Joe Kelly and Shiftypop on Pure Local Extra

Our guests Joe and Sarah are not new to Newport City Radio, Sarah had come as a guest around 10 years ago and Joe used to volunteer here. 

Joe Kelly describes himself as an ‘itinerant blues singer’. His songs range from blues and country with an Americana sound to it. He is backed by some others to be ‘Joe Kelly and The Royal Pharmacy’. Shiftypop does a bit of everything with creating music, although kids’ music sticks out. She has created some tracks using only toy instruments. She even has a YouTube channel (Learning with Shiftypop) which encourages children to make music, which I’ll get into later.

We listened to Sarah’s song ‘Wise One’. A newer track from the summer. She described it as a new years song, about leaving what has happened in the past. We also listened to ‘Cast Me Down’, Joe’s newest song. The song was also announced as our record of the week, meaning it will be played throughout the week on our various shows. The track is also the title track of his upcoming album.

Both artists discussed how they got into music. Sarah said that she was a part of a group in university called Toy Pop and each member had a different name. She, of course, chose Shiftypop. She mentioned the origins of the name, she said that it came from an old MSM username she had and adapted. After Toy Pop, she continued with music making, particularly jingles. Joe said that he was 7 when his uncle got him a guitar. He started group guitar lessons with a school teacher but he started to dislike it and tried to hide from the lessons. He eventually dropped it and picked up piano and violin instead. He still plays guitar and occasionally the piano.

More about Sarah’s YouTube channel, it started a while ago as she wanted to do something for herself since she had only really been making things for other people. She had previously written music for other YouTube channels and decided to give a go at making a video about making music. She posted her video involving her son’s toys and, knowing nothing about algorithms and posting videos, her video did quite well. It lasted for a few months which she essentially forgot about with the trials and tribulations of having 2 young children. Kym uncovered it and she encourages you to look for it. Sarah still posts content online, however now she focuses on posting ukulele videos to tiktok  (@shiftypop).

Joe talked about a recent song of his, 200 years. He made the song for Newport Rising; he initially declined it because he struggled with following a brief. However, he thought about it, and decided to fo it as he had interest with chartism in Newport and the Chartist Mural. The song is accompanied by a video in which he goes through Newport and shows various locations, one of which being our very own studio!

Finally, we talked about upcoming plans for both artists. Alongside the usual gig, both are making albums. Sarah in the middle of writing hers and Joe’s is nearly complete, looking at it being released around springtime next year. Joe also mentioned that he has some videos to come out and some vinyls being released.