SOUNDBOARD MAGAZINE • ISSUE 6 UNDER THE COVERS... COVER INTERVIEW EDITORIAL . 3 QUICK INTERVIEW – HAWTHORN AVENUE . 5 STEVE RISING STARS – ETHAN HOVESTADT . 5 BALSAMO COVER CD . 7 PAGE 16 CLASSIC WELSH ALBUM – BADFINGER . 10 QUICK INTERVIEW – CHINA DRUM . 11 OBITUARY – JOHN CORBETT . 11 ARTIST IN RESIDENCE . 13 VENUE FEATURE – THE PATTI PAVILION . 14 HIP HOP CORNER – CRAZE THE JACK . 15 THE COVER INTERVIEW – STEVE BALSAMO . 16 RECORD REVIEWS . 18 ISSUE #7 (OCTOBER 1ST), ADVERTISING DEADLINE: 17TH SEPTEMBER LIVE REVIEWS . 21 Here’s where you can pick up your NIGE . 22 copy of SOUNDBOARD Magazine: OH PEDRO . 22 SWANSEA NEATH CARMARTHEN Derrick’s Music The Music Shop Parrot Records A YEAR IN REVIEW SWANSEA UNIVERSITY LMS – 23 Psicon Music (Neath Indoor Market) CARDIGAN GIG GUIDE – AUGUST & SEPTEMBER . 24 Sin City LLANELLI The Cellar Bar National Waterfront Cadno Music CWMAMAN GOSSIP . 25 Museum GORSEINON Cwmaman Theatre Cinema & Co. Spider Music & Arts Centre THE NEXT GENERATION – ERIN LANCASTER . 26 Cover To Cover (Mumbles) MERTHYR LLANDOVERY Square Peg (Sketty) Red House The Castle Hotel ROBOSCOPES . 27 Viva La Frida (Sketty) BRECON PONTYPRIDD Hen Dderwen (Sketty Park) The Muse A Strings IN THE FRAME . 28 ABERDARE CARDIFF Jac’s Spiller’s Records ENCORE... – ‘H’ IS FOR HELIPAD . 30 If you would like to stock the magazine and get lots of people to come to your place looking for it, please let us know. PUBLISHED BY EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS ADVERTISING SOUNDBOARD MAGAZINE LTD & REVIEWERS 2019 advertising@ 90a Bishopston Road, Swansea SA3 3EN Flipsy McCaw, Joel Morgan, soundboardmagazine .co .uk Mike Kennedy, Steve Haines, EDITOR Tansy Rees, Rosie Scribblah, Roger If you would like to stock MIKE KENNEDY Henderson, John Paul Davies, Amy editor@soundboardmagazine .co .uk Sinha, Anthony Price, Richard Willis, SOUNDBOARD MAGAZINE Mitchell Tennant, Keith Williams, please get in touch . DESIGN & SUB EDITING Moira Morgan, Eleanor Shaw, GRAHAM MORSE – GMID Tom Emlyn . No part of this magazine may be repro- duced in any form without the written design@soundboardmagazine .co .uk PHOTOGRAPHY permission of the Editor . Personal views expressed in SOUNDBOARD are not necessar- EDITORIAL TEAM Helen Louise Banham, Raymonty ily those of the publisher . Whilst every care FLIPSY MCCAW, JOEL MORGAN Thompson, Mike Kennedy, Steve is taken, we cannot take responsibility for Manley, Graham Morse, Shutterstock, unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or CHIEF CULTURAL CORRESPONDENT Johan Butenschøn Skre, the shoddy appearance of any singer . JACK SOUNDS Billy Stillman . © 2019 SOUNDBOARD MAGAZINE LTD Cover & Contents Photographs: Graham Harries WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND? THINK YOU CAN DO BETTER? SoundBoardMagazineUK We want to hear from you. Send us your submissions. Email us. Please and thank you. [email protected] EDITORIAL SOUNDBOARD • AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019 GREETINGS! WELCOME TO ISSUE 6 OF SOUNDBOARD MAGAZINE, FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS. WE HOPE YOUR SUMMER IS PROGRESSING WELL, AND YOU HAVEN’T OVERDONE IT ON THE SUNBATHING. I CAME HOME FROM CASWELL THE OTHER DAY LOOKING LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF A HORROR MOVIE Honest, it’s an easy thing to do in this fine weather. I had Elsewhere in this issue you’ll find all the usual features, to sleep on the laminate for three nights like some kind of news and reviews, all diced, collated, pruned and presented shunned household pet. All told: a horrible mistake. Slap on for your pleasure and information. There’s an exclusive inter- the old factor 50, kids. Don’t end up like me. view with Britrock favourites China Drum, a feature on the It’s been another wonderful couple of months for culture newly-reopened Patti Pavilion, and a quick chat with con- in Swansea, and we’re honestly struggling to keep up with it temporary country rising stars Hawthorn Avenue. We’ve con- all. Bandicoot got a record deal; Stereophonics played a mas- vinced Tom Emlyn (News From Nowhere/Bandicoot) to write sive gig in Singleton Park; we had a half-a-dozen Swansea acts a column every month, too. Thus far, he seems slightly more playing various stages at Glastonbury; the Fringe Festival is reliable than Jack Sounds, but you never know with these just around the corner, swiftly followed by a little shindig of muso types. Tom, when you read this, we love you. our own, too, of which we’ll have many more details in the As we’ve said before, this magazine can only ever cover a thin next issue. It’s all too much. slice of what’s going on round here, mostly because the Swan- This issue we went crazy in the heat and decided to put a sea music scene has become turbocharged recently, for reasons CD on the