Steve Andrews is an author, singer-songwriter, poet, freelance writer, public speaker and naturalist. He was born in Cardiff in 1953. Today he is listed on two websites as a “Famous Cardiffian.” He is also known as the Bard of Ely, title he was given by Big issue Cymru magazine in 1998, when he was a columnist for the publication and lived on the Ely housing estate. According to Wikipedia, along with Shakin’ Stevens he is listed as a “Notable person” from Ely.
He is the author of five books published by Moon Books: Herbs Of The Northern Shaman, Herbs Of The Sun, Moon And Planets, Herbs Of The Southern Shaman, Earth Spirit: Saving Mother Ocean and The Magic of Butterflies and Moths.
He has written for many publications, including Kindred Spirit, Prediction, Welsh Coastal Life, Celtic Life International, MyHerbs, Mediterranean Gardening and Outdoor Living, Bee Culture: The Magazine of American Beekeeping, The Magical Times, International Times (IT), Big Issue Cymru and Living Tenerife magazines, as well as the Tenerife News, Tenerife Sun, and Tenerife Weekly newspapers.
As a musician he has had his songs used on many TV programmes. His song Sound Of One was in Family Affairs on C5, Rubber Ducky was in Y Ty on S4C, and King Arthur’s Coming was in The Slate on BBC Wales, as well as in documentaries made by Meridian and ZDF. He has also appeared on many TV programmes. He was featured on an HTV Wales news report when he grew the first homegrown Welsh pineapple. In 2000 he was an actor in Red Dragon, a short sci-fi film broadcast in SHOTGUN SLIDESHOW on HTV Wales.
He has a lead role in the documentary Savages In Foreign Lands, directed by Raphael Biss. Released in 2015, the film is distributed by ZED.
He has been a guest on many programmes on Welsh radio stations, including Radio Wales, Bridge FM, Cardiff Radio, and Valleys Radio.
In 1996, his cassette album Dive In Deep was a bestseller on the Music And Elsewhere underground tape label, topping the charts there. He became the second best selling artist on the label ever!
He has performed at the Green Man and Glastonbury Festivals. At Glastonbury Festival he was an MC for the Avalon Stage in 2002 and 2003. In 2004 he was a guest speaker at the event. Tracks by Andrews open and close the Green Man Festival album released in 2003 on Double Snazzy.
In 2002, his song You’re a Liar, Nicky Wire fronted the Taffia EP on Crai Records, and was rave reviewed in the NME. Harvest Home, also included in this EP, was used in the soundtrack of a movie in 2011 by Philip Gardiner, entitled Paranormal Haunting: The Curse of the Blue Moon Inn.
In 2017, Harvest Home was re-released fronting a limited edition CD EP on the German Moloko label. A new studio recording of this song was produced by Jayce Lewis and is the first track on the album Songs of the Now and Then.
Also in 2017, Andrews was a finalist in the Best Solo Act category of the Cardiff Music Awards, and he featured on the Britain's Got Talent TV show, with his performance being extensively written about in the press because he got a lot of the audience up on stage to help him out with his cover of Stand By Me.
In 2017, he was number 1 singer-songwriter for Portugal according to the Reverb Nation chart, and in 2018 he made it to number 111 in the Global chart for Singer-songwriters on the website.
He has been working from 2016-2018 with Jayce Lewis as his producer in sessions at Northstone Studios in Bridgend, and has recorded 10 songs that were released as the album Songs of the Now and Then in 2019.
In 2018 he was interviewed for Music Interview Magazine about his song Where Does All The Plastic Go?, and he was interviewed again about this song by Italian radio host Filippo Solibello for inclusion in the book SPAM Stop Plastica A Mare by Solibello published in 2019. This protest song of Steve’s has received a lot of international media coverage. e.g. in 2021, it was included in a full page article by Jake Cleaver in The Portugal News entitled Poseidon, Neptune and Aquaman “Stand by me.” SWND magazine from Wales in Issue 4, Spring 2021, carried a two-page article with the title Ocean Aid: A Solution for Plastic Pollution. Also in 2021, Steve and his song about plastic pollution were featured in The Wave magazine, published by the Rotary Club of Wyndham Harbour in Australia. On 15 June 2021, Steve Andrews joined this Rotary Club. In the same year, he appeared as a speaker and performer at the Oceano Azul Foundation’s COOL 21 event in Lisbon.
Steve has been featured in the books of many other authors: The World's Most Mysterious People by Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe, Real Cardiff by Peter Finch, Fierce Dancing, The Last of the Hippies and Housing Benefit Hill by C.J. Stone, and Leonard Cohen: A Remarkable Life by Anthony Reynolds. He was also included in two more books by Peter Finch: Edging The City and Walking Cardiff.
As a public speaker he gave a lecture on The Flora and Fauna of Tenerife to the English Library in Puerto de la Cruz. In Portugal he has been a guest speaker for the Clube Dos Boms Jardins in the Algarve, talking about Butterfly Gardening In Iberia and The Wildlife of Tenerife. Also in Tenerife, he led a number of guided nature walks, including two for a science class at the British School Tenerife, in which they visited the Ponds of Erjos and looked at the ecosystem there, and on another excursion to La Caleta beach, the school children were finding out about plastic pollution. He was commended by the school for his part in leading these walks. As an expert on foraging he was once commissioned to write a series about Foraging Through The Seasons for Permaculture Magazine. He writes a regular blog about nature and environmental issues at http://bardofelysays.blogspot.com/