The punk diplomacy of playing to real people

That’s not the setup for a joke. It’s your standard night at FOCUS Wales, a festival on the bleeding edge of cool new music hosted by Wrexham every spring. ‘By’ is the key word here: unlike many multivenue festivals that annex a town for a week, fill it with international delegates, then say their thanks and leave, FOCUS was born in Wales, founded by people from Wales, and motivated by – you guessed it – the music of Wales.

“We moaned about it not existing for a long time to the point where we were annoying each other.” That’s Andy Jones, head of music for FOCUS, which he co-founded back in 2011 with Neal Thompson. It was partly out of frustration: why wasn’t there an event like the one he was envisaging? Where the brightest new acts from his back garden would get a platform in front of genuine music lovers. How else was everyone to keep track of the continuous flow of talent from this often-overshadowed country of 3 million? “We just thought, let’s give it a go.”

They gave it a go. Now, in early May each year, trailblazing acts of every shape and size – from across Wales, and from across the world – jam into Wrexham’s venerable churches and sticky nightclubs, drink in its pubs and snooze in its Premier Inns. Throughout its 16 years, the festival has evolved naturally: from a Wales-first showcase to a highly respected international junction that is basically a clout-carrying stamp of approval on any artist’s CV. It plays out over three very-full days of gigs, networking, panels, and playful teasing from locals coolly coexisting with the lanyarded misfits that have teleported into their town.

These artists, bookers, and labels have arrived from far-flung reaches: Canada, the US, Indonesia, New Zealand, even China. With around 50% of the lineup from Wales, FOCUS remains steadfast in its commitment to local music while simultaneously enabling a space for more than a hundred international artists to get in front of new audiences. And even as FOCUS’ scope has expanded, its artists still embody that original ethos of bottom-up, do-it-yourself creation and connection.

Sam Woywitka has been to Wrexham before, but not as SamWoy: the beat-punk artist who writes, records, engineers, mixes, and books everything himself. Nor as Hidden Ship, the label he runs, including putting on events in his adopted home of Montréal, recording other bands, shooting their videos – you name it. “It’s awesome, but it’s so much fucking work,” he says with the shrugged-off weariness of someone familiar with the highs and existential lows of being a do-or-die DIY musician.

In 2022, Woywitka came to the UK to do front-of-house sound for TEKE:TEKE, a Canadian-Japanese psych band booked for FOCUS Wales. They played in a venue called Penny Black. It was his first time in Wrexham.

“Man, I really hope I can come back and do this,” he remembers thinking at the time. And he did: the night before we meet for a chat. “I got booked for the exact same showcase at the exact same venue in the same time slot,” he tells me on a bench just around the corner from Penny Black, which last night hosted an M for Montréal showcase. Not only that: he filmed a music video for his debut single, “Sbwriel”, in the streets of Wrexham. Its name is the Welsh word for rubbish, which he’d spotted on all the bins (and pronounces flawlessly).

“It was my first UK show and it was the first place I ever came in the UK,” the British Columbia native says of Wrexham. It reminds him a lot of his hometown, Cumberland. It’s on Vancouver Island, a couple of hours on the ferry from the city of Vancouver. “The small-town banter and stuff,” he elaborates. “Everyone just talking to you and being open. We had a hilarious night with someone who wouldn’t leave us alone. He was like, I’ll get you guys a cab, and hitting on Jess [his manager] the whole time, and making fun of me. It’s very friendly, but taking the piss.”

I catch SamWoy play a few times during FOCUS Wales and the locals are not taking the piss during his set. They are locked into his ardent trash-dance as it segues from shouty simplicity to improvised spoken-word fantasia that makes your jaw drop and head spin. He’s playing solo over here. Sometimes he plays with a full band, and it’s a full-on punk rock show. But touring internationally is plagued with hurdles, something he realised he needed to adapt to after getting booked for SXSW in Austin.

“I didn’t want this to be backing tracks of the recorded album,” he tells me of the solo set approach, “so I reinvented the original demos that I taught to the band and used those as the solo set, which is a bit more electronic and beat-oriented.” He cues the beats on a sampler while barking into the mic and digging into his Jazzmaster.

“I was into Bad Brains, Black Flag, Agent Orange – basically Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtracks,” he continues, having mixed those early loves with more experimental, conceptual, and beat-driven influences. “I always wanted to make music for people to skateboard to.”

After his final show of the weekend, in the Rockin’ Chair venue, some locals want to buy t-shirts and records. They’re the kinda people you wouldn’t guess would be receptive to a very tall Canadian punk with sleeves of tattoos wailing about near-death experiences and slinging skunk as a teen. But Wrexham is an open city of open people. It’s a place that feels largely devoid of judgement or inhibition. People talk to you without preamble. They ask questions. They listen.

