Town ready to rock as pubs prepare for first music festival
A NEW music festival takes place in Neath this weekend with several pubs and bars hosting local bands.
The countdown is on for the Neath Pub Rock Festival, which is the first of its kind in the town, and runs from tomorrow until Sunday across almost a dozen pubs.
Some of the bands featured in the line-up include South Wales’s biggest cover bands with the likes of The Hat and The Fiddle Band, Smooth Operator and The Polar Berries.
Neath has a vibrant live music scene, so pubs decided to come together to celebrate this and serve up a weekend of music like the town has never seen before.
More than 40 live bands will perform across the pubs with free entry to all of them.
Organiser Jack Tomlinson, who runs one of the venues taking part at The Arch Bar and Nightclub, said: “There’s a real buzz in the town about the festival and people are looking forward to it, I’m sure it will be a success.
“We all started talking about putting a festival on about a year ago and it’s grown from there.
“After the Covid lockdowns the pubs wanted to come together and plan something and that’s how the festival idea started. We have been booking bands for months and there will be a mix of cover bands and those playing original material.”
For fans of live music it is hoped the festival will be the first of many.
Jack added: “The plan is to hold the festival every year after this one.
“I think people will really enjoy it and we are looking forward to welcoming people over the weekend.
“Bands will be starting at 6pm on Friday and then from 2pm on Saturday and Sunday.”
Venues hosting live music across the weekend are: The Ambassador Hotel The Greyhound The Arch Bar and Nightclub
Merlins The Castle Hotel The Castell-nedd Arms Ten21 Allan Leonard Lewis VC (the former Con Club) The Cross Keys The Bear Inn The Duke
Details on venues and band times across the festival can be found on the Neath Pub Rock Festival Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ Neathrocks
There’s a real buzz in the town about the festival and people are looking forward to it, I’m sure it will be a success Organiser Jack Tomlinson
COMMUNITY is important to me: it’s why I got involved in politics in the first place. Our communities are the bedrock of society, and Wales is a community of communities.
The sense of social solidarity that our communities provide can be lifeaffirming, with bonds of family and friendship acting as a bridge between our sense of self and wherever it is we may call home. By looking out for our neighbours, by getting involved in community groups and through the strength of our common purpose, we can achieve great things.
However, years of cuts and decades of under-investment by Westminster have contributed to the decline of many of our communities. But even when they are at their weakest, our communities step in wherever and whenever Westminster governments have failed us, with foodbank volunteers for example working tirelessly to provide food for families.
Those who get involved in our communities, be that through volunteering to help others or by making our streets lively, social places by running small, local businesses, form the backbone of our communities. The type of businesses that keep our town centres and high streets going are often family-run businesses who care deeply about their local areas. Unfortunately, the latest figures show that small, family-run businesses in our town centres are struggling. And when they struggle, so do our communities.
When people were asked what they would like to see in their local town centre or high street, ‘thriving small and independent shops’ came out on top in a survey conducted by the Federation of Small Businesses for its recent report ‘A Vision for Welsh Towns’.
Even before Covid, town centres in our region – like Neath, Swansea and Bridgend – were struggling and the pandemic has had an especially negative effect on small and family-run high street retail businesses. The support given to these local businesses during the pandemic has of course helped them weather that particular storm, but now although restrictions are easing, footfall is still low and the bills are now piling up.
That’s why I have called on the Welsh Government to increase rates relief for town centre locally-owned retail businesses and accelerate the work of making business rates fairer. It’s something the Federation of Small Businesses are also calling for, and would help keep local people in work and keep money circulating in our local economy.
Working together to revitalise our town centres is absolutely crucial if we are to protect our communities not only from the effects of the pandemic, but also from the long-term decline which must be better addressed at all levels of government.