Carys

Carys discovered at the age of sixteen that the only thing she really wanted to do with her life was sing. Twenty (plus!) years on, she still hasn’t changed her mind. She’s a classically-trained singer from Suffolk who first discovered the delights of folk music around a dozen years ago. At that time she was playing Frida in an Abba tribute band, an experience cut tragically short when the rest of the band moved to South Wales and forgot to tell her. Several years in local duo ‘Shades’ followed, along with various parts in musical theatre, though somewhere along the line she realised that it was far more fun to follow her own inspiration rather than just sing what was popular. Shortly thereafter she discovered that writing songs wasn’t really that scary, and she has been doing it ever since, taking her inspiration from local legends or interesting random moments that occur out of nowhere. In May 2012 Carys auditioned for David Wright, who was looking for a vocalist for concert and possible recording work. The first concert, on 9th June, did not go off entirely without a hitch but it sowed the seed for pretty much everything that has happened since. In November 2012 her song “An Honest Man” was featured in “The Story Behind The Song” on FolkCast, one of the largest European folk podcasts. She spent much of 2013 concentrating on live performance, including Folk at the Boat in Ipswich and the ‘Flaming June’ buskers stage at Folkstock. 2013 culminated with the release of her festive single “At the Turn of the Year”; the video of which can be found on her youtube channel. 2014 saw Carys’s first official appearance on CD, singing on the Code Indigo album “Take the Money and Run”. During this year she also joined the tribute band “Lightwish” and began making plans for Celandine’s debut CD. The following year was her busiest so far. Along with David Wright and Robert Fox she co-wrote and performed vocals for “Dreaming Desire”. The track, subtitled “A Symphony for Synth and Voice” appears on David’s 2015 album “Beyond the Airwaves Volume Two”. Later that year Celandine launched their album “She’s Like the Swallow” at the Soapbox stage at FolkEast. They also appeared live on Felixstowe and West Norfolk radio. During 2016 David Wright and Carys began working on a track which got longer…and longer! What started as a 15 minute piece grew into an entire album, and thus “Prophecy” came into being. The same year saw Lightwish shows in Grantham and Gravesend, and Celandine again playing live on Felixstowe radio. David Wright and Carys released “Prophecy” in March 2017. Since then they have performed music from the album in the UK, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands. As the year draws to a close, work is well underway on Carys’s solo album, a probable final Code Indigo album, and more… When Carys is not singing she designs and makes her own costumes, writes things or sleeps. For four years she took part in National Novel Writing Month, resulting in three unpublished novels and one self-indulgent unpublishable sequel (to John Wyndham’s “The Chrysalids”). Sadly, after the initial writing she convinces herself that it’s all terrible and has thus far completely failed at editing. She has a degree in Biology and Earth Sciences from the Open University because it was really good fun to play with microscopes and fossils. In her spare time she has a cat, a dog and a day job.