On Tuesday night of February 26th, people gathered to hear the husky-voiced singer Tom Walker perform songs from his debut album What A Time to Be Alive.
The reception and performance were held at the esteemed Ludlow House of Soho House in the Lower East Side, a perfectly intimate setting for the crowd that piled in. At 8 pm, after the audience had had a chance to grab a drink from the bar and settle into a velvet settee, Tom Walker took to the stage.
He began with playing on audio, three of his songs from his debut album, one of which is a duet with Swedish pop star, Zara Larson. Stay tuned if you want to know which song it is. After watching the audience listen to the first three tracks, Walker finally graced the people with some live songs.
Although all of his songs are stellar, the crowd favorite was his well-known “Leave A Light On.” Before each song, Walker enlightened the audience on what inspired each song, ranging from a charmingly heart-warming ballad for his fiancé to a moving story of his conversation with a homeless woman. Walker’s beautiful lyricism and raw soulful voice failed to disappoint. There was not a dry eye in the house.
I sat down and had a chat with the endearing singer-songwriter the day before to discuss the much-anticipated drop of his debut album, What A Time to Be Alive, his plans for his next tour, and his celebration plans when he won the 2019 Brit awards for British Breakthrough Act. I’ll give you a hint, it involves a trampoline, a big one.
The Knockturnal: Well first of all congratulations on winning a Brit award for British Breakthrough Act. That’s amazing! What was that like winning for you?
Tom Walker: Well, I really wasn’t expecting to win, because we were up against some extreme talent and they had massive followings online and we were kind of the underdog. So, I had five beers before my speech because I was like ‘I was fine.’ So, I was pretty tipsy, but it was an amazing feeling, like really, really crazy. It was a real achievement that we managed to win that and me and the label and the management and everybody were super proud. We worked really hard to spread the word and do lots of promo and radio and TV and all this stuff. I did 22 days in a row without a day off, just hammering it, trying to get it together and then it all paid off! Crazy!
The Knockturnal: Did you do anything to celebrate that night that you won?
Tom Walker: Well, my mum managed to buy tickets for the Brits because they only gave me two tickets. So, one for me and one for my manager and I managed to get one off one of my friends for my fiancé which was cool, and my mum and dad were there. And then for the after party, I managed to sneak in my mum, my dad, and my two best mates that I grew up with. They grew up, one of them was three doors down and one of them was five doors down, in the town that I grew up in. They came and we ended up just partying until full on the next day, it was 5 pm the next day when we eventually went to bed. We really partied hard and celebrated. One of my friends took it upon himself to order a trampoline. I live one the second floor of a flat and he ordered a trampoline to the flat.
The Knockturnal: Like a small one?
Tom Walker: No no, a ten-foot trampoline! Yeah, this is how crazy it got, it was ridiculous! He’s wanting to send it back now. I was on the phone with him yesterday and he’s like, “I’ve got no money I don’t know why I’ve ordered a trampoline! You live in a flat!” He was so stupid, but at the time he was like, “You’ve won a Brit award, I’m buying you a trampoline!”
The Knockturnal: The fifth track on your album is “Now You’re Gone” and you sing it with Zara Larsson, what was that like working with her?
Tom Walker: So, I didn’t actually get to work with her face to face, unfortunately, because of schedule clashes, which is a shame, but I just love her as an artist. I remember seeing her for the first time do a Radio1 Live Lounge with “It Ain’t My Fault” and she brought this amazing band with her and this gospel drummer and all these crazy chops. She’s just been a massive inspiration for me, she’s the ultimate all singing, all dancing pop star, she’s sick. To have her on my debut album was ridiculous. But she was working a lot with Steve Mac, who I wrote “Leave A Light On” with, and one day she was in the studio vocaling another track, and Steve let her hear the track and she jumped on it and did a vocal. And you would never know that we didn’t do the song together because it sounds so connected. She must have really got into like what the song was about and the emotion of it because the song is really connected, which is amazing.
The Knockturnal: Some of your songs on your debut album, I’m specifically thinking of “Dominoes,” which is such a beautiful song by the way, that have a slight political and social undertone, was there a specific event that inspired this song?
