsh tradition, despite her being born in Manchester—yes, the very place where Womex will take place this October! At the same time, her music is challenging and goes far beyond traditional boundaries. Cerys’ approach to music is both imaginative and iconoclastic, rethinking the triple harp—her chosen instrument of disruption since she was eight—to uncover its raw, emotive power. This has placed her at the forefront of a movement that both preserves and shakes up Welsh musical heritage, suggesting new possibilities for the role of traditional instruments in contemporary music.
We reached out to her to dedicate a Musical Road to Womex episode featuring a Q&A and a playlist handpicked by Cerys herself.Could you briefly introduce your music to someone new at Womex and share the key influences and origins of your unique sound?As I child I studied classical piano and traditional Welsh harp music. I then decided that I liked alternative pop music and electronic music in my teens, and then briefly joined a 6-keyboard ensemble who played minimalist and post-minimalist music. Though I mostly perform on the Welsh triple harp these days, I like to think that all of these influences are part of my ‘sound’ and compositional process.
Could you share a personal anecdote or experience that impacted your musical journey and the evolution of your sound?
I think one of the most influential events of my musical journey has been the Festival Interceltique de Lorient. I’ve been almost every year since 2018 and each year have a memorable or strange experience. The first time I went, I performed with an ensemble of traditional Welsh triple harpists in a disused underground reservoir. Another year I had the chance to perform in the city’s football stadium for 8 nights in a row. Last year I got to hear one of my own compositions being performed by a bagad (sort of like a 60-piece Breton bagpipe orchestra) in the festival’s prestigious bagad championship, which was probably a career (and life) highlight.
In a world full of diverse musical genres, styles, and traditions, how do you believe your music stands out and brings something fresh and exciting to the audience’s ears?
I think that the harp has a lot of stereotypes attached to it. People see a harp and immediately start thinking of angels and Celtic goddesses. I don’t really identify with any of that, and often have people tell me at the end of gigs that they don’t usually like harp music but liked my harp music. I try to approach the instrument in a much more rhythmic way than people expect from a harp, and also think my particular harp has a much more ‘raw’, imperfect sound (combined with my imperfect playing technique!), which I try to embrace.
As Womex is not only the Worldwide Music Expo but also a lively global music funfair, are there any showcases you’re looking forward to attending and enjoying or artists participating that you would like to meet during those five days?
Apart from the other two Welsh artists who are performing at WOMEX this year, GweniferRaymond and N’famady Kouyate, I’m not very familiar with any of the other acts playing there, which is exciting! Usually the gigs I enjoy most at festivals are the ones where I had no expectations, and just found myself there by accident.
This edition of Womex will take place in Manchester, a city with a vibrant cultural scene and rich music history. Are you particularly passionate about any act coming from the city and how has the city’s musical heritage influenced your work, if at all?
I was actually born in Manchester, and lived there until I was five. My parents met in a band run by Manchester-based performance artist EdwardBarton. It was called Pudding and I think the peak of their career was having their Christmas song included on the Observer’s list of the top 10 alternative Christmas songs (the song was called “Little Christmas Eve Thieving” and I think it’s up on Youtube). As it’s the reason my parents met each other, I guess it has to be the Manchester band that’s had the biggest impact on my life!
Womex is a unique opportunity to share and showcase your music with new people and inform them about your upcoming projects. Could you reveal some of your plans for the future?
I recorded a lot of solo piano compositions at the beginning of the year, and will be releasing the first batch of those in September to coincide with the two-year anniversary of my last album, Edyf. Otherwise, I’m hoping to get more time in the autumn to work on new harp material. I’m going to be touring again in early 2025, both in the UK and in mainland Europe, so I want to have some new things to play then!
Aside from that I’m also very keen to play a pipe organ, if someone would like to let me into their church.
If you had to draft an invitation card for our readers to join you at Womex and enjoy your showcase, what would you write in it?
Come and listen to some sad Welsh harp pop. Hopefully it will make you cry.
A conversation with the Welsh instrumentalist and composer, as well as a transcription from her most recent album
BY ADAM PERLMUTTER July 3, 2024
In the 1950s and ’60s, the guitarist and composer John Fahey spearheaded the development of an idiosyncratic approach to instrumental fingerstyle guitar, drawing equally from folk, blues, and contemporary classical sources, and played in nonstandard and often wild tunings. This niche genre came to be known as American primitive guitar and, for the most part, the musicians and their audiences have been overwhelmingly comprised of white men.
