As he took the short walk from his uncle to his auntie's house on a small road in Llanengan, Al Lewis turned the corner of the small country road and saw a Waitrose van. "Nothing could have been more succinct," he laughs.
Originally from Pwllheli, the singer-songwriter went to school in Sarn Bach in Gwynedd. His latest single, The Farmhouse, released on Friday, April 8, is about second homes and the impact they are having on the area he grew up in. He knows it isn't a new issue, nor is it simple, but as he walks through the villages he grew up in he sees the Welsh house names being changed, the heart of the community he knew being chipped away at and with that the fear once it has gone, it won't return.
"Like a lot of people during lockdown I was just seeing a lot of stories online and hearing reports from friends and family who I still have living there and seeing a lot of reports about old Welsh buildings that weren't necessarily houses but old post offices, old schools, being bought up for second homes and being turned into names like 'The Seagulls' or whatever. And I just felt like it was a bit of a cultural whitewashing and it was a tendency of just purchasing these properties or these buildings with no real regard for what had been before and the area in which they were in." Read the story of how people on Anglesey think any changes to second home rules are 'too late'.
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That prompted feelings of anger and sadness in the artist, but because Al moved to Abergele aged 12, it was also a "realisation that I was the epitome of what was happening because I didn't live in the area anymore. I was feeling a bit of guilt". He said: "My dad's family and my dad stayed in the area and so I've always had a really close connection to it but now that I live in Cardiff and I'm only seeing these things online and talking to people on the phone there's this feeling of yes, I can talk about these things and I can write a song but I'm fully aware that I'm not there on the ground.
"People could call me a hypocrite and I'd have to accept that, because I don't live in the area. But I suppose what I was worried about was this feeling that the people who did want to stay and want to bring up their children and wanted to do that within the parameters of the Welsh language being the language of the street were struggling to do that. At this point the things I was reading were all in the Welsh language in the Welsh language media and I felt like people who weren't Welsh speakers were unaware of the fact that this was happening and the significance of it to the Welsh language."
No-one claims that second homes are a new phenomenon, but for Al it was seeing the wealth arriving into the area at weekends, or certain times of the year, and the speed at the erosion of the place he knew which caused concern. "It's a really tricky thing because I remember when I was a kid, my nain and taid would go and live in the caravan to let out their house during the summer and that's 30 or 40 years ago when they used to do that, so it's in some ways it's really not a new thing."
Each house name lost, or community member forced out is slowly chipping away at the thing that made the place an attraction in the first place. "You're killing the golden goose almost because you're stripping away everything that created the thing in the first place. And it's really difficult to know what the answer is, because what is the foundations of creating a community there? Well, it's having jobs and it's having some sort of sustainable infrastructure," says Al.
"Do we want the countryside to just be a plaything for the wealthy and for the rich or do we want our rural landscapes to be to be more equitable and to be shared between all types of people of all backgrounds? Even if you have tourism as the main fulcrum of the society, you still need your taxi drivers, the doctor and nurses, people who run the restaurants, own the restaurants, you still need some sort of community there.
"I wanted to write a song because I wanted the conversation to be in the public sphere and in the public sphere not just in the Welsh language because I felt like you were preaching to the converted. If I'd have written this song in Welsh, it would have resonated and people would have really agreed with what I said but it wouldn't have gone any further."
The inspiration for this song was Woody Guthrie's This Land is Our Land, a version of which, Mae'n Wlad i Mi , was sung by Dafydd Iwan. "This land, is it our land anymore like it is or is it just the playground for the rich so that was kind of the jumping board for the song and then this idea that you know, these names were being changed to names that have no relevance to the place.
"I've always been really protective of the language because I think it's so important to me, and because I grew up there it's so hard to describe to people like the idea that you live in a part of the UK where English isn't the language of the street. That's why I wanted to write this song in English because the biggest driver for me was that idea of protecting the language."
What prompted the song was the language, but more than that, it was the community, its makeup and its social structure as well as the disparity of wealth Al sees on the streets. "It was evident when I grew up, but has just become so glaring now. In just the cars that you see, it's just little things like that. You can tell who lives here and who doesn't. I was up this weekend, I went to see my auntie and she lives in Llanengan and her house is just around the corner from where my uncle lived. So I walked down this little country lane, and what came to meet me was a Waitrose van. It was five o'clock on a Saturday and it was just like... it couldn't have been more succinct about what's happening.
"I think that education. If people want to buy in the area there's that realisation that, okay, you can get your Waitrose delivery, but understand the implications of that. So you're not buying from the local shop and that means that guy or the woman who own that local shop are going think twice about having that local shop because nobody's buying from there."
