Interview: Tom A. Smith

 

 

 

The Detroit Social Club used to come round to my house every Tuesday evening. They’d move all the sofas, we’d play football for an hour, FIFA for an hour, and then there’d be a ten-minute guitar lesson at the end. I just thought it was cool that these rock stars were coming over and trashing the house. I didn’t love music instantly, I just loved the occasion. But the guitar lessons got longer and longer as I got older, and by the time I was eight I was playing my first gigs. It sometimes looks like overnight from the outside, but it isn’t like that. It’s a lot of work and a lot of years. But right now, it’s so exciting, not just for me but for my band, my family, all of us experiencing it together for the first time. There’s a buzz happening with what I’m creating that I haven’t felt before. Things are moving at a pace they never have. And now that it’s clicking, it feels really authentic, really natural, and that’s clearly coming across.

 

Sometimes I just do things as a joke and then they click. I bought a jacket in a vintage shop in Lincoln at the end of a tour last year for a tenner, bright red, with “Joanne’s Dance Place” on the back. I wore it to every gig for ages because it was such a statement piece. Then I wrote ‘Put On A Record Tommy’ in January this year, and everything just connected. The EP already existed, it just needed something to give it an identity. That song fell out of the sky really quickly and it gave everything a home.

 

It is an alter ego, yeah. The most outgoing, confident version of myself, the one that maybe doesn’t show up in every other walk of life. I’ve never been called Tommy once in my entire life, which I love. It’s such an over-the-top, dramatic way of saying Tom. And then the polka dots came, and the white braces, and the polka dot tie and the bright pink, and it just worked. It felt like this extreme entertainer. It’s been really fun to inhabit.

 

Yeah, and I think it makes people curious. They hear Put On A Record Tommy and then they hear something like The Band and they think “What is going on here?” I like having a song where you hear one thing and it’s about something else entirely. The EP covers a lot, confidence, becoming a young adult, all those responsibilities shifting onto you at once. It’s a lot to comprehend. The wrap might suit a dance floor but not all the songs do, and I like that.

 

Everything I do, I have to post about and share, especially anything on stage. And that makes you feel like you always have to look and be at your best, all day, every day. Nobody is. So it’s me taking ownership of that, giving myself three minutes to be the most out-there, outgoing version of myself possible. And hopefully anyone listening feels the exact same thing. I always test songs for a few months live before releasing them, just to know whether they’re the ones. And as soon as SFX went into the setlist, you could feel the impact immediately.

 

I met her a couple of years ago at a party in Manchester. I did a couple of songs on acoustic guitar and she was really complimentary. Then I saw her again at an awards show in London, and the day I wrote ‘Put On A Record Tommy’ I just sent it to her; I thought it really needed another voice on it. She was instantly up for it and sent me fifteen vocal stems within a day. It was incredible. My very first gig was at the Cluny in Newcastle, and I was wearing a Happy Mondays T-shirt. On the last tour, we sold the Cluny out, and I brought Rowetta out on stage. That was definitely a full-circle moment for me.

 

Put On A Record Tommy, because it’s become the track of the set already. The Band, because it’s probably my favourite thing I’ve released so far. And the very first demo of Fashion, because that was the moment things clicked with this new sound and this new identity. That’s when I knew I was onto something. I signed my first record deal because of tracks like that.

 

I wanted something that felt unanswered and open, something that could lead me into whatever comes next. We played it as the closing song on the entire sold-out tour, even though it was unreleased at the time. Six minutes, acoustic guitar, every single night. That’s quite a statement. But it clicked instantly almost everywhere we played it, and that was exciting. I’ll talk about what it’s really about in the summer. But the moment I wrote it, I knew I had an EP.

 

The first time I held my own record, even just a test pressing, felt so good. My family framed the last ones. And it’s just such a different thing. The first run sold out in a day because we didn’t know how many to do. This time we’ve had a bigger run. I still have to go to my mate’s dad’s house to hear the test pressings properly because my record player’s rubbish, but his dad’s an absolute record geek with the full setup, so it works out.

 

He rang me at a family barbecue in the summer, just said he’d been writing this film and wanted me to be in it. I’d never met him in person, he’d just seen me on socials and knew I was from Sunderland. And the character is a similar age to me, from Sunderland, learning music in the same places I learned music. For a first acting role, it’s about as easy an entry point as you could hope for. Though it’s a musical, so there’ll probably be a couple of dance moves in there. We’ll see.

 

Festivals, new music, keeping the momentum. Isle of Wight is one I can’t wait for, The Cure are on and I’ve never seen them live. They’re my heroes. I get compared to Robert Smith occasionally, which I’ll always take. But yeah, lots going on, keep a look out.