Singer Gwenno says her wild teenage days on Lord of the Dance in America were  'drink, drugs, eating disorders'... Those were heady years and far from the wholesome world of cailíns and curls one might expect

Published: 22:57, 9 July 2026 | Updated: 22:57, 9 July 2026 Gwenno Saunders has her work cut out for her. While other artists spend their tour time relaxing before gigs, Gwenno is organising the show — or the shows to be exact. The Welsh singer is not only the talent but also the tour manager and has booked her own gigs for her latest Irish stint which kicks off at the Earagail Arts Festival in Letterkenny on July 14 . ‘I am a massive control freak so that certainly has something to do with it,’ Gwenno tells me. ‘But also, when you tour manage you are just more connected to the event and the people running it in my opinion which can only be a good thing. It’s only me doing a solo show across Ireland so it’s really not that much of a bother to organise either. I think being involved in the logistical side of things is something that I’ve always enjoyed doing and you just know what’s coming a bit better then and there are fewer surprises.’ Utopia is Gwenno’s latest album and it’s the first of her solo records to have songs mainly in English. And her decision, she says, was mainly centred around the fact that the inspiration for the album mainly happened in English which aided her connection. ‘Well, I’m trilingual (Welsh, Cornish, English) and English just wasn’t a language that I’d explored for so many years that I was a bit curious as to what would happen if I tried writing a song,’ she explains. ‘I then discovered that in using the language to write songs I was reminded of all of the emotions that I’d felt when using it, which became useful for exploring the cities that I’ve lived in and people that I’ve loved along the way in the songs that make up the record.’ In fact, Utopia was actually inspired by Gwenno’s time as a principal dancer in Lord of the Dance in America. Growing up speaking Welsh in Cardiff, she got her dancing shoes on because of her dad and became a world-class dancer. For someone who has already managed a successful music career through her native tongue, Gwenno says she can draw some parallels between the rise of Irish here and the Welsh experience ‘My dad is an Irish speaker and his friend’s nieces went to Irish dancing class in an area of Cardiff called Splott every Friday. It was only 50p to go so I just went and loved it but gradually got bored of competition by the time I hit my teens,’ she explains. ‘There was then an audition for Lord of the Dance in Dublin after the World Championships when I was 16 years old and I went along and got a place in the troupe to tour Australia and Europe, and then when I turned 17 I got the lead part in Las Vegas.’ Those were heady years, as she mentions in the press release for her album that far from the wholesome world of cailíns and curls one might expect, it was a time of ‘drink, drugs, eating disorders,' as she said in one of her press releases. ‘It’s difficult for it to be that wholesome if you stick a group of 40 teens in an apartment complex unchaperoned in Las Vegas,’ Gwenno explains of those wild days. ‘It was the late Nineties/early Noughties in the US, the culture was very plastic and superficial — boy bands, MTV Cribs, all of that stuff. ‘The internet was new so it was harder to find alternative stuff, but there was this techno club off the strip called Utopia which all us girls would go to every weekend, and dancing there with everyone really saved my sanity. It helped me get out of my own head and realise how connected I was to everyone else around me, it was a real epiphany which is why I called the album Utopia.’ The world of Irish dancing’s loss though was music’s gain as following a successful stint with The Pipettes, Gwenno embarked on her own solo career which is once again bringing her back to Ireland. The Earagail Arts Festival has roots in Donegal and the Gaeltacht areas up there but, though Gwenno has other Celtic languages down to a tee, Gwenno doesn’t speak any Irish. ‘I do feel an affinity with Gaeltacht areas as my parents would spend a lot of time there when they were students and I’d hear so much about the place and its people as a kid, especially Connemara,’ she says. For someone who has already managed a successful music career through her native tongue, Gwenno says she can draw some parallels between the rise of Irish here and the Welsh experience. ‘It never really went away in Wales as our Welsh speaking heartlands have held out better (due to many contributing factors) so we’ve been luckier in that sense,’ she says. ‘The language is always changing with new demographics having access to it which I find incredibly exciting. I feel there are some parallels between what’s happening in urban areas like Belfast with the Irish language and the growth of the Welsh language amongst a younger generation in the south east of Wales in places like Cardiff and Newport with the demand for more Welsh language education being met finally, but then it’s also really different as those areas of Wales have always historically been diverse in culture and language so it really creates a very different dynamic I think. Welsh has a long history of being spoken by the working class, radical left and the counterculture (as well as all other parts of society of course) but that side of it has produced most of its output in music, literature, theatre and TV over the past century so I don’t think it’s ever been in a position not to be seen as ‘cool’ in a way.’ So does she think we’ll love her English record as much as we loved her Welsh ones?Do we appreciate her enough? ‘I’ve no idea,’ she says. ‘But I’m excited to find out!’ Gwenno plays the Earagail Arts Festival in Letterkenny’s Regional Cultural Centre on July 14, Bello Bar, Dublin on July 15, Cleere’s Kilkenny on July 16, the Savoy in Cork on July 17, the Kasbah Social Club in Limerick on July 18, De Barra’s, Cork on July 19 and Galway Arts Festival on July 20. Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article.