In The Words Of by

Carl Marsh

Intro Rant

How many news channels initially said that the fires in Rhodes and other Greek locations resulted from climate change, yet it’s apparent that arson and discarded cigarettes are to blame? I am a frequent visitor to Corfu. I’ve friends that live there. It’s a yearly occurrence. Still, we’ve got to keep that narrative flame burning now, don’t we? [lousy pun - sorry]

Wales and its soon-to-be comprehensive scale implementation of many 20 mph zones. A quick question for Drakeford and his merry men and women - Do you realise that people will be spending more time looking at that speedometer than they will be looking ahead of them? And more cars will pollute more fumes at 20 than at 30 mph. As with all this climate stuff mantra and legislation, it has more holes than the last teabag I used for my cup of tea! If there was no money to be made [governments & industry] with all this climate lark, then people might take it seriously. Me…, well, forget it. I’m only someone with a keyboard and an opinion not blinkered by the TV man/woman.

Music Review

Liam Gallagher - Knebworth 22

It might be a live performance CD of past Oasis and Liam Gallagher songs, but it’s Knebworth. I love how Liam has embraced the old with the new. He is the voice of Oasis. He always has, always will be. With talk of an original reformation being just that, talk. Seeing this guy perform at Knebworth alone will - and did - bring back those memories from when Oasis did the same thing many years ago. This CD is for those fortunate to make it last year, decades ago, or both! And for those that made neither, what are you waiting for?

Interviews

Ukweli Roach: cast as the lead in BBC One’s new show, ‘Wolf’, he plays Jack Caffery. Shot in Wales, it’s based on the novel of the same name by the late Mo Hayder, with an all-star cast of Welsh talent. This is warming up to be the BBC’s biggest summer drama offering.

Beth Nielsen Chapman: Nashville-based singer/ songwriter Beth is appearing at Acapela Studio on August 3rd. It’s guaranteed a fantastic night, and as she told me, amazing pizza!

Stephen J Shaw: Writer, Director and Producer of ‘Birthgap - Childless World’. It’s a subject matter probably alien to most of us, yet one that is more important now than it will ever be. Please have a read and then follow up by watching the documentary.

Mr Bewlay: Cardiff-based singer/songwriter and ultimate performer, Mr Bewlay is a force to be reckoned with. Articulate, intelligent, talented and a marvel to behold. There are not many artists like him around these days. He’s one to watch out for!

Enjoy August. I’m off to Ibiza and then Michigan in the US. Maybe more places, but I’ll see nearer the time.

Ukweli Roach first appeared on screen in the movie ‘StreetDance 3D’ in 2010, subsequently acting in many films and shows as the FBI psychiatrist in the US TV series ‘Blindspot’, whilst most recently in the UK drama ‘Annika’. He now leads the cast as ‘Jack Caffery’ in the BBC series, ‘Wolf’, this is my interview with him.

Carl Marsh

The series is based on [the last] one of Mo Hayder’s ‘Jack Caffery’ series of books. So, were you a fan of her books before you read the script?

Ukweli Roach

I didn’t. To be honest, I’d never heard of the books before the audition. And then I did want to read the book, but then I decided not to before filming because I wanted to base my adaptation of Jack on the actual screenplay written by Megan Gallagher. I knew slight differences existed, so I tried to base it on that. However, my Mum had finished it before I’d even gotten the job, she finished the book [Laughter] as she’s always very eager and she was always telling me bits and bobs and of certain similarities between the character and me! So, the short answer is no, I deliberately didn’t read the book beforehand. I didn’t want that to inform my version of Jack. I wanted it to be on [scriptwriter] Meghan.

Carl Marsh

Those similarities that your Mum said that you and the character share, what are they?

Ukweli Roach

Well, they were… [Laughs] Essentially, there were parts of the book, and I remember her messaging me telling me that a pub that I can see from my balcony was featured in the book. And there’s one book in particular which focuses specifically around the area where I live, which is quite strange. And just lots of things like that. And as she was reading it, I was unsure whether to take this as a compliment. But she said, “Oh, I could see why you’d be good at playing Jack”. And the more I learned about Jack, I’m not sure that was a compliment! [Laughter]

Carl Marsh

Jack’s a pretty disturbed individual, having gone through a lot of trauma with his brothers’ unsolved murder at a very young age. How hard was it to get into the mindset of portraying such a damaged individual? And didn’t you create a music playlist to help you prepare for the role?

