Record crowds are expected to attend the four-day festival which runs at multiple venues across the town until Saturday April 26.
The festival started on Wednesday with three stages of live music in Central Station before moving to Glyndŵr University on Thursday for a series of discussion panels.
A Q&A about online music and a further discussion about accessing mainstream media preceded a headline ‘In discussion with’ session featuring Alan McGee, founder of the Creation Records label, which signed Oasis.
Live music from Meilir, Austrian artist Effi and Siôn Russell Jones completed the interactive session at the Catrin Finch Centre.
Other Wrexham venues hosting music and entertainment through the week include St Giles’ Church, South, Un Deg Un and the Royal Oak.
Festival co-ordinator Andy Jones said: “The start of the festival has been brilliant. We are growing Focus Wales year on year and we hope it’s just going to get better and better.
“We now employ 70 people when Focus Wales is on and all the hotels in Wrexham are full and the bars packed for the four days of the festival.
“90 per cent of visitors to the festival this year are from outside Wrexham county, which is fantastic, and hopefully businesses in the town will benefit from this.
“When we started Focus Wales we wanted to create a festival which Wrexham could take ownership of and it’s great that we now have so many partners which is enabling us to grow the event.”
Toronto-based Americana musician Darren Eedens is playing at Focus Wales on Friday and Saturday as part of a 24-date tour of Europe, taking in shows in Belgium, France, Germany, Czech Republic and Austria.
“This is my second visit to the festival,” said Darren. “I had a really good time here last year and I loved how much local support there was for the festival. With a few artists from overseas as well, you get the best of both
worlds.”