Clamping down on second homes is something that has been much discussed in political circles. The Welsh Government wants to hike council tax in the areas worst affected. The maximum level at which local authorities can set council tax premiums on second homes and long-term empty properties will be increased to 300%, which will be effective from April 2023. You can get the latest on the biggest issues facing Wales by subscribing to our Wales Matters newsletter here.
However, with some house prices in the millions, that doesn't seem much of a disincentive. "Hopefully it will bring a bit more money to the coffers, but I went up this weekend to film the music video and we had a look in the estate agents and you're talking £3m, £1m...so if that's your second home, a few extra grand just isn't going to be a big thing.
"The other thing that I was very wary of that in Abersoch was the us and them feeling and I think that's more about the social inequality of the people who are coming and the people who live there. And this feeling that they are just worlds apart. And that was another thing I wanted to sort of highlight."
But that emotion is hard for people on both sides. "In some ways it is a bit like Brexit in that you just get these polarised views but I'd like to think that there is a common ground somewhere. I feel like part of the journey is education and educating the people who want to buy a second home because second homes will exist, there's no point being naïve and thinking you can get rid of second homes, but it's that education of the awareness of the area and saying, 'Look, this is this is the area'. Maybe the estate agent says, 'Look, there's a legal thing that says you can't change the name of this house, you can buy it but you can't change the name of it, because the Welsh language and all this and just an education of the area.'
"I feel that would perhaps help with this idea of us and them and the feeling like it's just an extension of where they've come from and would hopefully help as well with this idea that they are bringing something that contributes to the area rather than it's just they come, they get their Waitrose delivery, and then there's no actual contribution to the local economy."
Al is about to tour and it will take in the rural bastions of the Welsh language as well as Cardiff. "They're also the areas where this subject is at its rawest. And so I felt like if I'm going to talk about this, I should be talking about it in these places to these people, but these people know exactly what I'm talking about."
The singer began writing the album last year, and admits that in some ways this song is an outlier. Most of the songs are about grief and his dad, who died when he was 21. "The pandemic made me open up about my grief more and think more about my dad and I had never really written about my dad and I lost him when I was quite young. I was 21. His family, and he, had stayed in this area. So my ideas and my connections to that area are all tied to him and then losing him as well changed my relationship to that area. So as well as this subject being complex, my relationship with the area is complex as well and it's a complex topic."
In the Welsh verse he sings it as his father. "I say, 'My son has long gone, has left' and that's me talking as him talking about me as I left, and I'm sure he would, and I know he had dreams of me staying in the area and taking over his business and I turned that down. And so a bit of it is guilt and knowing that I didn't, I didn't stay in the area, and looking at what's happening and feeling like this is what I can do. I write songs. So in some way, I'm hoping that by writing this, I'm contributing in some tiny, tiny way."
The pandemic brought statistics and deaths to all of our doors in an unavoidable way. "It became something that I just needed to get out so this has been quite cathartic and from that I've started a podcast called Feels Like Healing where I talk to other creative people about grief because I found out a lot of my friends within the creative world had lost somebody, not necessarily a parent, but they all had this trauma in their life that had driven them to become a creative person.
"The collective body is going to be the sort of relationships. The other element of it is that I'm now a dad, at the age that my dad was a dad. And so now, I'm now seeing dad in me for the first time because I'm the age where I remember him and that's the first time that's happened.
Now if he looks in the mirror Al's reflection reminds him of his dad. "It's that circular thing of the grief. Him, me, and now my kids and the sort of connections between those three things, that's kind of the basis of the album and this comes into that sort of side of him and where I grew up".
This is his eighth album. "You always look back on your albums and think which ones you know which songs do I pick to play live and this one certainly feels like the one where I've been most honest and and in that respect, I'm really scared for people to hear it because I'm laying it out in terms of what my childhood was like and my relationship with my dad, which wasn't always straightforward.
"And that brings with it a risk of being judged and also bringing other family members into the public's fear that they might not want. I'm very aware of it and hopefully I've done it in a sensitive way but the pandemic made me realise this time it's healthier to talk about whatever you need to talk about.
"I think that's what I found is that I needed to vocalise the subjects of grief and loss and the Welsh language and these things that mean a lot to me. Perhaps in the past, I thought, I just need to write a great pop song that's going to be played on the radio and that will bring me joy and happiness but I think now, I think I want something more out of it, or I'm going to creativity for something else. Now. I'm going for answers or to sort of put out a question out there".
Al Lewis will perform on April 30 at The Gate, Cardiff with Côrdydd choir, May 6 at Mwldan Theatre, Cardigan with Côr Cywair choir, May 7 at Aberystwyth Arts Centre with Côr ABC choir and May 13 in Galeri, Caernarfon with Côr Dre choir.