Ukweli Roach

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I did. Music is a big thing for me; it’s a perfect gateway to get into a character or a state. So, I created a playlist of songs that I felt connected with Jack or the story of ‘Wolf’. It was exciting, to be honest, when I read the first script before the audition, everything about it appealed to me because, as an actor, there’s the substance that is available there playing a character like you said, that’s this disturbed and is in the depths of trauma. That’s a real engine that pushes him to get answers to solve crimes and do what we see him do. Honestly, that was really exciting for me because it’s every actor’s dream to play such a complex and conflicted character.

‘Wolf’ is showing now on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

Singer and songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman has many accolades to her name. Her song ‘This Kiss’ was sung by Faith Hill and was ASCAP’s 1999 Song of the Year, Grammy-nominated many times, Nashville’s Songwriter of the Year, and even inducted with the ultimate honour a songwriter can expect to achieve: the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame! Oh, and an Ambassador for the Buddy Holly Educational Foundation. She’s playing at Acapela Studio in Pentyrch on August 3rd. I had a Transatlantic Zoom chat with her.

Carl Marsh

Your last album, ‘Crazy Town’, came out last year, but I know you’ve got new songs and more to come. Will it be aimed at what’s to come or interspersed with most of last year’s album?

Beth Nielsen Chapman

Yeah, we’ll start from the album, obviously, but I always do old favourites because I can’t get through the show without some requests for songs that I do in every performance. And then we’ll be doing both new songs. The one’ Back to this Moment’ is so much fun to perform and has this kick-ass beat. It’s a song with this kind of longing and has some depth of going through life stuff, but the overriding feeling about the song is resilience, which I love. And that’s kind of what we have to do right there. I think collectively, our whole world is coming out of this pandemic, and many people feel like they’re just looking back and going, “Wait, did that really happen?” You know, it was a very weird time. [Laughs]

Carl Marsh

Oh yes! A year passed, then two, and now we are three years later. It was a crazy time. The album could have been called ‘Crazy World’, but I guess it was not written during this time?

Beth Nielsen Chapman

The funny thing is, we recorded the album in six days, and on the last day of recording, somebody - one of the musicians - came in and said, “Have y’all heard about this virus coming from China?” And I’m like, “What?” Because we’ve been so busy recording. We weren’t paying attention to the news. And it was this vague, weird thing that infiltrated our last day, and then at the end of the day, they were like, well, I think they’re gonna make us go into lockdown. And then we had to wait through the whole pandemic, and we were working on it a little bit, you know, finishing it up. But the songs on ‘Crazy Town’ were almost written as if we’d already gone through all that we were getting ready to go through. That’s happened to me a few times throughout my songwriting career, where I write ahead of schedule. I’m writing about things that haven’t even happened yet, but I don’t know that I’m doing that until I get to the other side of the thing that’s getting ready to happen. Then I look back and say, “Wait, that song is about this,” and I’ve had people say. “Does it creep you out?” and I’d said, “No. Actually, it gives me a great deal of comfort that some part of the entity of existence knows what’s going on, even if I don’t.” So, that’s comforting. [Laughs]

Writer, Director and Producer of ‘Birthgap - Childless World’, Stephen J Shaw spends his time between Tokyo, New York and London. You can watch part one of the documentary at www.birthgap.org, and please do. I asked Stephen questions on a topic - I’d only become aware ofvia Zoom video when he was in Tokyo. It’s a topic you do need to know about.

Carl Marsh

Most people will say that the World is too overpopulated, and you’ve most likely been asked so many times, but why should we all be alarmed by what Birthgap’s message is all about?

Stephen J Shaw

Well, that’s the message we’ve been getting. But what shocked me is when you look at the actual data, the only reason the World’s population is going to increase a little bit more for the next few decades is that we’re getting older. The number of babies on the planet peaked about a decade ago. The number of babies born yearly is the same as in the 1980s. So, we’re really at a turning point. And the term birthgap is a term I came up with to explain that it’s actually not the total population that matters. It’s the gap between the number of older people to support and the number of younger workers who will need to pay taxes to support their health care social services like the NHS. So, when you have these birth gaps, the number of children decreases. You don’t usually know this for a generation or two. It’s when you try to find workers, and there aren’t enough workers. Then you start to have stresses on the economy, but throughout that time, the number of older people stayed pretty much about the same for a generation or two before that number went down. So, there’s an imbalance, and it will affect young and old alike.

