An Interview Edward Channon, Piper and Author

Edward Channon, a resident of Portland Oregon, has been playing the bagpipes for 35 years. He has recently completed his first book:- The Ballad of A Bagpiper. The book details the humorous stories of things Edward has observed over the years at weddings, funerals, events and a myriad of other gatherings around the world. Edward will be appearing at the Left Coast Eisteddfod where he will be giving a presentation and demonstration of his piping skills and signing copies of his new book.

Americymru: How and why did you start learning the bagpipes?

Edward: I didn’t start with the bagpipes when it comes to learning a musical instrument because both of my parents are classical pianists, I started playing the piano at age four. My father learned in Austria and my mother in the USA. However,my mother being of German/Scotch decent, made me practice the piano at least two times a day ,for about an hour each time. She always gave me that image that comes from being German discipline, thats my mum. If I got something wrong she would yell at me, striking me on the hands with a ruler or just stand behind me yelling ‘PRACTICE, PRACTICE , PRACTICE’ with a German accent ,looking like a Gestapo agent, which always scared the hell out of me!

My grandfather, who at that time was a Episcopal minister and loved classical music, also played the bagpipes. Since I was young he constantly told me how fun bagpipes were. So pulling me away from the piano he showed me the techniques in playing this weird looking and sounding instrument. Of course, I had to use smaller ones, his made me fall over because of its size and weight. He always joked that if you suck at playing the piano, you can’t pick it up and walk out, at least with the pipes you can walk out. Didn’t need to say more!

Americymru: You’ve written a book recently called Ballad of a Bagpiper How would you describe it?

Edward: Ballad of a Bagpiper is the first of its kind in this wonderful world of ours. At least, in the bagpipe world. It's about the funny things that have happened to me, really, and the things I saw at weddings, parties, military events, and even funerals over the many years I’ve been playing. It's not really a life story but more about small segments rather short stories of my life playing this instrument.

Americymru: Do you have a favorite humorous incident?

Edward: I once played for a funeral in England after a rain storm , so the ground was wet, muddy and just slippery typical Britain. Even though I was watching where I was walking, I also had to watch the funeral to get a sign from the minister or family that I had to stop playing, which I had been doing for a while. Walking and looking, walking and looking; finally I thought I saw the sign but it was false, so I kept playing but I didn’t see where I was walking and fell into a newly dug grave. Yes ,it was deep and it was full of water.

Another story, I was doing a benefit walking down the street ,leading runners in a charity run, so that as I walked the runners would run past me. I was sure that they heard me, how can you not hear the bagpipes being played, but I was being bumped and pushed as they ran by. I didn’t care, I was having fun. When I got to a corner, a few reporters came running out to ask runners questions, one of them came up to me to ask me something. I gave them that look like, ‘Ah hello! I’m playing, kind of hard to talk!’ I tried to tell them but I couldn’t and they ran off....... I’ve been in that situation a few times and each time I wonder if reporters ever get it!

Americymru: Where does your sense of humor come from?

Edward: I grew up watching British comedy shows like ‘Benny Hill’, ‘Monty Python’, ‘Dad’s Army’, ‘Are you being Served?’, ‘Man about the House’ and more. But the comedians Spike Mulligan, Peter Sellers and my father were great influences on me and how I look at the world. Not to be a critic about things but seeing the funny side of any situation.

Americymru: Would you say that Celtic music has been your biggest influence in play the bagpipes?

Edward: To tell the truth, no. Growing up I listened to Chopin, Bach, Mozart but going to primary school one day I heard a band called Def Leppard. That was it, I was hooked on rock. Since then heavy metal, classical, pop have been influences on me. I personally find Celtic music kind of boring if not played with passion and many don’t have it. Bagpipers are the same: if you don’t have the passion or the state of mind, then you shouldn’t be playing if it doesn’t come from the heart.

Americymru: You reference some bizarre events in your book. Can you elaborate on these?

Edward: Well I’ve played for a nudist wedding, a vampire wedding and so many more. I don’t want to give to much away. These are just a just a couple of weird or interesting events that I’ve done. Things that I guess a bagpiper probably wouldn't play for or be included in normally however they were interesting and weird, which made them fun to watch and be in.

Americymru: Do you have any book influences or writers you like?

