Songwriting with fire and a social conscience

For just two people on stage, Geoff Cripps and Wynford Jones make a big sound. Ahead of their upcoming gig in Maesteg, Jenny White profiles the powerful duo who are also founding members of the seminal Welsh folk rock band The Chartists

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FOUNDING members of Welsh band The Chartists Geoff Cripps and Wynford Jones are playing at Maesteg Town Hall next Friday following an outstanding gig at Parc and Dare Theatre on October 2.

The pair started gigging together again a few years ago, resulting in the reunion of The Chartists and the release of their album Live at BGFM Nantyglo in February 2024.

The Chartists originally formed in the 1970s after their local MP Neil Kinnock asked members of Islwyn Folk Club to take part in a commemoration of the 1839 Newport Rising.

Geoff Cripps, the club's organiser, had discovered folk music almost by accident after he returned to Newport following his studies at Swansea University.

He had started at the Newbridge Folk Club, which then moved to the Ynysddu Hotel and became Islwyn Folk Club - a vibrant club that set up a festival in the late '70s.

"We were causing a little bit of a stir in the late '70s, and that's why our MP, who had started to commemorate the Chartist uprising and to hold what he called Chartist rallies to commemorate the fact that that fight for democratic rights was really important in our local history, asked us in the folk club if we could do something to be part of a commemoration event," Geoff recalls.

From this came the idea for members of the folk group to write some new songs about the Chartists. They met at Geoff's house to discuss the history of the uprising and identify topics and stories that might make a good song. In the end it was Wynford who wrote most of the material and a full-on gigging folk-rock band, The Chartists, was the unexpected result.

The band started performing at folk festivals, and a few years after forming, their first album, The Chartists, was released.

The fact that the album got made at all is a miracle. Although the band had been courted by a number of folk labels, every avenue closed down, forcing them to consider self-funding the release.