This effervescent synthpop artist arrived on the scene relatively recently but has a storied entertainment background. Tara Bethan Williams, to use her real name, has TV and theatre credentials – while the life and death of her dad, cult Welsh wrestler Orig ‘El Bandito’ Williams, inspired her music as Tara Bandito, as Emma Way discovered.

You’ve got a really interesting backstory with how you started out in music and entertainment…

Tara Bandito: My dad [Orig Williams] was a wrestler and a wrestling promoter, while my mum used to be a dancer but later became a merch seller in wrestling. My grandparents were a ventriloquist and a dancer.

I started taking dance classes at the age of three, then later someone suggested to my parents that I should learn to sing, so I started taking singing lessons. I don’t remember everything, but I just loved doing these things, and I was fortunate enough to get opportunities doing them. Musical theatre was my main avenue, but it never quite felt right: I basically trained up to be the same as the person before me, and if I couldn’t do the same as them, then I wasn’t considered as good. I loved doing it, but there was no reality to it.

When I was 24, I participated in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s search for a Nancy in Oliver Twist on BBC One [I’d Do Anything, 2008]. I got to the final, but I didn’t know who I was. I’d always been this robot doing everything. 

I got a job as the narrator in Joseph on tour for 17 months and my dad died [in 2009] while I was doing it. It took until the pandemic, when everyone lost work, for me to revisit the first song I wrote, Six Feet Under. That was written two days after my dad died – I wanted to try and start working on music. I’ve just released the album and it’s like, 38 years of nothing happening all kind of came together in a year.

So do you feel like you were always working towards something without knowing what it was?

Tara: Definitely. I always felt like a bit of a fraud – I was good at dancing and backflipping and telling a story, because I was taught to do it all, and I was really lucky to have been given that opportunity, but it kind of felt like I’d wasted them.

I’m such a big reactor to things – that’s how I write, my writing process is to extensively feel to the point of, like, I can’t fucking cope. And then I write it down. It’s always the words first. And then the pandemic was, obviously, loads of feelings and loads of time to write.

So you’ve got the words – why did you then decide on electronic pop as your style?

Tara: I guess because I grew up in this world of listening to musical theatre, male voice choirs and Irish rebel music. Those were the genres in my house! I didn’t even know who Pink Floyd were until I was like 22. I think the big turning point for me was when Beyoncé released Lemonade. I’d never really been a fan of her music – I could totally understand that she was amazing, but the music always felt a little bit manufactured – and when Lemonade came out I just lost my head to it because it was so honest, and I’d been struggling with my mental health. So I think seeing this woman who everyone perceived as a goddess, going through shit, showed this can happen to anyone. The music wasn’t trying to be likeable. It was just, this is my truth. And it gave me a bit of balls.

I also love big fat bass sounds and big angry beeps. When I go to Green Man, I’m walking around being like, where’s the noise? I want, like, angry go nuts music – so I made it myself instead.

You wear a lot of vibrant costumes onstage too.

Tara: I’ve always wanted to be onstage performing my music before wanting to release music. I want to release music so that I can put on a show. The way I grew up, I saw men and women in leotards, and how to keep the audience entertained. If I see a band playing and they’re quite static after two songs I’m bored of watching them.

Are there similarities you see with music and wrestling?

Tara: For Six Feet Under, I got carried through the crowd in a coffin onto the stage while the music video was being projected onto a screen behind me. Someone did ask me whether that was inspired by the Undertaker! My dad used to rip off some of the American wrestlers in his shows… I think it’s my idea but realistically, where did that come from? I suppose watching my dad.

I organised my dad’s funeral, so it was quite the show. It wasn’t just a sad funeral. It was like ‘El Bandito’ in red, white and green flowers on top of the coffin, and the big flag. So I guess there was a bit of that there. That thing of making an entrance, making your mark – people like that feeling, so that’s what I try to bring to the set.

Tara Bandito plays FOCUS Wales, The Rockin’ Chair, Wrexham, Fri 5 May (info)

Parti Ponty, Pontypridd Lido, Fri 12 May (info)

Tafwyl, Bute Park, Cardiff, Sat 15 + Sun 16 July (info)

Tara Bandito is out now.

Info: facebook.com/tarabandito

words EMMA WAY