Edward: That's a hard one, since I read all types of books and have since I was a kid. I love all genres but I would say my favorite is Jack Higgins. But I love Bernard Cornwell, Sergei Lukyanenko, Nigel Tranter to name a few.

Americymru: What kind of engagements do you play at?

Edward: Of course I’ve played for normal events like weddings to funerals, a number of these have been very usual in themselves, but I have also played for parties including a fraternity initiation parties, hen nights and stag night parties as well as birthday parties; business events, and even a Bar Mitzvah. However, it has never been about the money for me, I love what I do. It's all about the people I meet, the joy in helping them and the experience of doing it. But, of course in doing so I got into situations where I couldn’t leave or get out of!

Americymru: You’ve played for some celebrities and even royalty can you tell us more about that?

Edward: When playing for politicians and royalty, it is like entering different worlds. Politicians like it to make them look good no matter what, ‘Do it this way as long I look good’. While royalty like it done very specific, conservative and old ways ways, tradition all rules their thinking. ‘This is way we’ve done it for centuries,’ Celebrities such as movie or TV stars are really the most fun. ‘Just have fun!’ is what they’ve always tell me. Each person I play for holds a distinct memory for me, however, playing for Queen Elizabeth is kind of hard to remember as I was so young at the time. Princess Diana was one I remember as being the most elegant, because of her beauty and grace. Her loss was a terrible for Britain and the world. From Reagan to the local politician’s I remember as being stressful because I have to be careful what I say. I have a tendency to say the wrong thing at the worse time, getting the politician in trouble. I’m good at that, my wife would say.

Americymru: Any plans for a record deal or music CD of your own?

Edward: I do. I was recently approached by a record producer to set something up in the near future. Don’t know what type of CD it will be as I find the normal bagpipe CD kind of boring and over done. So, who knows, but as with this book it will be a first of its kind.

Americymru: Any other message for the members and readers of Americymru?

Edward: Just that this book will give everyone a good laugh and for those musicians out there remember that all things are possible if you have a sense of humor when you look at something. Humor I think brings out both the worse and the best in people you just have to figure what to do in that situation. Of course having humor can get you in trouble.... as you will see. hehe!!

Americymru: Any public appearances in the near future?

Edward: I do have many are coming up. The Scottish Highland Games in Gresham, Oregon I’ll be making an appearance there with Kathleen’s of Dublin. I also have a launch party at Kathleen’s of Dublin in Portland on 6 Aug. I will also have a launch party in Seattle on 30 July. I will be working with the Iron Mutt Coffee Company which has three cafe’s around Portland in doing signings, one this coming Saturday the 27th from 10-12 in Hillsboro. This is great place to bring your dog and get them high on caffeine. I’ll be in Seattle, Los Angles as well later in the summer. I believe I’ll be in Boston, London, England, New York, and Albuquerque, New Mexico as well. Then of course Americymru’s big event the third weekend of August which I hope shows the world the funny world of Celtic music.

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An Interview With Peter Thabit Jones

