With the COVID19 pandemic taking hold across the globe, Folk and Tumble took time out to speak to the musicians and promoters who though no fault of their own have found themselves out of work and facing uncertain futures. This time around, we spoke with singer-songwriter Anthony Toner.
FT: You’ve just released a new album. Were you forced to bring forward the release due to the COVID19 situation?
AT: No, I’d been planning to put this out at the end of January actually and it got delayed so the arrival coincided with the outbreak completely by accident.
FT: You’ve covered works by some of your musical heroes this time. How did that grow from an idea to the finished product?
AT: I had first started off over the last few years with the idea of redoing some of my own songs in an acoustic setting. Let me be clear, I very seldom listen to my own back catalogue, but having played many of these songs live with just a guitar over the years, it struck me that I’d like to revisit some of those tracks and strip them right back to their basics.
In the studio, I have always had a tendency to over-arrange things. It’s been a lack of confidence on my part, I think. And I’m a better guitar player now so I’m perhaps a bit more confident in the delivery. Anyway, I think this album is probably a dry run for that project. I already had an arrangement of ‘Back On The Chain Gang’ and ‘Everytime You Go Away’. By the time I got ‘Scarlet Ribbons’ and ‘Young Hearts Run Free’ under my fingers, I thought, “maybe there’s a covers album in the pipeline first”. I was able to record them very simply at home. Some bass and vocals were recorded at Clive Culbertson’s studio in Coleraine but the approach was very basic from the word go and the production part of it seemed very fast. It seemed to move from the idea to the finished product in a short, fairly straight line.
FT: Were the songs just personal favourites of yours or do you relate them to personal experiences in your own life?
AT: A bit of both. Some of these songs I associate with certain people. My mother loved that Cowboy Jack Clement song ‘I Know One’. We had it on an old Charley Pride live album. So I sang that song for years for my mother when we would have tipsy sing songs in the house.
I used to sing ‘Goodbye’ by Steve Earle in my bar gig days so it’s been there for a long time. That first Rickie Lee Jones album is embedded in a particularly broken-hearted time in my teens so those songs are rooted in there pretty deeply. ‘Back On The Chain Gang’ is just a beautiful piece of writing. So is ‘She Gives Me Religion’. ‘Sugar Mountain’ I sang as a lullaby when my daughter was a baby. Songs get their hooks into you over the years, for all kinds of reasons.
FT: Like many musicians at the minute, you are sitting at home having had your main source of income taken away from you through no fault of your own. How does that sudden loss affect you financially and mentally?
AT: The diary has just emptied out so the immediate income stream of the next couple of months has just vanished, and that’s pretty frightening for a while. But you immediately get into firefighting mode and start trying to postpone the gigs ’til later in the year, rather than have them cancelled completely.
I was lucky enough to have a short tour with Barbara Dickson just before the shutters came down so there was some income coming in until the middle of March. And the sales of the new CD are also useful so I’ll keep pushing away at that door. Of course, we have no way of knowing exactly how long this whole thing will last so that’s disconcerting. I have work to do, some songs for the next recording project, so I have something to be getting on with to keep my mind off it.
Mentally, I really miss the social aspect of it. Income is one thing but the sociability of going out to play, meeting people, sharing the stage with other artists, playing an instrument, having a coffee, making future plans – losing all of that is a real blow.
FT: Did you have to cancel tour dates?
AT: Yes and no. To be honest, I didn’t have many “Anthony Toner” solo dates in the spring. I was kind of saving myself for a push on live work next year. But there were a couple of interesting things I was looking forward to, of course. There always are. There were also about a dozen gigs with the Ronnie Greer Blues Band through the spring that have all been pulled and that’s hard. Those are always fun.
FT: As a self-employed musician are you able avail of any of the recently announced government support measures?
AT: The package announced by the government is a welcome move, and it’s something that I hope will help to keep promoters and venues and festivals afloat. Without them, artists like me are in real trouble. At the moment, there’s not much on offer there for self-employed artists. There’s a lot of lobbying going on, and there’s a suggestion that there may be a package to come, but so far it doesn’t look like there’s much on offer for us We’ll see.
FT: What can people do to support musicians like yourself through this difficult time?
AT: Any kind of connection is welcome. Luckily I have a new album to talk about so I’m happy to receive mail orders for the physical CD from my website. There are back catalogue albums on there too and I have padded envelopes all ready to go. The new album is also available to stream or download on all of the usual sites so all of those plays are welcome and being added to playlists and so on would be good.
The CD will be with radio stations shortly and if you feel like contacting presenters with a request that also helps. Hopefully, we’ll all be able to reconnect as human beings before too long.
FT: Thanks for your time. Stay safe and I hope to see you on the other side before too long.