But American primitive guitar—oof, is it time to retire the term?—has become more inclusive in recent years as younger generations of players and fans gravitate towards its mélange of sounds. And one of Fahey’s most prominent acolytes is one of his unlikeliest, at least on paper: Gwenifer Raymond, the 38-year-old tech director of a video game audio company with a PhD in astrophysics, who lives and works in Brighton, U.K.
The specter of Fahey flickers through Raymond’s music, especially in a composition like “Requiem for John Fahey,” which I had the pleasure of transcribing for the January 2019 issue of Acoustic Guitarmagazine. But Raymond has put her own stamp on the idiom, with a sense of speed and velocity that comes from her time spent in rock bands, and a penchant for the weird and uncanny.
Having last exchanged emails with Raymond while editing her lesson on John Fahey’s arrangement of “Uncloudy Day” for AG, I recently checked in with the musician via Zoom from her home in Brighton. Among other things, she talked about the unexpected similarities she’s found between punk rock and old country blues, an upcoming sabbatical to work on her third studio album, and a fortunate and surprising gift from guitarist-composer Henry Kaiser. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
You recently completed a North American tour. How has it been to play in the United States, where so many of your musical antecedents originated?
It’s my third official tour of the States. I’ve hit a lot of the same spots, in the Northeast and Midwest, and I do want to try to play farther west. It’s always great play in America, but it’s a strange place to play, because it is both very similar and very different to the U.K.—almost like almost like an uncanny valley situation. American audiences always seem appreciative and particularly enthusiastic, which is nice. Obviously, there’s a special kind of history in some of the places that I’ve been playing—Takoma Park [Maryland], where Fahey’s from, and Chicago or Detroit, where a lot of my other favorite musicians are from.
What was it like for you to discover the blues and John Fahey when you were growing up an ocean away in Wales? Did you have peers who are interested in the same music, or did you follow your own path?
I was a big punk and grunge fan, and a lot of my friends at the same age were into that scene. That’s why we were mates. At the same time, both of my parents listened to a lot of Dylan and Velvet Underground. I came to it through their common influences, which were a lot of early blues musicians. It seemed that anyone whose opinion was worth anything cited the blues as a reference. So I kind of found my own way to enter this sort of strange new land.
What about the blues struck you?
I liked a lot of more angular rock music, slightly weird and left of center, the stranger side of guitar-based rock. The sound that a lot of people think of when they hear the word blues is ’50s and ’60s Chicago blues. That’s not really my scene. I got into blues through guys like Mississippi John Hurt, who was a lovely, warm singer-songwriter and a fucking amazing guitar player, from a technical standpoint, as well as just having a lovely sound.
The first time I heard John Hurt, it didn’t even occur to me that was one guy. So when I discovered that it was, I wanted to pursue playing like that. And hearing musicians like Skip James, who was really strange; he didn’t sound anything like anyone else with his haunting sound… The whole angularity of it didn’t feel that different from some of the stuff I was otherwise listening to. From this kind of blues, I really got interested in hearing solo musicians, with very little between them and you, where you’re hearing the warts and all. There’s nothing to hide the performers, so it’s more of an intimate relationship.
The main accompaniment figure in Hurt’s innuendo-rich “Coffee Blues”
When you discovered that the music was made not on multiple guitars but on one, how did you figure out how to do that yourself?
I just looked up a ton of tabs on the internet, and in guitar books like those by Stefan Grossman. Learning was a mechanical thing for me. It was about sitting there for hours, just playing the same riff over and over again, and trying to get it down. From a technical standpoint, a lot of how you play that music is like learning to play the drums—you have to grow that muscle memory and that independence to be able to play these different things at the same time.
After I’d been doing that on my own for a while, I found a really good fingerstyle teacher in Cardiff, not far from where I lived. I started going to him for a while, even though I’d been playing the guitar for ten years at that point. He was really great, and he played me my first Fahey record.
In a New York Times feature, you described John Fahey as “almost your mean uncle figure.” Can you expand on that?
Me quipping? Never [laughs]. Fahey is my favorite musician in the American primitive genre. You can sense his personality in his guitar playing. Even if he’s trying to hide something about himself, he can’t. He’s playing these lovely tunes, in major keys, but somehow it sounds kind of menacing. Having heard a lot of about him, he strikes me as an interesting character. If I had met him—he was an asshole, but I probably would have liked him and seen him less as a father figure than a strange uncle. Unfortunately, he was gone before I discovered him.
