The Green Man Podcast

From 1981 for almost 20 years, Greenham Common became home to thousands of women acting in political resistance to the nuclear arms race, to patriarchy and violence in all its forms and to the claiming of British common land to store US missiles.  Greenham Women Everywhere is a project focused on collating and preserving the stories from these protests, creating an archive and asking, how can the legacy of Greenham Common inspire the next generation of activists and give us hope for the future? Rebecca Morden from the project talks to peace campaigner Sue Say and singer Frankie Armstrong about their Greenham memories. 

Melin Melyn and their uplifting blend of psychedelia, alternative-rock, folk and surf music, promise a splendidly jangling affair. Now with a debut EP under their belts, the Cymru six-piece have had memorable sets at Green Man each of the last three years; and with Huw Stephens amongst their loyal-fanbase, it’s safe to say that Melin Melyn’s rise is a continuously rapid one. Gruff from the band chats with Rozi Plain. 

Carefree vocals and jovial complexities swirl together via a hand-made electric-guitar, as Rozi Plain returns with a new series of intimate alternative-folk. Collaborating with Kate Stables of This is the Kit and jazz icon Alabaster DePlume on 'Agreeing for Two', off her fourth record 'PRIZE', Rozi Plain's world is woozy, expansive, and subtly jazzy.

Why do we dance together? What does dancing tell us about ourselves, individually and collectively? And what can it do for us? Whether it be at home, ’80s club nights, Irish dance halls or reggae dances, jungle raves or volunteer-run spaces and youth centres, Emma Warren has sought the answers to these questions her entire life. 

Dancing doesn’t just refract the music and culture within which it evolves; it also generates new music and culture. When we speak only of the music, we lose part of the story – the part that finds us dancing as children on the toes of adults; the half that triggers communication across borders and languages; the part that finds us worried that we’ll never be able to dance again, and the part that finds us wondering why we were ever nervous in the first place. 

Recorded live at Green Man's Talking Shop, Emma Warren chats to Richard King about her new book Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through The Dancefloor.  At the intersection of memoir and social and cultural history, the book is an intimate foray onto the dancefloor – wherever and whenever it may be – that speaks to the heart of what it is that makes us move. 

Emma Warren has been documenting grassroots music culture for decades. She is the author of Make Some Space: Tuning Into Total Refreshment Centre (2019), which was a MOJO book of the year and was re-released by Chicago record label International Anthem; her pamphlet Steam Down: Or How Things Begin (2019), which was published by Rough Trade Books was named an Irish Times read of the year; and she published Document Your Culture: A Manual (2020). Warren was a founding contributor to Jockey Slut magazine, worked on staff at The Face and worked as the editorial mentor at youth-run Brixton publication Live Magazine. Her monthly radio show on Worldwide FM ran for six years. Dance Your Way Home is Emma’s most recent book, published to wide critical-acclaim by Faber in 2023. 

Renowned for her captivating genre-hopping, and collaborations with Andrew Weatherall and The Chemical Brothers, Beth Orton is a timeless master of electronic ambience, and contemporary folk exploration. Full of messy narratives and all-encompassing songwriting, Orton’s eighth studio album ‘Weather Alive’ is a beast of its own perception; one which effortlessly depicts the highs and lows of a career spanning nearly thirty-years, that shows no signs of slowing down. Beth chats to author, journalist, DJ and long-time friend of the Green Man, Pete Paphides, following her set on the Mountain stage.

Hiut Denim make jeans in Cardigan, West Wales. Their motto is "Do One Thing Well". Sara Ladd from Hiut chats to Emma Jones from the University of South Wales about the sustainable fashion workshops taking place in Einstein's Garden.

Finally hear a Cinedrome Q&A as directors Josh Appignanesi and Devorah Baum chat to Jason Solomons about their film 'My Extinction', exploring themes of climate activism and personal action.

Green Man Rising winners Eve Appleton Band chat to Pete Brown, and you can hear Pete's long-running show where he matches the Beers to the Bands, recorded at the Talking Shop. Finally, Nature Nurture’s Joshua chats to Joey from the Bristol Fungarium.

Steeped in the waters, woods, and hills of West Dorset, Eve Appleton is a self-described “poet of modern progressive folk music”. From betrayed lovers to tragic heroines, her storytelling songs come to life with a full band, turning out echoes of sixties folk, Americana, and alt-folk, and a spirit of camaraderie. 

Pete Brown is an award-winning writer of beer and pubs who has always been obsessed with music. For ten years, he has been uniting his twin passions at Green Man on the Talking Shop stage. He can remember when it was all fields round here. His latest book, Clubland, was BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week in January and is out now. 

Soothe your soul and the soles of your feet in Nature Nurture, our tranquil nook offering a dreamy dose of rejuvenation. Cocooned in a cluster of oak trees, this is our blissful antidote to late nights, weary limbs, and dancing-induced aches. Refresh your body and untangle your brain with organic and natural remedies, from yoga, restorative massages, meditation and workshops, to slightly more unusual tonics. Loosen up, slow down, and let Nature Nurture float you away…

The Comet Is Coming's synth guru Danalogue chats to Pictish Trail.

Combining the orchestral powers of members Danalogue, Betamax, and Shabaka, The Comet is Coming take us on their most astronomical jazz-voyage to date with their latest gift ‘Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam’. An alchemic deep-dive into saxophone-forces beyond the third eye, in the company of the cosmic trio there’s never a dull moment. Their Friday night Mountain Stage set surely opened a vortex into another dimension entirely. Were you there to witness what will be one of their final live performances? 

