East Portland Blog has been featuring the excellent music of Wales for a long time now. Perhaps the best example of this is seen in the coverage and analysis Peter Dysart gave to the Joy Formidable in East Portland Blog as far back as 2010. This made EPB an early, even an eccentrically early, adopter of the now legendary band that went on to make a hit out of their song “Whirring” and to travel the world playing for enormous audiences of tens and hundreds of thousands. Peter Dysart went on to form a friendship with members of the Joy Formidable and has kept in touch with them even into the present time. In a proud moment for EPB, Peter Dysart was able to interview the Joy Formidable in a relaxed setting and present EPB readers with the very best and most informative interview ever given by the Joy Formidable to a human audience.
Thus, in furtherance of a great practice begun by EPB many years ago, 2019 will be a year of intense focus by East Portland Blog on all of the beautiful music in every genre coming out of Wales. The music which is extruding right now, as I type these words, from the cities and towns of geographical Wales, is as high, fine, beautiful, elegant and refined as the fragrant and delectable ambergris extruded constantly from the digestive paths of biological whales which circle the deep blue oceans of the United Kingdom. Every Thursday night in 2019 we will present a different song from Wales for your listening pleasure.
You’re Welcome!
Our first Weekly Wales Song is “Addo Glaw,” from Dan Amor, a stalwart Welsh singer-songwriter and lndie label powerhouse with a heart of gold and the work ethic of a starving father of five. His label is Cae Gwyn and Dan’s commitment to the success of that label is limitless. Some days he will transform himself into “Label Mode” and work all day and into the night communicating with media figures across the world who seek him out for morsels of information on the “Wales Phenomenon,” the inescapable sense that Wales is the next place to become inextricably linked with beautiful music like Memphis in the 50’s, San Francisco in the mid 60s or Seattle in the 90s. Dan will perch his poor man’s arse in a rotting leather desk chair in that label office, hour after hour, typing prose-etry the like of which Billy Shakespeare would have envied into an old computer, his two impossibly cute and fiercely loyal corgis– Gwynedd and Norwallia– napping at his feet. In the coal black of the Welsh night his office will be rocked by high, wild, wintry, Welsh winds that blow through the cracks in the ancient walls around him, chilling him and making him thankful for the lush, generous, itchy-but-he-loves-it-that-way homespun sweater he saves for nights just like this. Some nights when he’s both hungry and thirsty he’ll bring over a bottle of thick, delicious, nutritious, oatmealy Welsh ale to keep him company. Gwynedd and Norwallia don’t mind, they know that the right ale will feed a man’s soul just as a raw beefheart would. They’ll see to it that Dan gets home safe and sound before daybreak. They’ll tuck him in too, they will.
Dan describes “Addo Glaw” in this way:
“I wanted to include an uptempo song as a counterpoint to the album’s rather more sedate opener. The song revolves around the idea of being in someone’s house you really don’t want to be in.”
