Susy Wall and 'Black Lights': Shining a Spotlight on the Soul of the Black Country

July 06, 2025

Susy Wall and 'Black Lights': Shining a Spotlight on the Soul of the Black Country

A Musical Celebration of Black Country Creativity, Character and Community.

We're proud at backcountrynostalgia.com to have a shot from Peter Donnellys archive included in the amazing album artwork.

Now, one of the region’s most passionate voices, Susy Wall, shines a new light on that legacy with her new album Black Lights—a heartfelt celebration of the creativity, landscape and people that make this region so extraordinary.

The Black Country has always been a land of grit and grace—shaped by fire, forged in steel, and softened by stories.

A Historic Venue for a Historic Sound

The live launch of Black Lights took place in the iconic Workers’ Institute at the Black Country Living Museum—a building saved from Lomey Town, Cradley Heath and rebuilt brick by brick. The venue, steeped in working-class pride, is the perfect backdrop for this powerful acoustic journey.

On the night, Susy Wall was joined on stage by fellow musicians Matt Sayers, Russ Sargeant, and Simon Riley. Also moving performances from local poets John Homer, Claire Tedstone, and Martin Kennedy Yates adding to an already deeply rooted experience.

There were Heartfelt nods to the visual artists and photographers whose work inspired many of the album’s tracks, making this more than a concert—it’s a multisensory tribute to Black Country creativity in all its forms.

Black Lights: Songs Rooted in Story and Soil

More than just an album, Black Lights is a tribute to the unsung artistry of the Black Country. Through carefully crafted songs, Susy pays homage to local poets, painters, photographers, and the everyday characters who breathe life into Dudley, Cradley Heath, Wednesbury, Tipton and beyond.

https://susywall.bandcamp.com/

Inspired by real people and places, the album captures the rhythm of the Black Country dialect, the weight of its industrial past, and the brightness of its cultural spirit. From echoes of factory floors to snippets of poetry and personal memory, each track reflects a region often overlooked for its creative value—until now.

Clapping and smiling. The mood is joyful and warm. The setting is a cozy room with brick walls.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Were-Yesterday-Birmingham-Photographs-Remembered/dp/1704391431

Comments

The Telegraph

Peter Donnelly's prize-winning essay offers a brilliant example of how local, and often unprepossessing, backgrounds can provide the material for an outstanding colour story. All his photographs were taken within a few miles of his home in Birmingham, Brierley Hill, at Blackheath, Bilston and Cradley Heath. He took them over a period of several months while on weekend walks along the deserted banks of the local canals. "Most evenings I never met a soul," Mr Donnelly recalls. "There was an air of isolation, and often desolation, over the whole scene, and this is what I have tried to capture in my photographs." The camera used was a Pentakon F and the film Agfa and Kodachrome.

by Dr Carl Chinn MBE

Peter Donnelly was born in Birmingham, educated at Corpus Christi junior school, Stechford and later at the holy rosary, Saltley. While at the Holy Rosary he took and passed a drawing examination for Moseley school of art at which he spent several years tuning his artistic talent.

On leaving the art school he joined Birmingham printers, Sam Currier & Son in brook street, St Pauls square, as an apprentice commercial artist. After completing his apprenticeship he left Sam Currier and worked at various printers and advertising agencies gaining valuable experience before starting with his working associate Bob Burns (typographer). Donnelly Burns Graphic Design studio was in Chapel Street, Lye before moving to larger premises in Cradley heath then Harborne.

Before starting the business Peter entered and won the Sunday Telegraph national photographic competition. He submitted an essay of photographs illustrating the demise of the Birmingham and Black Country canals with fellow photographer Norman Fletcher. To Peter and Norman, Midlands photographers and photographic societies seemingly had ignored the once great industrial arena that surrounded their everyday lives.

What an arena! what powerful exiting subjects for the camera; neglected canals, weed and web woven towpaths, old worn out narrow boats – redundant and half submerged in silted murky brown waters; steam trains rattling, hissing and bumping their waggons into line and the rail men who worked the line at that time.

Old foundries, run down factories and scrapyards – the industrial flotsam of a once great manufacturing region. Many six o’clock early morning starts were walked and many miles covered by Peter and his camera.

Now over 60 years later, photographs taken during those early excursions are being published - looking back at the time, long before the surge of change and reconstruction 1962 - 1965