The Man Peter Thabit Jones was born in Swansea, Wales, Great Britain, in 1951. His work, particularly his poetry for children, has been featured in books from publishers such as Penguin, Puffin Books, Letts Educational, Macmillan Educational, Heinemann Educational, Oxford University Press, Simon and Schuster, Heinemann Centaur (South Africa), Scholastic Publications (Australia), and Titul Publishers/ British Council Moscow (Russia). The latter was a major British Council Moscow educational project to teach English to secondary school children throughout Russia.His poem Kilvey Hill has been incorporated into a permanent stained-glass window by the leading Welsh artist Catrin Jones in the new Saint Thomas Community School built in Swansea, Wales, which was officially opened in July, 2007. Peter has been invited back to America in May 2009. He will carry out a a series of poetry readings and literary talks in New York, where he will be hosted by Professor Sultan Catto of City University of New York, The Graduate Center, and his American publisher Stanley H. Barkan. Whilst in New York he will also participate in a new project with Stanley, who is planning to produce a dvd based around the popular Walking Guide of Dylan Thomas's Greenwich Village , written by Peter and Aeronwy Thomas, Dylan's daughter, which was commissioned by Catrin Brace of the Wales International Center, New York in May 2008. Peter will produce a narrative contribution and Swansea singer-songwriter Terry Clarke, a frequent participant at The Seventh Quarry/Cross-Cultural Communications Visiting Poets Events, will sing original songs and compose the incidental music. Peter Thabit Jones is also one of the judges of the Left Coast Eisteddfod Poetry Competition. The Interview Americymru: Where else in the US are you visiting this year? Peter: Firstly, I have literally just returned from the World Conference in Boulder, Colorado. I was visiting poet for ten days. I had a truly wonderful time, spent with a variety of leading creative people from around the world (a filmmaker, cowboy singer-songwriter, jazz musicians, politicians, Irish storyteller, scientists, journalists etc.) on stimulating debating panels and I also read my poems whilst there. In mid-May I go to New York, as visiting poet, sponsored by Professor Sultan Catto of CUNY, The Graduate Center, New York, and Stanley H. Barkan, my New York publisher (Cross-Cultural Communications). I will be giving readings and talks, including a major event at the Mid-Manhattan Library, whilst there. I will also be involved in the making of a celebration dvd built around the Dylan Thomas Guide to Greenwich Village, which I wrote with Aeronwy, his daughter, for the Wales International Centre, New York. The dvd is being produced by my New York publisher, who came up with the idea, and will feature original songs about Dylan by singer-songwriter Terry Clarke, and a group of Cross-Cultural Communications- published poets from across America. Americymru: Do you set out to write a collection for publication, or do you simply write and eventually gather up the ones that seem to go together? Peter: I tend to write poems in batches and eventually shape them into a collection, Usually, my final choice is powered by poems that seem to fit into certain themes, such as childhood, people etc. However, my last book, The Lizard Catchers, was a kind of Selected Poems for the American market and it comprises poems taken from my books published in Britain. Americymru: Is poetry a priestly calling for all poets, or just a few? I’m thinking of “The Priest-Poet R.S. Thomas.” Peter: I think it is for the true poet. R.S. said, 'Poetry is religion, religion is poetry' and I think he was echoing Wordsworth's 'priest-like task'. Poetry for me is a vocation, like the priesthood, and I certainly believe a poet can have - to quote St John of the Cross - 'a dark night of the soul', when he doubts the importance of poetry, in the same way some priests go through moments of doubt about their faith. Alternatively, a true poet can experience visions of eternity. I am, in fact, a real admirer of R.S. Thomas's work. Americymru: Are poets born or made? Peter: Well, John Clare, echoing Horace I believe, said 'A poet is born not made'. However, we have Edward Thomas, the First World War poet ( he's of Welsh descent and gave his three children Welsh names), who started writing poems around the age of 37 years at the suggestion of the American poet Robert Frost. Thomas had written quality prose for decades and Frost pointed out that some of the passages were ideal for turning into poems. I have taught potential poets for sixteen years at the Adult Education Department at Swansea University. I think the hardest thing is to develop an individual vision and poetic voice. Maybe one is born with those two vital things. Americymru: When you teach writing, what’s the most important thing you want your students to apprehend and incorporate in their writing efforts? Peter: I try to get over a real sense of the importance of craft. Vernon Watkins, Dylan Thomas's much under-rated friend, said, 'Cold craftsmanship is the best container of fire': an important statement. It's craft that takes over from that initial and exciting spurt of inspiration. I