The odd, militaristic intro to John Fahey’s interpretation of the gospel standard “Uncloudy Day.” Note that Fahey quickly tuned the first string up a whole step, to D, for the main body of the tune.
You played in grunge and punk bands as a kid, and occasionally as an adult. What did you take away from that music in how you approach the acoustic guitar today?
To a certain extent, I still like a good, solid riff—even if there are 25 of them in a song. I like the idea of formulating a song with strong riffs. It’s probably because of my background that I play pretty hard and quite fast. I’m not a fan of pretty, pastoral sounds or meditation music. I like the gothic and the the dramatic stuff, and I think that’s from coming up steeped in punk and grunge and hard rock and metal.
What is it about the dramatic and heavy sounds that speaks to you?
It’s the first music I liked—I had zero interest in music until I first heard Nirvana, when I was eight. It grabbed me and always has. It’s hard to explain; it’s just a natural gravitation I feel—not just in music but all media, especially horror movies.
Photo by Leny Munier
It’s interesting that you have an astrophysics background and a professional life as a video game coder, but in your musical life, you work in a decidedly low-tech medium. How do these different areas interact with other?
They have certainly identified a certain attention deficit that I have, which might be present in my music. I got into science because I love the grand scale of the universe and all of those things. And the top two reasons I left science were that in order to pursue a career in science, you have to be beyond dedicated, and that I was playing too much guitar. Also, I have a horrible appreciation for printing the myth, which is not very good, as it doesn’t get you accepted into scientific journals. As for games, it was just that I’m good at maths—and I like video games. In a way, they inform each other by being almost polar opposites, which means that they don’t interfere. There’s a nice separation of the things, so you can approach each with an independence of thought.
What kind of video games does your work involve?
I’m currently the tech director of a game audio co-development studio, so I’m not personally working on anything right now. We do audio for lots of games, like Diablo and stuff like that. I’m actually about to go on sabbatical for two months to write a new album. I’ve never had that much time off work to pursue something, so that’s going to be a really interesting two months.
Do you have ideas percolating—or will you enter the sabbatical without any preconceived notions for your album?
I’ve already written half of it, and I’m approaching it the same as I ever have, which is just to play guitar and wait for the songs to slowly come out. I’m going to approach it like a job with regular hours and a routine, and I’m hoping I just might unlock something that’s hard to achieve when you’re tired after work, and you’ve only got a couple of hours to spare. I usually write just enough tunes to fill an album, but I’m hoping to overrun it and have a lot of materials to combine and edit for more of a cohesive album—or maybe not [laughs]. I don’t know yet, but I’m going to find out.
Tomos Williams tells Gail Tasker about the connections between Paul Robeson and the Welsh labour movement, reclaiming Wales’ traditional music after centuries of oppression, and confronting the ugly sides of his nation’s past
By Gail Tasker
In 1928, the African-American singer, actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson was returning from a West End show when he came across a chorus of unemployed Welsh miners. They had walked all of the 140-plus miles from their homes in Rhondda to London, waving banners and singing in protest against the mass unemployment and hardship they were enduring. It would be the beginning of Robeson’s rich and reciprocal relationship with the Welsh labour movement, which would go on to span performances, activism, and even a role as coal miner in the 1940 Welsh film Proud Valley. In 1950, amidst Cold War tensions, Robeson’s passport was revoked by the US State Department due to his left-leaning politics, so it was whilst stranded in the US, in October 1957, that he gave a recital through a telephone line to a packed audience in Porthcawl Pavilion as part of the Miners’ Eisteddfod. An eisteddfod is a celebration of Welsh music and poetry, and in this instance, Robeson performed a selection of songs, including the spiritual ‘Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel?’ and ‘Schubert’s Lullaby’, while the Treorchy Male Voice Choir sang ‘Y Delyn Aur’ and ‘We’ll Keep a Welcome’ in response. This moment, dubbed the ‘Transatlantic Exchange’, comes up time and again in Welsh modern history, and most recently in the composition ‘Paul Robeson Ac Eisteddfod Y Glowyr 1957’ by Welsh trumpeter Tomos Williams. Angular yet meditative, a repeating motif hints at Coltrane’s A Love Supreme as it surges through a backdrop of spiritual harp cadenzas and off-kilter piano.