cover, like it’s the 90’s or something. A retro move. we don’t entirely understand but are very happy about. There But why not? We had a situation crop up where we had a stu- is now a steady stream of quality touring acts playing regularly dio, a producer and an opportunity, so we took full advantage in Sin City, The Bunkhouse and Creature Sounds every week, of it. We hope you like the results. If you’re a producer, or and local bands are now selling out their shows at a pace which have a studio, and you fancy doing something similar, get in would have seemed unthinkable a couple of years ago. All in touch. We’d love to do this kind of thing again. all, it’s a good time to be alive, provided you avoid all news outlets, obviously, and never turn on a TV or get into a con- versation about politics with anybody at anytime, anywhere. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this or any other issue. Without your help we’d have a much narrower focus; as it is, it’s already a difficult thing, trying to find a bal- ance between covering what interests us (the people who run this little enterprise) and trying to make sure no one feels left out or marginalised, but we try. By God, do we try. Moving on, we hope you enjoy Issue 6, and that your sum- mer turns out to be an absolute bloody delight. If you’re not in Swansea, come visit us sometime. You’ll love it here, no messing. Stay away from the Wetherspoons, naturally, but there’s plenty else to see if you know where to look. The live music is plentiful, varied, berserk and everywhere. We have galleries and parks and beer gardens and miles and miles of sandy beaches. World famous ice cream, too. In fact, in our humble opinion there are few better places to find yourself on a hot summer’s evening than Swansea bay, looking out over an azure blue sea at the coast of Devon glistening in the distance like a rolled out green carpet scattered with jewels. Bliss. On a fine day I reckon Swansea Bay makes the bay of Naples look like a shoddy, inferior, gaudy imitation. Ha! Spo- ken like a true Jack. Totally deluded. Ah, well. I know in my heart it’ll always be a lovely-ugly town. But the bay in the sunshine, oof! Lovely. Come and have a look, just clean up your rubbish after you, is all, and – as always – act tidy. Kisses and (Joe’s) ice-cream, SBM Oh yeah, one more thing... If your CD is missing we’ll be putting a playlist of the tunes up on the streaming sites in a month or so. There are some legal issues surrounding copyright that prevent us from doing this while this issue of the magazine is still officially in a state of “doing the rounds”, but rest assured that we’ll be uploading the tracks as soon as we can . In the meantime, seek out someone who has a copy and steal it from them .* *Soundboard Magazine does not in any way endorse robbing CDs off your mates. Magazine does not in any way endorse robbing *Soundboard NEW ALBUM CD / LP / DL AVAILABLE FROM: HTTPS://SENDELICA.BANDCAMP.COM/ALBUM /CROMLECH-CHRONICLES-IV-THE-DOOR-INTO-SUMMER THE QUICK INTERVIEW SOUNDBOARD • AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019 Mike Kennedy caught up with Laura Benjamin and Marcus Gumms ahead of their sell-out show at Swansea’s Cinema & Co. HAWTHORN AVENUE NOT YOUR AVERAGE BANJO-PICKING HILLBILLIES. HAWTHORN AVENUE HAVE BEEN MK: Do you write together or apart? CREATING QUITE A STORM WITH LB: Always together. We’ve fallen THEIR CONTEMPORARY COUNTRY into a kind of routine which looks a RISING STYLE SONGS AND LAID BACK LIVE little something like this: One, Mar- PERFORMANCES, AND RECENTLY cus fiddles on the guitar and makes HAVE BEEN A-LISTED BY BBC RA- loads of noises until a cool riff/ gui- DIO WALES, GETTING RAVE RE- tar part comes out. Two, We come STARS VIEWS FROM INDUSTRY EXPERTS. up with a concept of what we want to write about, based on IIIII the sound of the riff/ gui- tar part. Three, We go into my garage (which we had converted into a classroom since my dad is a maths tu- tor) and make a mind map on the white board, until eventually a string of words that sound like good lyrics come out. MG: Four, the optional step, Laura bins the whole idea because it’s too cheesy or includes the words ‘beer’, ‘truck’, ‘boots’ or ‘moon- MK: How did you guys meet? shine’ and we go back to step one ETHAN LB: We had both been gigging on the [laughs]. same scene for a few years when Mar- HOVESTADT cus came along to the jam night that MK: Do you ever disagree on the Ethan discovered photography I host in Swansea every Thursday, and style of the songs? when he was looking to do a after we sang together, we realised how LB: Not really, we generally go into creative A-level and has been well our voices gelled together and it with a concept that we both love taking photos for just under a how musically compatible we were.