Wheatsheaf Gig 19/04/08

18/04/2008 12:25:47 By Sebastiaan

We make a return to the magnificent drinking and entertainment establishment, The Wheatsheaf, this coming Saturday. It's in a little village at the foot of a hill just outside Pontypool town, easy to find if you have one of those soul-destroying navigational devices in your motorised wheelchair, even easier to find if you have a map and half a brain. Jon is the enigmatic landlord there who's never quite recovered from having to pay Rhiannon a couple of hundred pounds for guessing the correct number on his balls, the night she called in to enquire about playing there. Give Jon a call +44(0)1495755561 and tell him that having Ridinghood play his joint is the best thing he's ever done. It'll take the sting out of the whole jammy winnings thing. Last time we played we were warmly welcomed and appreciated, especially by the resident band that play there every Sunday. Their trump card is the unfathomably young musical talent Rhydian. Ignore the bit about the valleys being a wasteland: he is such a beer-guzzling Romantic. In fact the valleys are a place of awe-inspiring beauty and wonderfully weird mythology. Pontypool's own mythology stems from the name of the town, Pont-y-pwl, believed to be a corruption of Pont-ap-Hywel ("Howel's son's bridge"). The legend tells that David ap Howel was a stout, strong, broad shouldered parson, both "fond of a bottle and fond of a song" but well able to take care of himself. After supper one night David went down to the river and met the Devil himself; an argument followed as to who should build a bridge across the water, and it was agreed that they should join hands for a tug-of-war, and whichever should be pulled across the stream, should build the bridge. After many a pull and heave the Devil at last gave up, and the next morning the villages beheld a newly built bridge of good mortar and stone. Going head-to-head with the devil that is modern music, we will be playing an extensive set and trying out some of the new material we're currently recording, in a tug-of-war where the prize is to bridge the gap between our music and the hearts and minds of the good people of Pontypool.