Interview - Tom Baxter

My second Tom interview in a matter of weeks. Tom Baxter sounded very educated and interesting, and I really did feel bad for not having done much research on him and his work, having recently returned from a trip involving approx. 500 Pigeon Detectives gigs...

Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in November 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd

TOM BAXTER

It’s not often we start our interviews with an apology, but I feel like I owe Tom Baxter one. I’ve been off work for a couple of days and so the amount of background research for this interview is considerably less than usual. I’m concerned about asking something obviously stupid. “That’s fine. I’m used to it,” Tom says, shrugging off my concerns with a laugh. So, your debut single ‘Better’… “It’s fine, don’t worry at all!”

Tom Baxter is a singer-songwriter, originally from Suffolk, now based in London. His parents were both folk musicians, so tunes are in his blood. He’s previously said that while trying his hardest to get into music, he avoided getting ‘a proper job’ because of concerns he might fall into it and never fulfil his potential. Having supported Nerina Pallot on tour, lost one record deal and gained another, and played at Latitude, it’s been a busy year.

I read somewhere that Tom went to music college. If you’ve studied writing or music, a lot of people seem to look down on it. “Going to music college was a little bit like going to art college when I went there. It kind of put me off it a bit because analysing something, that’s hard, but at the same time it was also really helpful. Yet you can’t teach someone how to be an artist or a songwriter or whatever, do you know what I mean, but at the same time I don’t think anyone should look down on it. I think some of the greatest musicians have studied, whether you study at college or you study in life.”

When Tom rings us, he’s somewhere in the middle of a London council estate – cue police sirens in the background – accompanied by a cameraman and a giant frame, the sort you would see a painting in. This is because he’s filming a Channel 4 documentary. From what we can gather, this involves him travelling around the country bearing the enormous golden frame, through which interviews and video will be shown. “We went up to the coast yesterday and did it, and the beach and the forest. I’m sort of walking around with the screen, it’s actually really cool!”

Art is something of a big part of Tom’s life. He studied at art college, and if you take a look at the images used in his forthcoming record ‘Skybound’, well they were all produced by his own fair hand. “I love trying to keep it as creative as possible,” he explains. “It’s more fun that way. It’s trying to explore different ways of communicating with people and for me it’s good because it just means I get to play around a lot more [laughs] I’m just a big kid really, messing about! I did the artwork for the first album as well [as ‘Skybound’] but this one I did differently, I did big canvases. We had an art exhibition where we launched it and we sold the artwork to help fund the record and the marketing of it and stuff like that. So it’s been brilliant, it’s been a brilliant year.”

’Skybound’, out in early January 2008 (how far away does that sound? – November Ed) is the follow up to 2004’s ‘Feather and Stone’, which spawned singles ‘This Boy’ and ‘My Declaration’. “It was recorded a while back but it was put back because I didn’t really want to release it at Christmas, I mean I was happy to release the single at Christmas but I didn’t want to release the album then because it just gets swallowed up, there’s all that pop star stuff that’s on TV which gets in the way and everyone’s just panicking. I wanted to get it out there and I didn’t want it to be competing with all this sort of Cliff Richard Christmas time.”

Has your sound has changed much since ‘Feather and Stone’? “I think it has,” says Tom. “I’m really happy with this album, it’s much more organically put together. It’s quite upbeat for the first half and then it gets a bit darker in the second half of the record, but yeah I’m really pleased with it, I’m really proud of what we did.”

You may be familiar with the single ‘Better’ if you’ve been following Simon Pegg’s filmic adventures or have tuned in to Radio 2 at some point recently. “Well ‘Better’ that’s in the film ‘Run Fat Boy Run’. That’s been played on Radio 2 a lot, and there’s a video so that’s the one you’re more likely to hear at this moment because the actual album hasn’t been out in the shops yet. There’s lots of different sorts of tracks on there, I don’t know if you’ve heard the record?” he asks. I haven’t heard it yet, no. “Well, check it out! And then you’ll know.”

Any other tracks apart from Better that we should listen out for? “There’s a track called ‘Tragic’ which is one of my favourite tracks, it’s just about how dreams get kicked out of you,” says Tom.

”There’s lots of stories on the album. There’s another one called ‘The Last Shot’ which is about a soldier in the First World War, it’s basically an analogy of love. It’s kind of based on watching Gallipoli, have you seen that film? What they used to do is that it was one of those really stupid wars, when a load of kids get sent to the front line and put in the trenches and the Germans were just gunning them down as they went over. The English knew that but they just kept sending them out. If they got wounded they’d get sent to the sort of Red Cross bit and then if they got better they’d just got sent to the frontline so the likelihood of them dying was pretty high.

”So in this song a soldier’s talking about how he’s been wounded and now he’s feeling better. He’s running over the trenches and he thinks he’s fine and then he gets shot in the heart and basically the whole thing is an analogy of being wounded in love, making yourself better and going out there, having another relationship and then really getting heartbroken. So that’s what the song’s about.”

Sounds quite deep. “Well I mean it’s just a song. But if you read it, you’ll know what I mean. On the website, all of the paintings are up there, and the lyrics are there as well.”

Are you touring the album or single at all? “I’ve just come back from tour, I’m just about to go on to another tour which is like touring all the radio stations and stuff, so that’s taking a lot of my time in the next couple of weeks. Then I come back and lots more things going on, lots of promotional stuff, and then we’re playing the Shepherd’s Bush Empire so I’m really looking forward to that. I’m going to Argentina for Christmas, have a bit of a break, so that’ll be nice.”

I was going to do some Christmas questions at the end and you’re anticipating them already. “One step ahead!”

Back onto Tom Baxter: The Early(ish) Years. He found studying guitar at music college very helpful. When he first took tentative steps into the music industry, he was a session player for various pop bands. Any good ones? “No,” Tom laughs. “I can’t even remember half their names. Some of them were famous, but it didn’t interest me really. It wasn’t my thing. I… just sort of stopped doing music for a while and just completely did something else, I just found that I wasn’t really enjoying that side of it. Making my own records and stuff, that’s what I enjoy, that’s why I’m doing the art and the music. I just made sure I was making the records I wanted to make you know, instead of trying to commercially continuously jump on any sort of bandwagon. Sort of try to keep it as personal as possible.”

So what bands and musicians are currently on Tom’s playlist? "Well I really love Sigur Rós, been listening to them a lot. I really like the Amy Winehouse album. A band called Beirut, I really like them, another band called Quartet, Arvo Pärt, who’s a classical composer. Loads of stuff!”

Someone is lurking in the background, waiting for Tom. We think it’s the film crew, waiting for him to carry a frame around. Time for him to go. It seems less like a career in the arts and more like a stint with Pickfords. We could make a lazy pun about him being Skybound, but instead we’ll stick with wishing him luck. It’s even lazier, but you’ll agree it’s marginally less cheesy.