’PHONICS REVEAL DATE AT CITY STADIUM
STEREOPHONICS have announced two huge homecoming gigs in Wales next summer.
The Cwmaman chart-toppers have revealed that they’ll perform at Wrexham Racecourse on Saturday, June 2 and Cardiff City Stadium on Saturday, June 9.
The dates round off what’s shaping up to be a busy time for the fourpiece, with two shows at Cardiff’s Motorpoint Arena already scheduled for March 2018 as part of a 15-date UK tour.
The band will also be appearing in the capital tonight as they play a charity gig at Cardiff University Great Hall in aid of disadvantaged children’s charity Global’s Make Some Noise.
The group, led by singer Kelly Jones have also just released a new album called Scream Above The Sounds, their 10th in 20 years.
The ’ Phonics first played Cardiff City Stadium back in 2010 and revisited to perform in front of a sell-out audience last year.
Kelly said: “We always like to put on these outdoor ones as they tend to have a real celebratory feel about them.
“Plus, it’s great seeing fans who’ve been with us since the first album now coming along with their own kids in tow.
“It’s real jab in the arm for us because it means we’ve always got to push ourselves, to grow and carry on making good music.”
The 43-year-old dad of three recalls the importance of playing at home for the band was something that had been with him since childhood.
“Going to see big bands was a real rite of passage when we were younger because most of them wouldn’t come as far as Wales, we’d have to trek to places like Birmingham NEC instead,” he says, adding that his father would often drive he and his friends the long journey to watch the likes fo AC/DC and The Scorpions.
“The one major exception, however, was The Rolling Stones at the Arms Park in Cardiff in 1990.
“My mother was working in the village shoe shop and I was weeding the garden out the back for pocket money when my brother and his mates turned up in a mini-bus with a spare ticket for the gig.
“I remember getting there, buying a bootleg T-shirt for a tenner and making my way to the front.
“The stage looked the size of Snowdonia or something and Jagger was hilarious – he’d be name-checking all sort of random Welsh places names in that voice of his: ‘Ere, Swansea... Merthyr Tydfil!’ It was bizarre.
“Even more surreal though was the fact that, some 13 years later, we’d be opening for them on tour in Europe.”
Stereophonics play Cardiff City Stadium on Saturday June 9.
Tickets go on sale on Monday at 10am via www.stereophonics.com and www.myticket.co.uk