The tune appears on Williams’ 2021 album Cwmwl Tystion / Witness, the first instalment of the Cwmwl Tystion trilogy. Comprising a series of performances and resulting albums, Cwmwl Tystion explores aspects of Welsh identity, history, and culture through the mouldable folds of the jazz idiom, into which Williams introduces repertoire from the Welsh folk tradition. This fusion, in a nod towards Robeson’s activism, embodies the core themes of Cwmwl Tystion: internationalism, openness, and the idea of shared humanity.
Over a Zoom call, Williams recounts the beginnings of Cwmwl Tystion in a self-deprecating manner. “I was starting to think, ‘Well hang on, I’m getting older. I can’t just wait for other people to do stuff. Maybe I should do something.’”Williams, originally from Aberystwyth, was already involved in the Welsh music scene as a member of folk group Fernhill and the folk jazz fusion group Burum, as well as various side projects, but these thoughts, which occurred around 2017 during the fall-out of the Brexit vote, where an ideologically-charged referendum proved divisive for Wales, were particularly catalysing. He’d also come across Wadada Leo Smith‘s momentous 4-disc box set Ten Freedom Summers a few years prior to that, in which the musician had navigated the tumultuous events of the Civil Rights Movement across 19 tracks, part composed and part improvised over 34 years of intermittent creation. Williams describes the discovery as like a switch turning on.
“It’s all about the African-American experience throughout the 20th century and before that,” Williams says of Smith’s work. “The titles are very specific, but the music is just massive. It has gravitas, it has depth, it has everything. I thought, ‘Wales needs something like this.’”
Matana Roberts‘ Coin Coin albums, which Williams also cites as a clear influence, inhabit a similar paradigm. In them, Roberts combines her lived experience with that of her ancestors to explore overarching themes of racism, oppression, and liberation, a series that now spans five albums. Cwmwl Tystion is a clear reference to these two projects in its abstraction of political events through the kind of musical framework employed by Smith and Roberts, but as Williams explains, the point of departure is its questioning of what it means to be Welsh.
“With the whole Brexit thing, there was just a constant bombardment of one kind of identity. There was no allowance for being anything different from this sort of south east of England attitude, if you like, [the idea that] that’s how everybody sees the world, and that’s what Britain is. I’ve got a big problem with Britain to start off with, but equally as a Welsh person within Britain, you’re completely different, and equally within Wales, there’s multiple different perceptions of Welsh identity. I’m Welsh, whatever that means. And so then this is the experience that I have. Let’s put it out there.”
With funding from Welsh music charity Tŷ Cerdd and Arts Council Wales, Williams toured Cwmwl Tystion’s first instalment Witness in 2019 with an all-Welsh band, featuring Francesca Simmons on violin and saw, Rhodri Davies on harp and electronics, Huw Warren on piano, Huw V Williams on bass, and Mark O’Connor on drums. Cwmwl Tystion II / Riot, which toured in 2021, consisted of a slightly different line-up, including Soweto Kinch on saxophones and spoken word and Orphy Robinson on vibraphone. The music then was raw, fiery, and more dissonant than Witness. Tracks like ‘Cardiff Race Riots 1919’ and ‘Mahmood Mattan’ – concerning the wrongful conviction and execution of a Somali seaman of the same name, who was falsely accused of murdering a woman in Cardiff in 1952 – reference the more uncomfortable side of Wales’ past. Williams explains how he wanted to deal with racist attitudes that are still present today, but often overlooked due to Wales’ status as “the perennial underdog.”
“Every riot that we talk about in Welsh history is generally against the English. You’re giving it to the man and the man is generally, in this context, the majority culture, which is English. Whereas in reality, in the global sense, Wales is a part of that dominating British Empire. We are part of colonial history, and if we want to be realistic, we’ve got to deal with our role in the big picture. We can’t continually play the underdog card”.
In the liner notes to Witness, Williams describes it as “a paean to the nation and its people… by some of the finest musicians in Wales.” The music is a freeing journey of open-ended improvisation, dissonant and angular, yet there’s also a hint of the dirge-like and anthemic. This is owing to the presence of traditional Welsh tunes embedded within the material. ‘Pa Beth yw Cenedl?’ for example contains the folk melodies ‘Castell Rhos Y Llan’, ‘Lloer Dirion’, and ‘Marwnad Yr Ehedydd’.
