A day of pairing drinks with music.
We started the day by nipping over the road from the hotel for a Greggs, the breakfast of champions, and ordered our taxi from there.
We were dropped off down by The Grist, the bottom end of town, and walked straight into The Cross, a pub that has a reputation for not suffering festival goers and their requests for coffee lightly. They had even gone away for Friday and Saturday, not opening at all. It’s a local pub for local people. However, by the time we walked away from the bar with our first round in our hands, we were the best of friends. He had taken a shine to our valleys ways. “You’re the kind of customers I want”.
We sat in the beer garden for four hours slowly pickling our livers. At one point Megan was hit on the head by a low flying parasol, briefly giving her the appearance of a cocktail*. (* credit to Alison Chalmers. The funniest line she has ever come out with in her entire life.)
We engage in conversations with other patrons of the establishment. We discuss things like folk festivals in Haverfordwest, the recent form of Laugharne RFC and horny tortoises jizzing over shoes.
Every now and again we would look at the programme and contemplate going to see something, then just get another round in. After four hours we concluded that it would be wrong to waste the entire day in the beer garden of the Cross. So we got our stuff together, said our goodbyes, and walked the two hundred yards over the road and set up camp in the slightly sunnier beer garden of The Fountain Inn.
Two hours later we finally decide we are going to attend an event, Huw Stephens discussing his book, Wales: 100 Records. It’s upstairs in The Fountain. There’s a bar. Rude not to.
Stepping in at the last minute to ask the questions is Matt from the impeccable Tangled Parrot Records. Originally one shop in Carmarthen, there are now Tangled Parrots in Swansea and Hay on Wye.
Matt is well-placed to discuss Welsh music, many of the bands being discussed have hung out in his shop and some have even played in the venue he used to have downstairs. It takes more willpower than I have to leave his shop empty handed. He has an amazing stock of, shall we say, lesser known bands. Where else would you find albums by The Swansea Laptop Orchestra, The Trawsfynydd Lo Fi Liberation Front and Llwber Llaethog? Not only is it an Aladin’s Cave for record-buying geeks like me, but it is vital support for Welsh bands looking to get their name out there.
The same can be said of Huw Stephens. He does what Peel did for several decades, with shows on Six Music and Radio Wales, he showcases the best emerging talents in Wales. A vital leg up in a cutthroat world.
The next hour was exactly how Sunday afternoons should be. Music enthusiasts with extensive knowledge chatting about music over a pint. We get extracts of some of the albums played over the PA. Mostly it’s just a minute or two to give a flavour of the record being discussed. Only one tune is played in its entirety, ‘Rhondda Grey’ by Max Boyce, from the album ‘They All Had Doctors Papers’. Yes, it’s a very varied book. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
All good things must come to an end though, and tables and chairs were cleared to make way for bands wanting to soundcheck for tonight. If you want to learn more about Huw’s book, check out our review here. BOOK REVIEW: Wales: 100 Records (Y Llofa 2024) – Peppermint Iguana Zine
When we were up here on Friday night, it was very full and most people were standing. So as the tables and chairs are rearranged, we bagsy a good table near the stage, looking out over the estuary. The first band might not be on for a few hours yet, but it is going to take a good firm to shift us from these seats.
We sit through all the sound checks, mostly behaving ourselves, although Phileas Fogg nearly gets us chucked out for interfering with the sound check. “We already have one sound engineer, we don’t need another one thanks”, could be heard coming out of the darkness. Quite right too. Frequencies my arse, just enjoy the gig boy.
The village of Laugharne sits near the mouth of the estuary of the River Taf, as it completes its thirty-five mile journey down from Presceli (the mountain range, not Elvis). It’s very wide and very flat, which means the ebb and flow of the tide make a huge difference to how far away the river is from the village. This weekend there are very high tides. Something to do with the Moon (the celestial satellite, not the live music venue) I think. We are sat overlooking the car park for the castle and the landlady of the pub comes to check if anyone has parked there. Cos it is about to flood. Me and Michael Pailin guard our chairs like our life depended on it, whilst our glamorous travelling companions head down to take photographs and indulge in a mild bout of schadenfreude*, as a handful of cars start to float out to sea. (*Sorry if you’re reading this and it’s your car. It’s not really a laughing matter.)
As Huw Stephens’ book highlights, there has been a long and proud history of excellent, unique and original music coming out of Wales for a very long time. And it’s not just history, as tonight is about to prove.
First up are Slate from the ‘Diff. As is the way with these things, bands soundcheck in reverse order, so we are not sure when they stop soundchecking and start gigging, but at some point we notice the dancefloor is full of people soaking up their psychedelic post punk vibe.
It is a constant source of optimism to see young people with a bucket load of imagination, a wheelbarrow full of talent and an uncanny cultural awareness of the music of the last forty years, taking inspiration from a wide variety of sources to create something fresh.
Talking of originality, the enigmatic MWSOG (moss) are next up.
Take one of the biggest, baddest, heaviest, most awesome power trios I’ve ever seen, The Biggest Thing Since Powdered Milk. Add harmonium, mandolin, more guitars, more drums, ethereal female Welsh language vocals and make them play psychedelic folk rock, and you’re almost there.
Pretty much everyone in the room has their flabber gasted. It’s an almost perfect end to an almost perfect weekend. Why almost perfect? Just like Friday night, we are at the mercy of local taxi availability and have to miss the amazing Pigeon Wigs. One consolation though, we did get to catch them sound check. We had a tantalisingly brief sample of their funky psychedelic rock that has been winning them fans wherever they play.
Sadly we have to extract ourselves from the venue. A mad tussle begins with those staying on, wanting our now unguarded seats. We head out into the night, wave goodbye to the ever present Eugene on the decks downstairs, and swim over to our taxi.
Just like Lorna Doon, the Laugharne Weekend will vanish in a puff of smoke overnight and tomorrow Laugharne will go back to being just Laugharne. But the memories will linger for years to come. And next year, we will do it all over again.
Overheard in the beer garden and too brilliant to not be recorded for posterity.
Penguins are just ostentatious puffins
Only in Laugharne.