About this Event
Mal Pope
Mal Pope is a Welsh musician and composer, who is notable for his contribution to music theatre portraying Welsh national identities and themes. As a gifted singer and songwriter at a young age, he learnt to play the guitar at the age of seven, when his brother David bought him the instrument.
At school, Mal was encouraged by Peter Williams, a bongo playing young teacher to play his songs in front of the school at the drop of a hat. Band practises consisted of a couple of kids and the teacher sitting down to learn the latest songs by Ralph McTell or the Beatles. By the time he reached the age of 13, Mal's songwriting and musical skills attracted Elton John, who signed him to his Rocket Record label.
Unfortunately for Mal, disputes with record companies led him to release only one single before quitting the label to study Land Economy at Cambridge University. After university, Mal joined BBC Radio Wales as a producer and later got into singing the themes tunes for children's TV programmes such as Fireman Sam and SuperTed. He also had his own chat show on ITV's Wales regional channel HTV and tried to represent Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1987, but got placed seventh in A Song For Europe.
Mal still continues producing albums and recently has got involved in writing musicals for theatres.
Steve Balsamo
Born and raised in Swansea, Steve started out singing in rock bands as a teenager before I came to the public's attention in the mid '90s by way of a beard, long hair and a loincloth... this will make sense in context!
Signing to Columbia Records soon after the messiah complex wore off, he was molded into a poppy/rocky/folky/country-ish artist - nothing like covering all the bases - and made an album, All I Am. Despite the musical schizophrenia, he had a ton of fun travelling the world and writing lots of songs, and even got to play live on Top Of The Pops. Then, along with 3 mates, he formed a country rock band called The Storys, made 3 albums and toured the globe with the great and the good.
He is also part of an ongoing prog/electronica project with Rob Reed of Magenta called chimpanA. The first album upset Q Magazine so much that they declared it was 'drowning in a sea of pretentiousness' but that's very much a matter of opinion!
In between these adventures he got to write songs for lots of artists including Meatloaf, Slash, and Cliff Richard, worked with heroes Jon Lord of Deep Purple, Eric Woolfson of The Alan Parsons Project, and even gave a singing lesson to Robert Plant.
Over the last few years he has been recording a collection of old, new, borrowed and blue songs for a series of 4 EPs. Described as "country/Americana tinged tracks of mature AOR influenced music" (thanks Lyric Magazine), he intends to use the EPs as a place to musically reflect on where he's been, see where he's at, and get a loose direction as to where he's going.
Words feature very heavily in this genre and he's enjoying wrestling lyrics to the mat, trying to really get inside the songs, digging deep to soul mine my truth right now, and is probably the happiest musically he's ever been!
While the world ground to a halt during the pandemic, his old Storys compadre Andy Collins and ace Liverpudlian song-smith Pete Riley got together every week on Zoom to put the world to rights. The Monday lunchtime sessions turned in songwriting jams, and quickly turned into a bunch of sweet tunes.
They decided to commit the songs to tape and Balsamo Collins Riley was born, and their second EP will be released this year, as well as Chimpan A Album 3.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Elysium Gallery & Bar, 210 High Street, Swansea, United Kingdom
GBP 10.00