cover metre and poetic devices and try to get over the importance of the musical aspect of poetry, 'the colour of saying', to quote Dylan Thomas. Americymru: Post-modern “cool” poets write in free verse. Why do you choose rhyme & metre? Did you choose them, or did they choose you? Why do you like the traditional styles so well? Peter: It's possible we chose each other. I think it is because I believe passionately in the music of poetry, the sound as much as the sense. It's also, of course, a Welsh thing: Dylan, the Welsh-language bardic poets. I was lucky in the 1980s when I met the Welsh-language poet Alan Llwyd, the cynghanedd master, who taught me quite a bit about cynghanedd devices. He won the Chair and the Crown twice at Royal National Eisteddfods. I also think the rubber band of poetry can be stretched to take in all kinds of poems. For me, though, if I write free verse I try to sound-texture it with poetic devices. When I toured America last year (and at Colorado a few weeks ago) it was something people pointed out time and time again: the musical quality of my poems, which for me was rewarding when it was noted. I like the traditional styles because I see them as an adventure rather than a strait-jacket. Americymru: Why do you think landscape is such an important witness and mnemonic device for you? How do you think it holds memory the way you’ve depicted it – I’m thinking of Kilvey Hill and the Lion’s Head here? Peter: My first memory is of landscape. I recall, as a toddler, looking through the open kitchen door of my Grandmother's home (she and my Grandmother raised me) and seeing this huge, sulking shape dominating every thing: Kilvey Hill. As soon as I was old enough to explore it, I explored every corner of it. For me, Kilvey and the landscape of Eastside Swansea (Dylan's ugly side of his 'ugly, lovely town' - luckily for me he did not write about it!) confirms a pantheistic belief in me that we are connected to nature (The force that through the green fuse drives the flower). Kilvey Hill is also, for me, the touchstone to that reality that down the years has changed into a memories: my first bonfire night, first gang of boys, first camping out experience, first love etc. I have just finished, after ten years of working on it, a verse drama, The Boy and the Lion's Head, based on my Lion's Head poem and my grandfather's experiences as a soldier on the Somme. It is about the impact of a grandfather's stories and a particular landscape (the industry-spoilt Eastside Swansea) on a boy's imagination. I am very excited by it and two American friends have been very, very enthusiastic about it. Americymru: How many years of your life do these poems in “The Lizard Catchers” cover? Peter: From adolescence (My Grandfather's Razor) to poems written recently (Night, The Green Bird), whilst in my mid-fifties. Americymru: How long did it take you to find your voice as a poet? Peter: A long time. The turning point for me was a deep personal grief in my life, the death of my second son, Mathew. I did not write for a long time. When poetry came back to me I knew I could not fall back on someone else's voice or experiences. To be honest, though, I think it is only in the last twelve years that I have really started to understand and use, as I would like to, my own voice. My dear friend and mentor, Vince Clemente, a New York poet and critic (an expert on Walt Whitman) has helped me immensely since we first started corresponding in 1997 and showing each other poems-in-progress. Americymru: Why do you think it is that you can see so deeply into the world? Do you think this is a native ability or did you have to cultivate it? Peter: Even as a small boy I was curious about the reality of things, the depth of experiences. Also, my only memories of my grandfather are of him, seriously unwell, in a bed in our parlour. I think such nearness to death at such a young age makes one really focus on life, the living things. The part of the landscape of Wales where I was born and raised offered so much to focus on, Kilvey Hill, the nearby (then) busy docks, the beach, and the (then) seaside town of Swansea. As I got older I read famous poets, such as Wordsworth, Tennyson, R.S., Ted Hughes, and I soon realised I was not alone in wanting, almost needing, to see 'shootes of everlastingness' beyond the curtain of reality. So I suppose I 'cultivated' my inborn strengths. They say the Welsh are a curious people and I certainly have that trait. Americymru: What is it about the little things and passing vignettes of life that catch your attention? Peter: I think the little things are all revelations of the big things, thus when observing soemthing like a frog or a lizard one is observing an aspect of creation, a thing that is so vital and part of the larger pattern that none of us really understand. Edward Thomas said, 'I cannot bite the day to the core'. In each poem I write I try to get closer to the core of what is reality for me, be it the little things or the big things such as grief and loss. Americymru: When you write, do you write a poem and then pare it down to its bones, or, do the bones come first? Peter: For me the bones come first, a word, a phrase, a line, or a rhythm, usually initiated by an observation, an image, or