Promoters team up to breathe new life into city’s live music scene
FOR years now, Swansea’s live music scene has been somewhat pale in colour compared with bigger cities like Cardiff and Bristol.
While some of us have been lucky enough to watch our favourite band or artist playing in Singleton Park or the Liberty Stadium at some point, we all know that these gigs are incredibly rare.
Most of us Swansea folk will know by now that if we want to watch a decent gig, the best we can hope for is that the tour schedule will have a Cardiff date – if we’re lucky – and to go, we will need drop a wad of cash on train tickets, hotel rooms and various other costs.
Well, despair not, Swansea music-lovers, because good things are coming.
Over the past few years, there have been some badly needed and muchwelcomed rumblings in our live music scene.
With Swansea Arena soon opening, and with beloved local venues like Sin City, Bunkhouse and Hangar 18 holding the torch as local venues, Swansea’s live music scene is making a slow but steady revival, and there are two young men working particularly hard to pull the right strings.
Dan Galloway, 31, and Will Sheldon, 28, are music promoters based in Swansea who have thrown everything they have into helping regenerate the local live music scene by co-founding a booking company called IBA.
Dan said: “IBA stands for Independent Booking Alliance.
“I met Will, a fellow promoter, a few years ago and we soon realised we wanted the same thing in Swansea – we both wanted more live music in Swansea, to help grassroots bands develop, as well as bringing established UK bands to Swansea. We decided we were better together and not against each other.
“IBA is different to other companies such as Live Nation or Kilimanjaro because we are fully independent. We have no financial backing from any form of investors like Depot or MJR.
“Any show we run, we risk our own finances. We do it for the love of music and wanting to improve the city.”
Dan promoted his first gig, the multiplatinum-selling rock band Puddle of Mudd, back in 2016, and since then he and Will have booked many sold-out events including Wolf Alice, Scouting for Girls and The Snuts.
Reflecting on the gig by Wolf Alice, one of the biggest bands to play in Sin City, Dan said: “We are incredibly proud of the Wolf Alice gig, as they’re a huge band which could have sold out Swansea Arena twice over.
“Tickets sold out in 46 seconds and it crashed all websites. Tickets were being resold for £100-plus, but we put a stop to this. For this gig, we had funding from the Music Venue Trust (MVT) and the National Lottery Fund, which fully funded Wolf Alice’s fee, enabling us to bring them Sin City.”
While things are looking promising for Dan and Will at IBA, the road has been far from smooth – particularly when the Government released its infamous campaign to get those in creative industries
to retrain into new roles such as cyber and tech.
Will Sheldon said: “It was hard enough with 18 months of no live music, and we questioned every day whether it would ever return. Live music is a safe space for all, events and the nightlife industry give everyone that escape and release they need to enjoy and let loose.
“The Government actively put out campaigns throughout the pandemic encouraging anyone in our sector to retrain and look for other work, which was incredibly deflating.”
On the same note, Dan added: “I nearly just stopped all things music and walked away completely.
“Will took on a job cleaning in B&Q and I started doing a business management degree at the age of 30, and I still work part-time at Limitless.
“Live music in Swansea was left in the dark for so long – much longer than any other businesses (apart from nightclubs), and the city is always overshadowed by Cardiff and Bristol. It’s our aim to put Swansea back on the music map.
“Having three sell-out shows in a row, and working with some of the biggest UK music agents and artists, we are turning heads and filling venues. Swansea has embraced live music after lockdown and the shows selling out prove that it’s needed here.”
Looking forward, Dan said: “We would love to do show in Singleton Park – possibly a small festival or even just a headline show.
“Anything we do, we always try and put it in Swansea first. This is where we want live music and Singleton Park is in the heart of Swansea. We have also had talks with Atg/swansea Arena, so hopefully we’ll put a show in there very soon too.
“I’m a local Swansea boy and can’t ever see myself leaving full-time. I honestly love it here.”
Will added: “Our goal at IBA is simple really – it’s to give the people what they want, more shows, and more music. We aim to actively encourage the larger known touring acts and booking agents to consider Swansea, which is Wales’ second-largest city that is often overlooked when planning tours and schedules.
“Our city’s music scene thrives and has the demand. Local support has been incredible, our first three events of the year once lockdown lifted entirely sold out – we can’t really ask for any more support or demand than that.”