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Blog

Darren Parry on The Pure Local Extra Show

9 September 2024 139 3

Photo of our Kym and amber with singer Darren Parry

On the 7th of September, the Pure Local Extra show at Newport City Radio had local musician Darren Parry on to talk about his most recent work and upcoming projects.

This was not the first time that Darren had been interviewed for the show, he had previously been on a year ago with Dani and another guest, Paul James. Since it had been so long, he had many more new things to discuss, this time with Kym hosting the interview and Amber sat to the side listening in and making notes for this article. The main focus discussed was ‘The Grand Cru’, a charity musical project with fellow musicians Lee Gilbert and Steve Balsamo.

On the show, we listened to ‘Soar’, a song written and produced by Darren and performed by Lee. As mentioned by Darren, writing songs for other people is a common occurrence. Sometimes he gets approached by others (which I will talk about later) and other times he just writes the song for himself but decides that it isn’t really for him so he passes it on to someone he thinks suits the song.

Darren is also a part of Black Mountain Voices choir and has been so for around 20 years. He saw an advert in the paper one day which wanted more members in the choir for a tour of the USA. He joined the choir and went on a 3 month tour all around the states, singing Welsh hymns among other songs.

Darren has won many awards for his talents in music-making. He spoke about some of the awards he has won. In 2004 he won the UK songwriting contest with the song ‘Reality’. He beat over 6000 entries. He was also the runner up for the US song of the year in both 2014 and 2016. He won the international singer songwriter award as well as many more.

Now, onto The Grand Cru. The group came to be after Lee attended a wedding in Florida and met Bonnie Skop. The two kept in contact and eventually Bonnie asked Lee if he wanted to write a song for a film. He didn’t really write songs but told her that he knew people who did, Darren and Steve. He asked them and songs for the film started production. Unfortunately, plans for the film fell through and it was never made, although some of the songs that were finished were released as singles.

More recently, The American National Guard approached Bonnie and asked her if she was interested in writing an album to raise money for the American National Guard. She agreed to the project. Calling it the “Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States”. One song from the album, “I was there” is going to be played at a remembrance gala for the remembrance of the 9/11 attacks. Alongside the song, a video will be played.

The album can be bought on www.toasttohumanity.com and all money made goes directly to the charity involved.

Find out more about Darren’s music at www.darrenparry.com