a thought. Then once I have the tail of a poem I start thinking of its body. Nowadays, within a few lines I know if it will be formal or informal. If it is formal, all my energies go into shaping it into its particular mould, a sestina or whatever. If it is informal, I apply the same dedication. Eventually after many drafts, a poem often then needs cutting back because of too many words, lines or ideas. R.S. indicated that the poem in the mind is never the one on the page, and there is so much truth in that comment. The actual writing of a poem for me is the best thing about being a poet: publication, if possible, is the cherry on the cake. Americymru: You have such an elegant and clean style; how did you develop it? Peter: Thank you,. I think from reading and studying the great poets, especially the Welsh ones (R.S., Dylan T., Vernon Watkins and Merthyr-born Leslie Norris) and the Irish ones (Yeats and Heaney). I also believe a poem should last for more than one reading, that a reader should be able to enter a poem again and again and get some thing from it. So, again, I think if I have such a style it is connected with my commitment to craft. Americymru: You paint such impressionistic word-pictures the way you hyper-focus on little details and hang the whole rhythm of the poem on them. Can you remember how old you were when you first encountered Monet, and what the process was for you to acquire that same technique he had in paints, for yourself with words? Peter: I first encountered a painting by Monet in a library book (I joined Swansea Central Library when I was sixteen, mainly to take out poetry books) and the real thing on a school trip to the National Museum in Cardiff. Again, I think by carefully focusing on the little things, and by trying to choose the right words to convey, indeed replicate, a visual experience, you can present a larger picture. Robert Frost (I'm paraphrasing) said that one first had to be provincial to be universal. Also, in the Welsh-language they talk of a poet 'being a master of the exact word', the ability to choose the right and only word. It was a single word rainbow in the Welsh poet W.H. Davies's The Kingfisher that started me writing at the age of eleven. My teacher at Danygraig Boys' School, a superb teacher called Mr. James, read out the poem to the class. The opening line did it for me, 'It was the rainbow gave thee birth'. I could not believe that one single word could convey so much. It lit up in my mind and kick-started my love of language, my love of the wonder and magic of words. Seamus Heaney said, 'Words are doors themselves' and I love that possibility, that way of using them. Americymru: In Psalm for the Twentieth Century you talk about what a sacrilege we’re committing on everything that is sacred. Is there something about that desecration you see, that makes the planet more blessed? Can environmental degradation somehow bestow blessings? One line really stood out “Blessed is the child that the city drives wild.” Do you think the cities bring out the native wildness in children, or do they shatter it? Do you think that the urban wilderness can give us mad and prophetic poets like Lailoken and Taliesin? Peter: I think as one gets older, certainly for me, the world becomes more incredible, my part in it so insignificant; and, despite what we are doing to it, it is still full of wonders and I do try to see the loveliness amongst ugliness, and the ugliness amongst the loveliness. So I do see the blessings. I think in that line about the child I was thinking of both things: that the packed, impersonal city can impact dreadfully on a child's physical and mental being, and, of course, it can push them into using their innate survival equipment in order to survive. Well, poets like Allen Ginsberg certainly faced many of the obvious problems of modern life in a very individual and impressive way. I think good poets, whether country-based or city-based, attempt as best as they can to respond to their immediate surroundings, and, yes, many are prophetic in their own way. As Wilfred Owen said, 'All a poet can do today is warn. Americymru: How did you get the job working with special needs children, why did you take it, and did it change or enhance the way you see the world? Peter: I was a freelance writer and I was doing a lot of work in schools, colleges etc. The opportunity came up to learn sign language on a college course (I used to ride a motorbike - my first one at the age of thirty something - from Swansea to Barry College, very scary and exciting). Then from that came the opportunity to do work with special needs children. I took it because I wanted to experience a world beyond my world, a world unknown to so many of us. It changed me in that it changed my perceptions of their world, their daily problems, their incredible bravery, and, at times, sheer tenacity. I'm sure, as with all ultimately rewarding and humbling experiences, it contributed to the way I see the world. Americymru: The themes in The Lizard Catchers – childhood and its traumas, the relationships of children to adults and vice versa, the loss and grief they inflict on each other, illness, death, mortality, urban ruin and the omnipresence of Nature even in the pit of industrialization – make this a very emotional collection. If our humanity is the connecting thread, then do you really think it’s possible to re-arrange the beads on the rosary as it were, to get them all to make sense? Peter: I certainly believe our humanity is the connecting thread. We all share these things, childhood, relationships, grief, the environmental demise of our world etc. We are all, ultimately, very fragile. One of the panels at the World Conference in Boulder, Colorado, was titled Death: Go Gentle into that Good Night, and one of my contributions was that if we all actually considered our own mortality more often then maybe we would be nicer to each other. These things, though, don't occur in sequence, For example, some experience death very early in life, others very late in life. So it is often difficult to get them to make sense, in a logical, a rosary-bead way. Again, getting older places some of them in more of a context and a kind of acceptance that starts to make sense. Americymru: Why do you think grief makes all the little things stand out so starkly? Why, or how, does it cause the hyper-focusing that comes out in your poems? Peter: Because it is such a cliff-edge thing, a paring down to the real basics, the real essence of what we are: fragile and naked. You see this in the big tragedies, world wars, 9/11 etc. People suddenly focus on what really matters, the little things, and they focus more deeply. Many soldiers in the First and Second Worlds Wars suddenly started writing poems, men who had never written one in their lives. When we find ourselves in the the cold corner of grief, the cul-de-sac of shock, the little things seem to light up, be of more importance: a child's smile, a friend's hug etc. The playwright Dennis Potter said in one of his last interviews, before dying of cancer, that the blossoms in his garden seemed to be more bright than they ever were. In my poems, the little things are a kind of reassurance, a kind of confirmation of a small pattern in the bigger pattern of it all. Americymru: Is childhood really that terrifying an experience for a majority of people, do you think? I’m thinking of the Boy and the Lion’s Head and The Protest. Peter: Probably not. But I do think children experience fears of what is not understood, such as the boy in the poem about the strange man and the Lion's Head. The Protest is one way of me looking at my not having my real parents as a child. It's not, of course, as emotional or as powerful as John Lennon's Mother. Americymru: So, Seamus Heaney has been known to praise Eminem’s rap-poetry. Any thoughts on that, on rap as a poetic form born of urban ruin, and on where that might fit into a 1000 year old poetic tradition? Peter: I can understand Seamus Heaney's praise for Eminem, certainly the musical quality. I have always liked Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues, probably the first 'rap song'. At the World Affair Conference I shared the stage several times with Lynne Johnson, a young female Hip Hop poet from New York, who was really great, engaging, musical and exciting. Rap seems the ideal response of young people to urban ruin and I'm sure the form will snuggle into its rightful place in poetic tradition. Americymru: Wildness and Nature always seems to overcome our best efforts to cage, encrust, or otherwise tame it. Why do you think so many people, and the “modern” world as a whole, think they can best it? What is it about people, do you think, that they just have to keep trying at that? Peter: Well, man has to dominate, not just nature but each other. Man strives to be godlike and getting nature/wildness under his thumb maybe confirms that side of his ego. Maybe there is an element of envy too, the freedom of an eagle in the sky, the sheer force of a river, the dignity of a mountain. Modern man has also lost his respectful relationship with nature. Pre-literate people understood and appreciated the preciousness of the world they inhabited, that they were mere brief visitors to the Earth, protectors of it for the generations to come. Americymru: Do you think mankind can save ourselves from our own bloodthirsty destructive tendencies, and if so, how do you think we’re going to be able to do it? Peter: I hope so but one feels so pessimistic for so much of the time. Materialism seems to gnaw away at our sanity, fool us into not wanting to see what damage we are actually doing. We have to try to do something for future generations, our grandchildren and their children and so on. To achieve changes, we have to consider this whole business of materialism, this 'fast food' approach to everything, this 'I want, so I must have' mentality. Maybe mankind will arrive at a cliff-edge that cannot be ignored, a natural or man-made catastrophe that will stop everything in its tracks: and then force a real change in things. Americymru: Are we going to destroy ourselves do you think, or will Nature beat us to the punch? Peter: A big question again. I hope no-one is mad enough to set off the first bonfire of vanity that will mean our mutual annhilation. Our daily destruction of the actual planet is probably a bigger threat and one we cannot ignore forever. Nature, of course, can happily get on without us. Interview by Kathleen O'Brien Blair

