GuilFest 2006. The 3 Day Guildford Music Festival on 14th, 15th and 16th July 2006

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Artist: Tom Baxter
Genre: Melodic
Performing: 16th July 2005 /BBC Radio 2 main Stage
Website Address: [www.tombaxter.co.uk] ,
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Tom Baxter fills his songs with real life, sings them like he means them, and arrives in this envelope via the reassuringly old-fashioned medium of word of mouth. This is a man whose music builds from acoustic beginnings to a real emotional intensity, thanks to a unique voice, powerful string-driven production and lasting songcraft.

There weren¹t many UK gigs last year that set tongues wagging quite the way Baxter’s residency at Bush Hall in Shepherd¹s Bush did in the summer of 2003. People began to see a commitment about this bloke that can inspire the lovelorn and unjade the jaded.

Signed soon after those gigs to Sony, he’s just finished making an album about his life, and everybody’s. 'In my little moments of thinking about it,’ he says in his thoughtful, approachable way, 'the album is a kind of document of a young man’s struggle into adulthood. A lot of it was basically to do with me trying to make a statement to myself. I wanted to make a record that had a reflective but positive angle on the way all of us have to deal with the trials and tribulations of life.’

The buzz began early in 2003, when some early believers in songs like 'Day In Verona’ and 'All Comes True’ led to Tom Baxter becoming a name to drop. The race began to be able to say you saw him live before everyone else. He multiplied the momentum with tireless gigging, including support slots with the likes of an old acquaintance and fellow survivor, David Gray.

The good news is, that live thing Tom does has made an authentic transfer to record. He’s been working at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios on a debut album that actually deserves the phrase 'eagerly awaited’. And if there was a British rock and pop equivalent of the cab driver’s Knowledge for studio wizardry, Baxter’s co-producer Jon Kelly could have written the exam. He learned with the master, Sir George Martin, and has worked with everyone from Paul McCartney to Kate Bush.

So, for starters, we get a limited edition EP that rewards those who already know Tom¹s music, but also yanks you in off the street if you’re a new listener. The lead song is 'My Declaration,’ the one track on this extended play release that will be on the album. The first single, 'This Boy,’ will follow in the summer.

'My Declaration’ is a song I rewrote and turned into a positive sentiment,' says Tom. It’s really about coming out the other end of a horrible time, and making a declaration to myself in how I wanted to make a change. In your early 20s, you tend to avoid responsibility, it’s like a lot of the time you’ve got blinkers on. It’s about taking the blinkers off.’

Not many new names know their way around their job the way Baxter does. It’s been his life. Born in Suffolk , his early years were spent in Cornwall.'My mum and dad were both musicians as well, they did the ‘60s folk circuit for years. We grew up in an old squat in Cornwall which they bought. I remember them doing gigs and using every spare moment to do the place up. It was sold, and piling into the back of a landrover, we went off in search of another property.'

Staying in all sorts of temporary places, eventually Tom’s parents bought a rundown hotel business in the Suffolk town of Bungay called the Kings Head, where he spent the rest of his teenage years. 'My mum and dad worked really hard at doing it all up and innovating a really creative place. It was essentially a hotel, but out the back we had an old fashioned ballroom and a nightclub beneath it called 'Charlie’s Bar’ that became a really popular place to hang out.

'I met so many different characters living there as a kid. It became part of the UK gigging circuit. There were different acts on almost every night of the week including comedy, dance, theatre, and music, and punters and artists were travelling from all over.’

His brother learned the drums, Tom learned the guitar and by the time they were around 13 or 14, they put a band together. ‘We supported some of the groups that came to our place and played all the pubs and town halls around the area. It was mainly covers and getting pissed but I¹m really, really glad I had that opportunity to do it, it was the best foundation I could have had. Playing live is such an art that I¹ve

learned to have a lot of respect for those people who do it really well.’

Baxter moved to London at 19 to go to music college, which turned out to be more scuzzy outskirts than buzzy metropolis. Plenty of banging away at locked industry doors followed, while his mates began to get jobs, cars and lives. But it was the start of the process of developing from mere musician into rounded songwriter.

'I played gigs in London for years, did lots of different things to pay the rent, and as hard as it was, I avoided getting a proper job because I knew I might just get stuck in it. Painting and decorating became the staple, and in the evenings I would either go out playing my own songs or I’d play jazz/soul covers in cafés and restaurants to keep practicing and get a bit of pocket money.’

Shortly before he was signed, Baxter was working as the in-house DIY man and painter/decorator at the Bedford pub in Balham. ‘In the day I was grouting the toilets, and in the evenings I was playing covers in the front bar,’ he says.

But it was during that time, at that venue, that Tom started to see a shift in music fashion. ‘The Bedford started putting on these ‘singer-songwriter’ shows in the back room. They asked me if I wanted to have a go at playing some of my own songs, so I started doing them, and because of the change in trends, more and more people started coming. It was good timing, I suppose, because everyone had started being interested in real music again.’

That’s the background that’s led Tom Baxter to where you now find him. He’s delighted to be here, but you can forget the usual prerequisite ‘new Messiah’ blagging. 'Your priorities change when you’re older about what¹s actually important,’ he says. 'Going at it for years without any success was a harsh apprenticeship. Now I’m hoping to have a good time doing it. I want to have the opportunity to make more records.’