Baxter Dury is set to release his ninth album Allbarone on September 12. The poppiest album by the man, we talked to Dury on Zoom in the heat of the two singles from the record. Sadly, we were faced with a very poor Internet connection and mostly struggled to understand our words. We still had a brief chat out of the process, though.
Excited for your upcoming album Allbarone. Can you elaborate for our readers what that name actually entails?
Baxter Dury: Well, the name is a way of making the bar name All Bar One, which is a cute name, a bit more wealthier or a bit more serious, whereas in reality it’s quite a downtrodden, a not particularly nice place to go to. So it makes it sound more regal. Does that make sense? It makes it sound posher. So it’s just a romanticizing joke of the real one.
You worked with producer Paul Epworth for this one. Both of you strike me as strongwilled people who know what you want. Was there any disagreement or conflict going on between you two in the creative process?
No, not at all. It was sort of done on his terms, because it was his big studio, and maybe he has the advantage of having so much pop success that in a way allows somebody to control the agenda a little bit. And that was fine for me actually, I really relaxed a bit and allowed somebody else to be quite parental about which direction we were going to go in. I sort of surrendered slightly. That was a part of the creative process, not to try and control everything. Also stopping controlling everything frees you up to do something different, because you end up becoming very familiar with your own tricks. You will just keep doing the same thing basically. So allowing him to take the lead felt innovative to me. He’s quite stubborn anyway.
So it was basically his vision that you followed.
Well, it wasn’t necessarily his vision. We discussed the vision, and he’s a proper old school producer that wants to please, but he does it from a place where he wants to be involved. So he’ll try and assess where I want to get to and then he’ll try and do his version of that. But it was very collaborative.
When you think back to the production process, are there two tracks that stand out, one the easiest and one the hardest to create?
I think the initial track you make is the most important, because that sets a standard for the rest of the thing. It gives you access to each other’s process and then you start to see whether it’s viable, whether it’s going to work or not. And that was “Allbarone” in our process, it happened quite quickly. Prior to that, we were sort of searching for something and I think that defined a moment where we really could see this work, and it ticked all the boxes in terms of being pretty eccentric. It still sounded like something I might do, and was something exciting. So usually the start comes off pretty easily. It’s just something inside you waiting for a chance to come out. How you finish it, though, is always a struggle, because that’s when you start to manage your perspective a bit more. That’s what I currently find difficult in the songwriting world, which is really where Paul’s great experience comes into play. He’s very experienced, and he doesn’t really get worried.
For this album, you once again collaborated with JGrrey on multiple tracks. I have always thought her voice complements your music perfectly. Has there ever been an idea to do a full-on project together? I can you two in a project with the vibe of the band Lovage, honestly.
I don’t know that band you mentioned, but, you know, we all have our own agenda. She’s got her own career on her own. Sometimes it’s better not to try and overexhaust the dynamic. Maybe it works better when it goes the way that we’re doing it. Sometimes you can sort of ruin something a little bit by doing too much, you know what I mean? And it seems to work really well. So, for now, I can’t say much more.
In the track “Allbarone”, you mention a trip you took, with the mention of a failed dating experience. Can you name any place you have been to so far that has taken an effect on you in a profound way?
Oh well, the place I mentioned in the song really is a setting for a miserable situation. (both laugh) It was a rendezvous date that didn’t really work completely, and I was left sitting outside in the rain. So the story is quite true, but it’s been made to sound a little less obvious. It doesn’t explain who was actually there, because I wouldn’t be allowed to do that. Places are always there, depending on what happens in certain situations. They’re stained with positive, negative memories. This place comes with a rather negative memory. It was not very nice in the first place, but it was made a lot worse by my situation. But I do like certain places that really have had a great impact, of course.
Let’s imagine we’re at a Musicians Theme Park 100 years from now, where every artist or band featured has their own memorial stone with a certain lyric by them written on it. Which one of your lyrics so far would you like to see written on your stone?
Maybe the main line of my song “The Night Chancers”: “You left me with the crumbs of my spare thoughts / You left me with the noise of the night chancers.”
You can check out Baxter Dury’s Bandcamp profile here.