“We always understood that Wrexham is a really good host.” We’re back with Andy Jones. He’s in charge of booking all the acts across the festival in collaboration with around 23 co-curators – everyone from BBC Wales to New York’s New Colossus Festival. “There’s something about Wrexham because it’s like, small city, big town. The music scene has already been very supportive in that the kids who are into the metal bands are going to the dance events and they’re also supporting the folk groups. Because it’s so small, we’ve got that crossover that doesn’t often happen.”

I half expect some of the locals to respond with bemusement to all the hubbub in what feels like a fairly sleepy city, even with 25,000 extra guests in town for the weekend. But this is their festival, first and foremost. Saturday, in particular, sees an influx of general-public wristbands (i.e. not delegates or artists) – whether it’s over at the outdoor tent stage (in Llwyn Isaf park, aka Library Field) or congregating in Ty Pawb (“everybody’s house”), an arts hub-slash-shopping mall that moonlights as FOCUS HQ. The whole operation is set up with such care: navigable, with a great mix of close-together venues, meaning old-man-pub overflows inadvertently coalesce with Vancouver skate brats, like SamWoy experienced. They’ve even got the Samaritans posted up, day and night.

“It’s a fine dance, but somehow I think we’ve got the balance right of industry and public and it feeling really natural,” Andy continues. “Sometimes, conferences for artists can feel a bit serious and a bit unnatural, but we’ve got a really natural music community here. We want people to come here, see this new talent playing to real audiences, and then hopefully they do business together.”

FOCUS Wales was always meant to be a reflection of what’s happening in the music scene, Andy tells me. They never wanted to impose a strict mission or dominant genre so much as provide hangers for clothes (turns out, their wardrobe is so brilliant it makes the Narnia one look like a second-hand IKEA). “We’re forever punching above our weight in terms of the talent Wales produces,” Andy says. “It just makes my job really easy. There’s always a thousand new artists in Wales, which blows people’s minds when I say that, because look at the size of Wales. It’s part of the DNA of being Welsh: you respect music.”

There are too many fantastic Welsh artists to see or write about (xx, in fact). I’ll reel off a couple highlights, starting with Małgola, No. She’s originally from Poland but is fully settled in Cardiff now, having been inspired to move over by Welsh music and folklore. Her work leans into the kind of robust piano songwriting of Aimee Mann but with glitchy pinball machine beats and blips that put it in sultry conversation with cheeky club pop. Andy Jones says she’s not only “one of us,” but in fact emblematic of the Welsh music community: “people aren’t afraid to give it a go. It’s nurtured, supported. It’s not our thing that we protect.”

In a totally different world are Campfire Social, a sextet that has played every edition of the fest (bar one!) since they formed in Wrexham in 2016. They make you feel like you’re riding the waltzer with members of Los Campesinos!, ME REX, and perhaps local “generic pop punk” heroes Neck Deep – a dizzying, happily chaotic rush of harmonies, breakdowns, and three bickering guitar parts. Slate kills the colour straight afterwards, also on the main stage. There’s a dissonant tension to their ranging, broken-up sound surges that’s never unpleasant but always edge-of-your-seat. Their well-crafted songs are gloomy but hopeful, sparse but somehow huge, and should be filed alongside New Order’s icy snares, Fontaines’ main-character vocalising, and afterdark walks around the overgrown grounds of a gothic castle.

Bau Cat is a late-night party band that doesn’t ask much of you. They make hyperactive, feel-good surf rock akin to necking some caffeine pills and watching Beach Boys videos on double speed. There’s also a puppy running around the audience – an actual puppy – during their set, which is either very irresponsible or just adds to the all-singing-all-dancing jostle. I guess it’s both. I also catch Mellt’s Welsh-sung college rock clamour; the softly spoken-word trip-hop of Internet Fatigue; and the resonant cello passages of Ceitidh Mac. There’s an accidental duet during Mac’s set: birdsong pierces the teepee stage, HWB, as she sings wistfully about catching “blackbirds and gold finches.”

The final band I see is Kidsmoke. When it comes to this North Wales quartet, every song is an end-of-the-night song, the kind that punches you in the gut so hard you take to the streets and rush off on some silly movie-script gesture. They make butterfly-stomach indie rock blitzed with swirling guitars and driven by a consistent, driving Motorik pulse. Lyrics like “please wrap your arms around me and break my bones” expertly sum up ridiculous-when-said-out-loud-but-perfect-in-song feelings we’ve (hopefully) all felt.

Andy Jones tells me that they’re lucky to have Arts Council Wales, the Music Venue Trust, and other bodies to support local acts like these. That makes it even more impressive and surprising to see representation from countries with zero support for the arts. “It’s a real fight for them to be able to do something like this,” he says.