Carl Marsh

I’ve got to ask you about some of the Wales birthgap figures. For Cardiff and its surroundings [26%], it’s less than in the Valleys [31%]. I always would have believed that city centres would naturally be less family-friendly than the outskirts, but how wrong am I?

Stephen J Shaw

No, and I see this everywhere where people often live in their cities or urbanised areas, and it feels busy. I live in Tokyo, a city of 30 million people, but I know that there are vacant apartments not far from Tokyo, and I know that if you go to the towns that go up to the valleys here, there you will see desolate places, and frankly, some desolate people as well. So, the World is changing very, very quickly. It doesn’t surprise me that you’re surprised because, often, there are many counterintuitive things in the data. But yeah, you’re right with the UK. The UK overall has a 23% birth gap, and that’s the number of 50-yearolds going down to the number of newborns. If you break it into a more regional basis, Scotland 37%, Southwest England 32%. And then number three, Wales at 29%, and the northeast at 28%. So, you know, Wales is not as bad as Scotland. But these gaps are widening.

Carl Marsh

We hope those gaps go the other way; that’s the ultimate wish.

Stephen J Shaw

Yeah, it’ll take time. Awareness is the start of it, though. So you know, I will appreciate being interviewed here and whatever I can do to help people understand that the World we’ve gotten used to for the past few decades will be pretty different from the one we’re about to enter into.

Birthgap - Childless World can be watched at www. birthgap.org

Now based in Cardiff, singer-songwriter Mr Bewlay oozes so much quality, passion and originality. He is adept at writing songs about everything and anything, whatever mood or observations he’s seen. I recently met him in person at an event in Cardiff. This is my interview with him.

Carl Marsh

Please tell me about your journey thus far into becoming this outstanding performer and singersongwriter I see before me.

Mr Bewlay

I’m as pure an artist as I think all artists should be. I’m an actor. I’m an actor who chose to (now) choose music rather than acting. I wanted to be an actor for a long time, but I got tired of directors and producers telling me what to do on stage and on the screen. And so, as a result, I’ll be my own boss. And so, I go into any music project as if it’s a book or as if it’s a movie or something with defined features around it. They all interconnect. I wouldn’t say I like pulling myself down with a particular style or theme. They are all varied. I’m just a musician, working and performing.

Carl Marsh

There aren’t any restrictions on any musical genre for you. Is it just whatever appeals at that given time?

Mr Bewlay

I feel like if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. Artists who only play postpunk or who only play jazz, or those artists who you play pop music. Where’s the fun? The fun is that every time I release something, my audience is always shocked and surprised about what comes out. If it’s a song about Wobbegong sharks in Australia or a song about a guy called Dan’ the Don’ Wilson. [Laughs] [Jokes] I don’t want to release a song called ‘Heard’ things that no one’s talking about. I want the fun.

Carl Marsh

I know what you mean. You don’t want to go down the same path as most artists who, for example, only ever write and sing about heartbreak?

Mr Bewlay

I mean, there is an audience and a market for that, and those people are very successful, and that’s great. And maybe, at one point, I’ll delve into that.

Everything I do is kind of fake and surface-level. I’m just a tourist. I’m a tourist of people and a tourist of art. I see the sights, buy the gift, and then go to the next place.

Carl Marsh

Where do you get your creativity and flair from? Must you be inspired by any acts you’ve encountered over the years?

Mr Bewlay

Yeah, I feel like when I was younger, there was a lot of influence from the likes of David Bowie, Gary Numan, Morrissey, David Bird from the Talking Heads, that sort of stuff. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realised that I still like those things. It’s still just embedded in me. But my influence now kind of, I don’t know if it’s, if it’s a case of I’ve absorbed all of those in the deep-set in my memory. And so now I just come up with things that have been influenced by these colour palettes or by those actions or by this choreography, but a lot of it I just kind of dredge up from within. Imitation is the best form of flattery.

Check out Mr Bewlay’s music across all streaming platforms. Gigs for October and onwards will be announced in due course.