Show Notes
In this episode we hear from Welsh band Melin Melyn, talking to Green Man stalwart Pictish Trail about their first times at the festival, camping next to Kneecap at Glastonbury, the bubble machine...and exactly how to pronounce Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons).
We're also joined by The Beatles Dub Club, who played their first show at Chai Wallahs here at Green Man in 2021, and has since taken it as far a field as New Zealand, Australia and Bali. The brains behind it - DJ Chris Arnold -highlights some of his favourite areas of the festival, and this year he's bringing his baby - so he'll be exploring a whole new side of it as well.
“Croeso! Welcome, one and all to the magical world of the Mill On The Hill. The yellow mill that sits on top of a hill, looking down on Melin Village and all of its wonderful occupants. Everyone is welcome here.” So begins the longed-for debut album from Wales’ beloved Melin Melyn (Welsh for Yellow Mill). The group are regular friendly faces at Green Man and consummate live entertainers, who sing psychedelic surf-rock and country songs in Welsh and English about falling in love with computer characters and eating “existential crises-inducing spicy foods”. In Melin Village, the townsfolk “bask in the beauty of song” — with Melin Melyn around, Green Man merrymakers are bound to do just the same.
Quite possibly Green Man’s most frequent performer — in fact he hasn’t missed a single year of the festival — Scottish musician Johnny Lynch will once again make the voyage (another kind of ancient kingdom-linking Pictish Trail) down from the Isle of Eigg to the Welsh mountains. He’s just made a new EP called Follow Footsteps, continuing to furrow his own path within the Lost Map Records family.
DJ Chris Arnold takes us on a mystery tour through his collection of covers, remixes and cuts that sampled arguably the greatest band to have ever lived, The Beatles. Get ready to dance as Chris bounces from track to track to the backdrop of a mish-mash of Beatles related film, this time with a supporting horn section.
More from The Green Man Podcast
The worlds of pop and rock owe a much greater debt to the classical canon than we realise. A direct and fascinating lineage draws from the experimentalism of Pierre Henry to The Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows, from Stockhausen to Donna Summer’s I Feel Love. In her new book Everything We Do is Music, Elizabeth Alker shines a light on the fertile ground that exists between the borders of classical music and pop. Elizabeth is in conversation with broadcaster Huw Stephens.
Two of our comedy heroes putting the world to rights? Oh, go on then.
Power, resistance, and the race to save our world.
Cameron Picton is the former black midi guitarist and bassist and his new project, My New Band Believe, has hit upon a sound that could have taken multiple albums to establish. The debut album released in April is urgent and jangly, almost tripping over itself in its eagerness to be heard.
In his astonishing and subversive memoir, Bless Me Father, Kevin Rowland lays bare his unvarnished life story for the very first time. From the juvenile courts of his troubled teenage years to the early days of the New Romantic scene in the late ’70s and beyond, he recounts his darkest hours, deepest desires and greatest joys. Back with a new album as Dexys Midnight Runners, Kevin Rowland is joined in conversation with journalist and broadcaster Sophie Williams.