An Interview With Mike Brooks of Here Be Dragons

Here Be Dragons have released three CDs, "Alcohol & Rain, Celtic Bonding and "Bright New Tomorrow".Their live shows have had crowds dancing and partying in festivals and venues across Europe and in the USA. From 2009 they will also be offering an "Unplugged" set for more acoustic venues.They've played to many thousands of people around the world. Their largest crowd was 30,000 in Bologna. Americymru: Who are Here Be Dragons? Mike: A band who play wild Celtic music from Wales. Mike Brooks Vocals (and various stringed instruments), "Big Willy" Morrsion on drums, Kyle Jones on bass, Helen Blackburn fiddles and Delyth Jones squeezes (Accordion) Americymru: What are the backgrounds of the people in the band and how did you end up together? Mike: I originally formed the band when I was an expat; I was living in London. Lineups have changed over the years but Will has been there since pretty much the beginning. The rest we met as friends of friends. Kyle is from Cardiff like me. A friend from West Wales told me his sister plays accordion in a duo with a fiddler and that's how we met Del and Helen. Americymru: You perform your own version of "Sospan Fach" . This , of course, is a traditional Welsh folk song about a small saucepan. For the benefit of our American readers can you tell us a little about this rather surreal ditty? Mike: Sospan Fach words are silly but the song is more than the words. It's sung pasionately at rugby matches to support Wales or Llanelli (Town in West Wales). It was also sung going to te trenches in the first World War. So it's sort of more about the singing than the song, if that makes any sense. Sospan Fach Americymru: You've played the States before? Can you tell us a bit about that? How did you enjoy the experience? Mike: We've come across twice for Celtic festivals in Florida and Chicago. On our first trip Will kept shouting "Where are we?" and we'd joyfully answer "In America!" it was a big deal, a big trip. The gigs went well and we were well recieved. I wrote the song "One Night Stand" on that trip - enough said! Chicago was great too. A well organised Welsh society, The "Chicago Taffia" met us there, with a limo. In fact both trips we got met at the airport and were given beer to drink on our way back from the airport. Each time I thought "I could like this country!" (Easily bought, eh?) Chicago is a huge and impressive town. The festival was big too, big crowds and a warm reception. It was great standing on stage looking at the Chiacgo skyline behind the crowd in Grant Park. That night we got to meet the locals to which always helps, if you can't do that then why travel? We're still in touch with a people in Chicago. I hope we return before too long. Americymru: OK...now for a dumb question. A lot of your songs are about drinking. How important is that in Welsh culture and in particular in Cardiff? Mike: Anyone who has seen St Mary's Street on a Friday or Saturday night would know. On those nights 50,000 people come into town to get drunk. Hen nights, stag nights, nights out with the lads or girls, birthdays, work nights, you name it. Drink is part of the culture the way food is in France or Italy. In Europe there is a North South divide with drink. Wales along with Irish, Scots amnd Scandinavians drink way more than those in the South. Tonight Cardiff Blues Rugby won a major cup so the fans will get drunk to celebrate. Cardiff City (Soccer) lost six nil so, to drown their sorrows, the fans get drunk. I'm Not Drunk Americymru: You have a song entitled "The Senghenydd Explosion" Care to tell us a little about the background to that? Mike: This is true story about the worst mining disaster in Britsh history. 439 died in an explosion in a mine not that far North of Cardiff. Mining is a big part of the history of South Wales. To anyone who comes here I'd reccomend a visit to Big Pit mining museum where you actually go underground and get a glimpse of what life was like. Mining was and is a horrible job but it binds the community together as every day the miners put their lives in each others hands. Obviously this is true of miners the world over as well as of soldiers and sailors. Americymru: "Auntie Henrietta o Sicago"...any resemblance to any real person alive or dead? Mike: I didn't write this so I can't say if she was real. It's a fun song in Welsh about Chicago so we had to sing it when we went there. It's nice to sing about places you visit. Our accordion player at the time has an Auntie in Chicago so we dedicated it to her. I like to write songs about places we visit often blurring fact and fiction like in a drunken memory. "Celtic Bonding" is like that. I enjoy singing "The Modena Rambler" in Modena (Italy) or about Cardiff in Cardiff. Any Welsh songs about Portland? Auntie Henrietta o Sicago Americymru: Where can people go to hear you play and buy your music? Mike: We're on Silverwolf Records in the USA. If you can't get a CD in your local idependant record store, I'd say go to our Website www.herebedragons.info and we'll sell you one. I'll sign it too if you like. If you're too stingy to buy a CD then you get (different) songs for FREE buy joing the supporters club on the same site. Americymru: What are your future recording and performance plans at the moment? Mike: Well both are work in progress. We have gigs in the pipe line for Italy, Wales and the USA. The Left Coast Eisteddford is on 22nd August in Portland, Oregon. Hopefully we'll get a few other dates around it in the USA. At the moment we're working on three albums:- A "Best of" in English and Welsh translating songs we've done before, an album of songs connected with Welsh rugby and a new album of original material. Americymru: Any further message for the members and readers of "Americymru". Mike: Keep flying the flag, singing the songs and drinking the beer when you can. Also don't keep Welsh culture a secret, let non Welsh friends have a taste too. Hwyl fawr! Mike Here Be Dragons Interview by Ceri Shaw Email