Slough
born singer songwriter and camper van dweller, Tom Dibb is currently in the
process of putting the final touches on his first ever full-length record at
Bedfordshire's Grand Chapel Studios following an epic musical adventure that
took Tom from London to Melbourne overland creating an LP that speaks of his
unique experiences during his 18 months on the road.
We
spoke to Tom Dibb about his new single ‘Hit The Road’.
How would you describe your
new song?
It’s
got an acoustic vibe like most of my tracks but it’s folk mixed in with
country, with a bit of pop in there, and it’s a story about hitting the road,
whichever way you can, be it car, foot or bicycle. Just going out and exploring
and breaking the ties with all the things that hold us back sometimes.
Can you tell us a bit about
your campervan and the journey you’ve had?
It
was a bit of an experiment really to see if one could get original songs heard
across the world without huge budgets, massive record labels or talent shows. I
thought I’d go and do it the only way I knew how which was to drive and play
live to everyone I met along the way, and I ended up in twenty-four countries
doing 21,750 miles overland [with] an awful lots of wild experiences and lots
of cool people!
That must have been a great
adventure for you to be on?
Absolutely!
I feel really privileged to have been able to do it [and] I wouldn’t have been
able to do it if it weren’t for a trusty VW camper van and to the people who
supported me on the way around and beforehand. I did a crowdfunding
Kickstarter, [with] merchandise sales, and if it wasn’t for all those people
then I wouldn’t have got as far as quickly as I did!
It’s probably difficult to
sum up a whole journey into one soundbite, but did you a favourite moment on
the road?
I’ve
been asked this is a few times and I’ve kind of dwindled it down to something like
a few countries I’d love to go back to as I didn’t spend enough time there. One
of the most enjoyable experiences when I think back wasn’t the places I would
have thought where there was a big music scene and I was playing all the time,
it was actually when going through central Asia and the desert, spending so
much time on my own reflecting on life gone by, and what I was seeing day to
day, seeing how different people lived and how the cultures are and how people
are living today, and how they deal with day-to-day life, just interacting with
folk. Without that kind of opportunity, or the experience of travel, you’d never
get to see how they live, or them how I live and the music that I make and the
music they make. After reflecting on it for a while that was one of the most
amazing parts of it.
How did the journey transform
itself into an album?
I
wrote the song ‘Hit The Road’ prior to the journey. Having come up with the
idea of the tour, which was called ‘The Pickle Down Under’, as the van is
called ‘Pickle’ and the tour was to Australia. I’d come up with this project
over a few jars with an old mate of mine in a North London pub about
two-and-a-half years before I left. The song followed that a year or so later
but then it became very relevant for the tour and I was doing videos in each
country and the track became a backing track to that. And then it had to go on
the album. The album’s called ‘Ground Up’ and it’s about my life from when I
first started writing to planning the tour to songs I wrote during the project
to when I got back earlier this year to record. There are literally songs there
from the ground up.
Was it useful to do that
journey as a backdrop to ground yourself for the album?
Absolutely.
I thought maybe I would write a lot more whilst I was doing the tour. I ended
up doing about two or three songs [so] there were songs prior to the journey itself
and then songs from the early days of writing. I never like to put myself under
too much pressure, especially with the driving and keeping the van running, and
keeping myself running and sorting out the logistics of the project, like
boarding passes, visas and shipping. It didn’t leave me with as quite as much
time to write as I’d hoped. The album has become, rather than just a story of
the Australian tour, but a story of my tour from the age of twenty-one when I
began writing, living in London and writing, work full time in a phone shop,
kind of scraping things together, to then moving into a camper van and living
life of a touring museum, again trying to keep things tied together, then
leaving home for the Australian tour and trying to do what I always wanted to
do, and love doing, and stay afloat whilst doing so and branching out as much
as possible!
Your journey has also been
picked up in print hasn’t it?
The
VW community, the camper van and beetle community, is huge and they’ve played a
massive role in my music and keeping me going. I started doing camper van
festivals a few years ago and now a lot of the festivals I visit are Volkswagen
festivals. I ended up getting up with Just Campers who are a parts company and
Camper and Commercial magazine who’ve just done part one of ‘The Pickle Down
Under’, my adventures down under.
What was it like making the
video for ‘Hit The Road’?
It
was an alright idea and it was definitely good fun doing it. It pretty much
involves Pickle and me and the boys from the back playing on the roof rack in a
field [and] driving along, with an awful lot of cows, and there are cut-aways
to us playing in Grantchapel Studios where the album was recorded. It was quite
the jolly!
Have you got any live gigs
coming up?
There
are a few gigs coming up. I’m actually heading to into Porthmadog this weekend,
Black Rock Sands, to do the Final Countdown, which is one of the final VW
festivals of the season, then I’m doing a support gig for a friend of mine
called Danny Gruff which is on the 15th October at the Camden
Assembly. Other than that I’m doing a lot of street performing, which I love
doing. I’ve found it’s a great way of reaching out to a wider audience and
playing to new people. I’ve got some Christmas fayres and then at the beginning
of the new year myself and the boys from the band are doing an album launch
tour. We haven’t done it the usual way around but because we are a small team
the way things have turned out is get the album out and then in the new year,
when everyone is back together and we’ve got some more power in the system, we’re
going to head up potentially as far as Scotland and Newcastle, plus Leeds,
Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Milton Keynes and London, so doing a full UK tour
for the album.
How would you describe your
live sound?
It’s
quite varied. I do an awful lot of shows solo acoustic, and the duo, trio and
everything up to a full band. It’s an acoustic vibe. A lot of my songs come
across as stories, with reggae, roots, blues and Americana, everything I’ve
ever listened to in there. It can be chilled and can be high-powered too!
Finally what are your
ambitions for the next six months?
I
probably spend two-thirds of my life now in the camper van and the rest of the
time I’m in the studio! We’ve already started work on some other tracks for a
potential EP release around Christmas or new year. We’re looking at doing a
video for a second single off the album. There’s pipe dreams of some other epic
tours to try and reach out and get my songs heard across the world. I’m going
to have to hold fire on that for another year or so and see how we go and just
keep making music really!
For
more information visit www.tomdibb.com or
facebook.com/tomdibbmusic.
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