Tom Walker: I think it’s a lot of things. A lot of things are happening in Britain with Brexit and politics just falling to pieces and I think it’s the same around Europe, and stuff in America’s gone down, as I’m sure you’re aware. I was just getting a bit upset every time I turned on the telly. It seemed like this forceful, right-wing thing was just coming through, and I just don’t really understand it you know? It stresses me out, so I wanted to make a song that kind of reflected that we are all responsible for this happening. Like get out and vote and make a change! Don’t just sit there and expect somebody else to sort his out. We are all in this together and we need to try and make a positive difference. If I could do it even slightly by hinting it in that tune, then that’s kind of my way to go around and do it, but I don’t really know what to do. It’s a crazy time to be living in now. What A Time to Be Alive is both negative and positive. There are so many things going on around the world that are crazy.
The Knockturnal: Your songs are extremely personal and come from such a vulnerable place, what is the writing process for writing songs like that?
Tom Walker: I think it’s just whatever is going on in my life. For me songwriting is therapy, so if I’m feeling particularly upset, or on the other hand, particularly happy, about something, I’ll try my best to capture the moment and put it in a song. I can’t write songs about things that haven’t happened to me. They don’t come through and when I do, I’ve done one song and it was not a real thing and I’m not gonna name it, because I don’t want you to know. But I just feel like I didn’t connect with it because of that reason. It didn’t have a dialogue and I didn’t have a clear idea about what it was about and what was going on, and I really noticed that. So, I try and just take everything that is personal as it can be so that so that people feel like not only is it happening to me but it’s happening to them and can relate to those stories.
The Knockturnal: You are keeping us on our toes with a new release on Feb 22 with “Not Giving In” can you explain what that song is about and the inspiration and story behind it?
Tom Walker: Sure! I was living in Finsbury Park for a while and there was a woman who’s homeless and she lived under the Finsbury Park Tube Station bridge. She was there for a long time, and one night we sat down, and I shared a cigarette with her, I rolled her up a rollie, and we had a brief chat and she was really lovely, but she’s obviously been through some pretty terrible stuff. And one day she just disappeared, and I often wondered what would have happened had I extended more of a hand and offered to help more. Obviously, people are living their own lives and you can’t save everybody, and you can’t go around trying to save people that you don’t really know. Do you know what I mean? Especially if they’ve not even asked. But I just thought that was a good basis of a song and I based the whole thing on the chat that we had together and that’s what it was about.
The Knockturnal: Is there a song on the album that is particularly special to you?
Tom Walker: Yeah Sure! “The Show” which is the last track of the album for me is one of my absolute favorites. One night I was in London, and this was like three years ago, I was in this club queue to get in with my mates and it was taking ages. We had been in it for like 45 minutes and we were getting nowhere, and I just said to them, ‘You know what, I’m not doing this. I’m wasting my life here.” And I went out and they went in, and for 4 hours I walked around London and I wrote these stories and I wrote everything that I could see before me. People pouring out of other clubs and stumbling in the street, or jumping into cabs, or eating kebabs in the street. All these things and it looked and felt like at the time that London was putting on a show just for me. And it was this beautiful picturesque thing that just in the moment was happening all in front of me and I wrote it all down.
I finished it a week later with a guy called Paul O’Duffy, who worked with Amy Winehouse back in the day. He’s a real cool guy. And we went to record it in the studio and I’ve never let the band hear it. The morning we recorded it I let them hear it twice and then we just started recording, and the take that we ended up using we completely improvised the outro and just did it in the moment by all just jamming together. It was this magical moment of this song coming together out of the randomest thing. Of me fucking off in line with my mates and walking around London to three years later, one of the best studios in London, one of the best producers I’ve ever worked with. It was this beautiful moment in time with my band, I don’t know, there was just something about it that gave me goosebumps.
The Knockturnal: You are going back on tour after the album drop in the UK in April I believe, what is your favorite part about being on tour?
Tom Walker: I’m quite nervous about it this time because when we started touring it was like we were charging a tenner a ticket and you know people are expecting to come down and see a band, some lights, you know? People, I think, are expecting a show now, like a big production. And we really are pouring a lot of money into it and trying to make it as big as it can be, but there’s just a bit more pressure this time around. It doesn’t mean I don’t love it, I adore it, and I adore doing good gigs and getting everything perfect and right and it’s such a buzz. Yeah, I think it’s gonna be different this time, it’s gonna be a special one
The Knockturnal: What are you looking forward to in the new year of 2019?
Tom Walker: Yeah, I hope Glastonbury asks me to do a set. I’ve bought tickets in case I’m not invited to play. That’s how excited I am about Glastonbury, so it would be awesome to do a set there. We’ve got another UK tour, we’ve got a European tour, we’re coming back to the US, but first an Australian tour, we’re going to Japan. We’re doing loads of stuff so it’s gonna be an exciting year!
