Baxter Dury has endured and adapted his sound for two decades. His upcoming tour will see him stop off with his bag full of alternative wonders following his latest album, I Thought I Was Better Than You. The brains behind Cocaine Man and Slumlord sits down with Ewan Gleadow to talk nylon suits, a Glastonbury appearance and the need to capture artistic “essence” in music appealing to yourself, not your listeners.
Ewan Gleadow: Before we dive in I just wanted to say I saw you open for Pulp at Castlefield Bowl in Manchester. I was on there for a date, it was an incredible start.
Baxter Dury: Weird venue, right?
Ewan: Really strange, a bit on the river.
Baxter: On a motorway and a river. It was a weird industrial place and smaller than I thought it’d be. Quite urban.
Ewan: How’d that gig come about? I know you’ve worked with Jarvis Cocker in the past on some remixes but you opened a couple of times for Pulp.
Baxter: We’re good pals. We’re all quite connected there. We’re connected by management and they probably shoved me on there, or Jarvis probably asked. It was nice to do those shows, though it’s always quite tough supporting someone, even if it’s your friend or not. Especially a band that people are so precious about seeing and haven’t seen for so long, so they’re so singularly dedicated to that. They’re a bit like “Stop delaying, why are you wearing a nylon suit? Fuck off.”
Ewan: You’re heading on tour too, starting in April and stopping off at The Glasshouse in Newcastle on the way.
Baxter: Yeah, I’ve never played in Newcastle on my own before, I don’t think. I might have supported Noel Gallagher there in a big arena but then you get a different type of audience there. It’s quite a big venue, isn’t it?
Ewan: Yeah, I saw Father John Misty play there last year. He was in and out, it was lovely.
Baxter: He’s probably got quite the draw too. So how big is that venue then?
Ewan: Glasshouse? 1,000 or so? I’ll double-check… 1,600 or so.
Baxter: Oh fucking hell-
Ewan: It’s one of the ugliest buildings I’ve ever seen. It’s like a big glass dome, obviously, it’s called the Glasshouse. It’s gorgeous inside, the actual Sage One stage is beautiful. There’s probably a bit of charm to it, I grew up down the road from it.
Baxter: I like coming up to Newcastle, the brutalness. We’ll see what happens.
Ewan: You’ll have Glastonbury to play too this year.
Baxter: Yeah, actually weird being up to play for the first time. I’ve been there a million times. Yeah. It’s quite an odd lineup. It doesn’t seem to be one of those where there’s a connection between the people playing, but maybe that’s not always a bad thing. I always think it gets too stuffy with a bunch of old people. I mean, it is a bit safe. But what’s quite good if all the headliners are safe is people seek you out more because people don’t go to festivals for the music. You don’t really go there for the music, do you?
Ewan: I’m off to my first festival in August. I’ve been convinced to go to Leedsfest. I saw the headliners. It’ll be a lot of wandering about. But I can calm down before then. Your debut, Len Parrot’s Memorial Lift, is one of my chillout albums. I’ll finish work and pop that on to depressurize. That and The Night Chancers, which is a surprise given how heavy the material is. But to turn that on its head, what are those songs out there which get your adrenaline pumping, those tracks that get your arse into gear.
Baxter: That’s nice to hear. Those two records are probably connected somehow, I’m sure. The first one is so naive. I made it all up on the spot.
Ewan: There’s an innocence to it.
Baxter: Absolutely. I didn’t know what I was doing. Totally. I was in the deep end. I don’t really have favourites or any of that stuff. I tend to start listening to things for different reasons, I’ve got music I love but I’ve exhausted that. When you exhaust the music you love you start to see why people like other music. I tend to very slowly process why, you know, why people like dance. I don’t get it. Then you get introduced to people that are really good at it. I’ve been listening to a lot of dance music actually, and then you start with hip hop, modern hip hop. Really good music that’s got really smart people doing it. There are so many people in this country making brilliant dance music, Overmono and Joy Orbison. I quite like the freedom and the way they construct songs, they’re not really songs, they’re sort of moments and feelings and I really like it. I like it a lot more than I ever thought I would.
Ewan: How has listening to Kendrick Lamar and Frank Ocean affected your work? It’s been nice hearing those develop over the last two records.
Baxter: It’s probably more evident on the last one because I shifted out of a format and did something slightly different. You always have the essence of what is you there. I guess that’s a good thing because otherwise, you go into imposter syndrome if you think you’re something you are not. You can only acknowledge those influences and try and have fun with them, and not try and pretend that you are them. You know what I mean? If I made something that was a dance record, I mustn’t ever think that I really am. People have spent years crafting something and understanding something, but I think it’s just clever to nod to it. I’ve got a very distinctive lack of skills, so that defines my music anyway. As soon as I talk or try and sing, it defines what you’re going to listen to. I can’t change it that much.
