Boyce first learned to play the guitar as a young man, but he showed no particular flair for the instrument, nor an actual desire to become a performer. In his own words: "had no desire at all to be anything. I had a love of poetry, and eventually started writing songs without any ambition to build a career. It just happened. I started writing songs about local things and it evolved." Nevertheless, in time he became competent enough to perform at local eisteddfodau, one of the earliest known recordings of his work being "", a folk tune in Welsh which he played at the Dyffryn Lliw eisteddfod in 1967.