Take Two-Man Giant Squid, for instance. They don’t do the antagonistic/abrasive brand of Brooklyn Cool you might infer from their name. They have more in common with LCD Soundsystem and BODEGA than Model/Actriz, as fizzing, bubbling synth undercarpets and all-in-the-hi-hat disco beats make you want to run on the spot (which keys player Sam Borges does). Mitch Vinokur, meanwhile, is the charismatic, yowling lead vocalist who also wiggles out some theremin solos as Robbie Sawyer saws away at one vamping chord or else loops a ringtoney riff for an entire song. There’s a loose, Strokesy swagger to their music, but also a mechanical krautrock edge.

The first time I see Two-Man Giant Squid, they’re in this odd little hotel function room, which pops off more than perhaps any other set across the weekend. It’s practically empty when they take the stage, and by the time they close with “I Was a DJ in 2015” – a euphoric, unlikely love anthem that I’ve listened to 100 times since – everyone in the packed room is dancing, sweating, and grinning like they’ve just found their new favourite band.

In terms of international representation, though, it’s a colossal year for their northern neighbours in Canada. More than once, I hear Canada compared to Wales, given both nations live beside arrogant, outsized neighbouring countries. Pony Girl, an arty quintet from Ottawa, are so uncategorisable that all I write down is “one song sounds like Turnstile via Jamiroquai for people sitting in bean bags transfixed by lava lamps.” But none of the other tracks do: the band seamlessly weaves together autotune play, squelchy grooves, and clarinet snakecharming – and surely have the best drummer of the whole weekend in Mili Hong.

Along with Two-Man Giant Squid, SamWoy, and others, Pony Girl confirms that dance music + indie rock is in right now. But so is Canadiana (Canadian Americana). His His, out of Toronto and led by Aidan Belo, operate with a sunny-day slouch that manifests as lo-fi and midwest emo-leaning on record, but live, they have got some serious punch, wrestling the sweetest, scorched guitar tones and Kurt Vile-friendly licks of the weekend. Daniel James McFadyen smiles his way around funny, charming dispatches from love-in-the-time-of-Nova-Scotia, under a giant stuffed cow head in a too-narrow wood-panelled pub.

Kimmortal, a Queer Filipinx hiphopper and does-it-all artist from Vancouver, tells me how important it is for these Canadians to get their music over here. Like SamWoy, Kim Villagante sees that their work resonates with UK and EU audiences more than at home. But it’s not just that: “It’s so important for artists to travel and get out of their box and see how their music hits people in other cities,” Kim says, “or else I’m just going to be preaching to the choir.” With dynamic, catchy bars that stick with you hours after, they ask us to “stop business as usual, stop the genocide,” as well as careening through discussions of Filipino folklore, their ancestry, and weaponised patriarchy over warm, west-coast grooves.

We’re chatting in the cold after Kim’s fifth and final show. They tell me that they love how each one has been different, with a different highlight. The one that ended five minutes ago had a special moment: “I got everyone in a circle and I went to the floor and I rapped to every single person,” they tell me. “I’ll have every bar with someone new and I’m like, that bar was meant for you, that bar was meant for you. If I can make a live show experience very unique and different than just getting on stage and doing a song – if I can change it up – that’s the most enlightening. Not just for others but for myself.”

It’s Kim’s first time in the UK, as it is for many of these Canadian artists. They perform with a DJ who goes by Sherryaeri, a Berlin-based safer space promoter whose work centres on queer and BIPOC representation. I assume the two of them have been writing and performing together for years. They met in Berlin – two weeks ago.

“We planned my set on their kitchen table. And the next day we did a show,” Kim explains. “It’s unbelievable.” And the synergy doesn’t stop there: “I named the tour the Fire Sign Tour, and they’re a Saggitarius, like me. And they just quit their job to be a full-time musician, and I messaged them two days later to offer this job.”

There’s so much kismet around Kimmortal, whatever they do. Earlier today, they played the oldest pub in Wrexham – the Old No.7 Bar, established in 1380, says the lettering on the door. Three lads were up front losing their minds – in an encouraging, into-it way – following along with every one of Kim’s dance instructions like it was the last show on earth. “They were so earnest,” Kim says. “He was like, I’m a poet too! I think he forgot he was saying thank you because he said it about five times. I see the kid in adults and that’s what I like to bring out, because that’s the play that we lose as we get older. You have to keep connecting to that or else you die.”

At this point, we are very politely interrupted by the venue’s bouncer. He shuffles over with apologies. I think he’s going to tell us to clear off, but he wants to say hi to Kim. “I was actually sneaking through the door to listen to you,” he says. “I pretended to go to the toilets. I work on the door, you see.”

For me, this interaction is the perfect encapsulation of what’s possible at FOCUS Wales, the most engaging, nourishing showcase festival I’ve ever been to: you’ve got music so good that you’ll break the rules to catch a glimpse of it. You’ve got open, interested locals embracing and connecting with international artists they’d perhaps otherwise never meet. And most of all – from Kimmortal’s brilliant, breathless bars to Two-Man Giant Squid’s ebullient, fizzing singalongs – you’ve got countless reminders to play. To live. To get out there and do it. It’s so worth it.