More history / Moy a istori

Matthew Clarke moved back to Cornwall after getting a job with Pirate FM. He immediately was off to the PanCeltic in Tralee with a song "Ple'th esos Sen Pyran?". He performed this as a duo with Paul Trevenna. The song didn't do too well as it was a last minute entry. However, this inspired him to prepare something much better for the PanCeltic in the following year. He started to form a group he provisionally called 'Skwardya' (ripping). The musicians who turned up to the first practice were: Matthew Clarke; Tamsin Carter; Jonathan Carter; Sean Hooper; Chris 'Cadwur' James. However, this ended up with just Matthew, Chris and Sean taking the group forward.

Early 1999:

Chris brought his brother in law, Ian, in to play bass. By this point, Pirate FM had taken interest in sponsoring the PanCeltic by way of an on-air competition. For this reason, Matthew Clarke left the group, which Chris James then renamed as 'Spit'. 'Spit' went on to win the Cornish heats at Pirate FM with 'An Baner Anken', then journed to Ireland in April, however failing to win. Spit went on to become the now defunct 'Ahanan'.

Summer 1999:

Alan Pengelly came over to Illogan for a recording session to add accordion to 'Sort out your mind'. It was during this session that it was decided to be a good idea to start up a band. Adverts went out for members, and by the end of the summer, we had Brian Simmons on drums, Daniel Edwards on guitar, and Gary Stevens on bass.

October 1999:

We played our first gig at Lowender Peran, however without Brian, as he caused himself an injury lifting the drum kit just before hand. Our roady, Jim, filled in on drums for this gig, and my mate Chris 'the taxi' Terry joined us on vocals for one song.

2000:

We played gigs at places like 'The Railway' in Pool, Royal Cornwall Museum, Lowender Peran again, Cornish Language Weekend in Sennen, Celtic Congress in Bude etc etc. We also release an ad-hoc CD on a very very limited basis called 'Dalleth an Hwedhel'.

2001:

Once more we played the Cornish Language weekend; and Celtic Congress at Redruth rugby club (Dave Miller playing bass with us for first time). However it all fizzled away.

2002:

Things kicked off again when Westcountry TV were doing a piece on the Cornish language and contacted Matthew Clarke to do a song. We therefore set up an impromptu Skwardya gig in the Portreath Arms where we were filmed. Brian was on drums, Daniel was on guitar, Dave was on bass, and Matthew on vocals and guitar. From here Dave moved to lead guitar and Alan onto bass, Daniel went off into the wilderness. We performed more gigs including the first Dehwelans at Falmouth.

Summer 2002:

The biggest gig for us was the Perranporth Music Day on a huge stage on the seafront. However, the day beforehand, Alan Pengelly's dad phoned to say Alan couldn't make the gig as Asterveryn had made an error in a booking. Alan was promptly sacked from the band, and Skwardya went on as a trio.

October 2002:

We thereafter gained Simon Glanville on keyboards and Brian Curtis on bass for our final gig at Hayle School (language college). Some songs from this gig are on the 'listen' page.

November 2002:

Matthew Clarke moves to south east Cornwall as he had moved to Pirate FM's Plymouth office. He set up the band Krena at this stage, but continued to return to West Cornwall to record with Dave Miller and Brian Simmons. They eventually release Skwardya's first CD 'Ottani'.

June 2004:

Matthew Clarke returns to live in West Cornwall.

2005:

Skwardya release second CD 'Arta', meanwhile Top Of The Hill release a Skwardya compilation called 'Some say the Devil's dead..."

2006:

The BBC discovered that Dave and Matthew were playing around with Beatles songs Matt translated into Cornish. Tiffany Truscott played two of them a few times on Cornwall Connected on BBC Radio Cornwall. Bob McCreadie played one of them too. Then the rest of the world learnt about this on 12th October 2006. 

Coverage: BBC Breakfast News (9am); BBC Spotlight; Westcountry News; Pirate FM; BBC2 Newsnight; Newstalk Ireland; BBC Three Counties; BBC Radio Devon & Cornwall John Govier Show; Eurolang; Gigwise.com; Yahoo Entertainment News; Ananova.com; Metro Newspapers; theregister.co.uk; The Sun Online; playlouder.com; The Australian Newspaper; Western Morning News (Friday 13th & Monday 16th); The Bay Student Radio in Wales (16th Oct); BBC Radio 2 ( Steve Wright mentions us in a 'factoid'); MSN.com homepage has a story about us in their 'Hot Topics' 

2007:

Chris Cadwur James dies in a road accident in Scotland in January. He will be sadly missed. Skwardya launch 'An Eledhva'. This is our third CD and it is dedicated to the memory of Chris, as it has several tracks featuring him playing the violin.We perform a gig at the Cornish Language Weekend at Perran Sands to mark the launch of the CD. August sees us on stage at the main concert for the Celtic Congress at Tremough (see picture below). August also sees Simon add vocals on some more tracks. This is the first work he has done with us in five years... and it looks like his part in Skwardya will be more permanent now.

Designed by Matthew Clarke 2005