Meic Stevens

A legend within his native Wales yet largely unrecognized farther afield, Meic Stevens owes that relative obscurity mainly to his steadfast commitment to performing in Welsh. This psych-folk singer and guitarist is routinely called the '60s Welsh psych-Dylan and likened to fellow cosmic voyagers such as Syd Barrett. In 1965, DJ Jimmy Saville spotted the Solva native from Wales's West Coast at the Manchester University folk club, leading directly to Stevens's debut single for Decca Records, produced that same year by John Paul Jones, later of Led Zeppelin. He spent the remainder of the decade gigging throughout Britain and Wales, sitting in on sessions and declining a five-album, five-year Warner Bros. contract in 1970—the label had envisioned him as the Welsh Van Morrison—so he could devote himself to recordings in his own language. His 1970 album Outlander, graced by sitar and tablas from Magic Carpet's Keshav Sathe, is now prized by psych-folk collectors for its rarity, as are most of his other releases.

He continued issuing material on small labels through the rest of the 1970s while supporting other Welsh musicians. In 1978 he joined the short-lived subversive folk trio Y Bara Menyn with fiddle player Siân Phillips and vocalist Heather Jones, and he has also led his own ensembles whose membership shifted over time. (The Shevells, who backed him under the name Mike Stevens, are likewise known as the Welsh Conquerors.) The 1992 best-of collection Dim Ond Cysgodion focused chiefly on the Welsh-language tracks he recorded between 1971 and 1992. In addition to the numerous EPs released throughout his career, his songs have turned up on various-artists anthologies, among them two successive volumes of Electric Psychedelic Sitar Headswirlers. He appeared in Mojo magazine's Top 100 Cult Heroes. Super Furry Animals, longtime admirers, issued their own all-Welsh album Mwng in 2000 and have performed his "Y Brawd Houdini" (aka "Houdini's Brother"), though their version has yet to surface on any of their own releases. Stevens remains active on Welsh stages, where he is regarded as a national hero. The 2001 compilation Y Baledl drew from three decades of recordings, spanning his early 1960s classics to more recent work. Sunbeam reissued two volumes of his EPs in 2006—Rain in the Leaves: The EPs, Vol. 1 and Sackcloth & Ashes: The EPs, Vol. 2—while he unveiled the new-material set Icarws/Icarus in 2007.