Johnny Lynch of Pictish Trail fame is something of a Green Man mainstay. Ten years ago, on the Hebridean Isle of Eigg, he launched his label Lost Map, home to a merry band of genre-fluid artists fuelled by a spirit of adventure and artistic exploration. Earlier this year many of these musicians — including Tuff Love, L.T. Leif, Savage Mansion, Kid Canaveral and Eagleowl — spent a week on Eigg recording a collective album to celebrate Lost Map’s special birthday. They emerged with seven songs that embrace “indignantly erotic post-folk chaos”, from electronic psych-pop to post-punk, dream folk to wild krautrock odysseys. The result is Lost Map Presents Weird Wave, who blew the socks off Far Out Thursday night. 

Legendary punk-icon and one of the founding members of seminal group The Raincoats, Gina Birch continues her creative-legacy with her first solo album, ‘I Play My Bass Loud’. In a career spanning over four decades, her work formed the foundation of the larger riot grrrl movement and saw her unwittingly become a feminist icon. 

Backstage at Far Out, Gina meets newcomer Eaves Wilder. She’s been writing songs since she was eight years old, graduating to what she describes as a “hyper-femme, fuzzy dream rock” sound. Eaves Wilder released her debut EP Hookey — a title inspired by bunking off school — earlier this year, taking in the riotous energy of Courtney Love and Kathleen Hanna, 90s shoegaze, and her own rapidly blossoming style. 

Welsh football legend George Berry talks to Cinedrome curator Jason Solomons about his experiences as one of Wales’ first black players, as documented in his new film The Dragon on my Shirt. 

Astrid, Jasmin, Samson, Kai and Shell, aka the ‘Kidscast’ crew, meet the creators of Frogs In Bogs, the all-singing all-dancing show about superhero frog plumbers, performed daily in Little Folk.

“The living version of a song for me is only ever the live one”

Few do twisted-break beats quite as cinematically as clipping. With a Hugo Award nomination for ‘Best Dramatic Presentation’ under their belts, the West Coast experimental hip-hop trio subvert all expectations with their pioneering hybrid of conceptual artistry, and midnight-beats. The group consists of rapper Daveed Diggs and producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes.

They chat to London’s Bob Vylan, a duo who observe modern-day insanities with an attentive ear for societal injustice. Formed of singer/guitarist Bobby Vylan and drummer Bobbie Vylan, the pair specialise in heavyweight commentary with plenty of magnetism to boot. This is community first, followed by “pizza with a side of misery.” 

Counting BBC Radio 6 Music presenter Mark Riley amongst their loyal fanbase, Caldicot, South Wales newcomers The Bug Club continue to win hearts with their playful garage-rock frenzies. They chat with Henry Widdicombe, curator of GM’s Last Laugh comedy tent. 

And hear from Seren, the first of our teen roving reporters from the Somewhere field.

In this trio of backstage conversations, Warmduscher meet their heroes Devo, Sans Soucis picks the brains of Amy True, and Rogue Jones catch up with The Gentle Good. 

“I was thinking of giving away free courgettes with every CD…”

The Gentle Good is Welsh multi-instrumentalist, and multi-linguist Gareth Bonello. Inspired by classic Welsh and English folklore, Bonello’s heart-stirring approach to acoustic guitar is a beautifully timeless delight. 

It’s been 7 years since the last album from Carmarthenshire's Rogue Jones — a wait explained by the title of the follow-up: Dos Bebés. The husband and wife duo have been busy starting a family alongside making music, but their experimental spirit remains as strong as ever, and their show covers witches, aliens, computers, the natural world, Welsh independence, Danish cinema, and 1970s orchestral disco. 

Forward thinking, British Born, Irish/Ugandan Poet and Songwriter Amy True has been delivering her unique fusion of politicised hip hop, jazz and soul since 2011. A true wordsmith, Amy’s steady stream of conscious, iconoclastic verse sits in visceral harmony amongst soulful melodic hooks and rich jazz motifs as she punches out poetry with unapologetic flare. Amy chats to rising star Sans Soucis. 

Raised on a diet of legends - from Madonna to Celine Dion, Whitney Houston to Luciano Pavarotti, Congolese-Italian soul-pop artist Sans Soucis (Giulia Grispino) is one to watch out for. Much like their namesake, which translates to “without worry”, Sans Soucis' vocals hark back to the invigorating hopefulness of childhood, and the blissed-out escapism we lose as we grow up. 

Warmduscher hail from South London via some seedy underbelly of the mind. Sexy, scuzzy, and gloriously untameable, their signature cowboy-punk aesthetic is genius; filthy bass-lines, slinky synths, and hedonistic mayhem from Clams Baker and his band of rhythmic-reprobates. The disco-sleaze connoisseurs meet their heroes, Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale from Devo. 

70’s icons DEVO combine new-wave with idiosyncratic humour and revolutionary electronic- mastery, to create something wholly one-of-a-kind. Relentlessly danceable, DEVO captured an entire shift in mainstream pop-culture, all through the power of jagged guitars, spoken word, and plucky no-nonsense percussion. Weird, loveable, and distinctly DEVO, you can’t help but get on board. 

Look out for new episodes of the Green Man Podcast on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Pictish Trail, Nuha Ruby Ra, Esyllt Sears, Melin Melyn, Pete Paphides and Caitlin Moran look ahead to Green Man 2023.