Ewan: There’s a sense of not duty but respect to a listener, to be honest and open with them, to not meddle with it too much. It’s the difference between creation and manipulation.
Baxter: Yeah, exactly. It’s enjoyable. I’m trying to get my head around something now, which is good. What you realise when you write a load of slow songs and a load of normal songs, everyone sits and listens to it, but nobody actually moves. As soon as you have something remotely dance-oriented, everyone starts jumping around and that’s much more fun. I think there’s a line somewhere. You don’t have to be honest with a listener you have to be honest with yourself and then that will come through.
If you’re a bit delusional it just falls apart I think. It’s really about what you’ve got to do for yourself. You can’t design anything based on a bunch of people or the idea of what people want. You can only really survive by thinking “Well this might work”, but you can’t pretend too much because that just doesn’t really work. I guess the best thing alternative artists do is they find something in themselves that’s interesting and draw on that. That’s not always easy, but it’s quite effective. You’ve got to be honest with yourself.
Ewan: Definitely. It may not be the goal for everybody but it seems like a good place to start.
Baxter: Yeah. You’ve got to believe in that and sometimes you discover it and then exhaust it, and it’s cheesy in itself. You’ve got to change up enough of it. Just constant awareness is good, with any art form. Filmmaking, breadmaking, a constant awareness that you’re not reselling the same dish. You can’t pretend that you’re now selling sushi.
Ewan: Something’s a favourite one day and the next day it isn’t. You can’t repeat yourself. I don’t want to mention specifics because I don’t want to get myself in hot water but there are just some who do repeat themselves and I can’t get away with it.
Baxter: Come on, tell me.
Ewan: For me, it’s Oasis, but that might be because I fell into listening to Suede and Elastica. You get some bands now where you listen in and think they’re spinning a crock of shit. Not Oasis, but the influences they had on the sound. There’s nothing specific to it.
Baxter: Probably the worst music in fact, the worst movement of music potentially full of total bullshitters, is spoken word music. I might be responsible for it, but you sometimes feel it might be an empty art form now. People do it as an excuse not to write a song. If you can sing, bloody well sing.
Ewan: Rock revival too, Greta Van Fleet. Watered down Led Zeppelin. The flavour is there, it’s just not put together. I always worry it sounds snooty when you chat to mates, though, and it sounds like you’re slagging them off.
Baxter: What I tend to find is a lot of older people slagging off younger people and some of the people in bands are just kids. You can’t slag them off. They’re just kids. Older people are slagging these younger people off, it’s the younger people who ascend to much greater heights. It’s a bit cynical. I’m just slightly less opinionated than I thought I was. Music’s quite a simple thing, really. You shouldn’t over-credit it with any great insight, and what I write is very basic and a bit about micropolitics. It’s not about anything large and it doesn’t have any political implications or consequences of anyone’s behaviour except for my own. It’s a bit personal, really. They’re not love songs, but they’re in the emotional realm.
Ewan: It’s tone, then. Like It’s A Pleasure or Printed Tears, which remind me of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jacques Tati more than anything.
Baxter: There’s a cultural nod to those covers. I like the styling and accidental coolness of those. When you’re not very cool but you’re kind of irregular looking. I think they’re good. I think there’s a bit of intention to it.
Ewan: There’s a Parisian sense to it, that rhythm it conjures up.
Baxter: Paris is a funny old place. It’s kind of weird. It’s like a village, small. There are some really idiotic men there. Less idiotic women, but some really idiotic men tuck their jackets into their trousers. They’re a bit suffocated by over-fashion. I do like the bread.
Ewan: I can’t get enough of good bread. I moved to Hull about a year ago and there’s a bakery nearby.
Baxter: Northern bread. I used to go on holiday to Hull when I was a kid. It’s so old school. There’s a lot of nice stuff around there.
Ewan: It must be one of the benefits of going on tour, seeing cities and playing around in them. How does an average day look on the tour?
Baxter: It depends really. Where you are. When, where, and how long you’ve got. I’m an early riser. I try and discover a bit. Have a coffee and wander about once you’ve been in for six months not touring, you’re ready to go out and drink it all in again. By the time you finish, you never want to do it again. You do see a bit, it’s really nice. You wake up in Cologne or somewhere, there are some brilliant places and you go into these weird Eastern Bloc countries and they’re amazing. Some of them are really frozen in time. I love it.
Ewan: The type of venue must help too, the more out-there ones to break up the pace.
Baxter: Oh, completely. It depends on what category of travelling band you are too. Some people just bludgeon themselves into a stupor and then they get up 10 minutes before the gig and they live life in a slightly intoxicated cycle and probably don’t see much. But if you’re a bit like me who gets up really early and is a bit hyperactive, you go and see quite a lot. Too much, probably, I exhaust myself.
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