Beans on Toast: "It's like I have built-in friends scattered around"

Hello beautiful, creative people!

Boy, do we have a treat for you this week, in the form of singer-songwriter Beans on Toast! Beans was full of anecdotes galore and he was great fun to chat with - you can either read on for the interview or click the video below to watch it.

Contains some strong language...

Hi Beans! I wanted to open up the conversation by telling you a story.

Great!

I want to tell you the story of how I was introduced to your music. It was in October 2017, and I was in Byron Bay in Australia. This was a beautiful period, of my life. I didn't own a pair of shoes, and I had some crappy phone that could just text and phone call, and I used to walk around everywhere with a guitar. At that point I only knew a few chords, but I used to walk up to people and I used to just strum a random chord and just make a little rhyme for them - just something stupid. For example, one time I was on a balcony in Byron Bay and there was a rugby tour there, so I’d strum a chord and go "Hello you with the bald head, you're a little bit bigger than me. I hope you don't mind this song, this rhyme I'm just being silly" - you know, just something silly like that.

And the girl I was hanging out with asked if I’d heard of Beans On Toast, and the first song that she ever played up to me of yours was 'War on War'. I fell in love with it instantly; I played it on repeat constantly. And so whenever I hear ‘War on War' now, I'm instantly transported back to that period of time. I wondered if there's a particular song for you that transports you back to a moment in your life?

That story certainly reminded me of an old friend of mine who was also called Jay. Years ago, when I used to hand out flyers at various tube stations for club nights, the way a friend of mine used to travel was very similar to the story you said. He had a harmonica - he couldn't play a harmonica - but he'd stand by the ticket machine and go "do da do da do da do... nice shirt!... do la do la do la loo... give me a quid, give me a ticket!" - Even if he had money! He called the harmonica his travel card.

But songs that transport me back... I think with stuff like that, the best songs that are going to really transport me have to catch me off-guard. I remember hearing a Tom Waits song and it transported me back to sitting in the back of my dad's car, mainly because my dad used to kind of rewrite the lyrics for it.

Like "I'm riding with Donald Duck!", rather than riding with Lady Luck, but then another time I went to listen to the same Tom Waits song in the hope to have that flashback down memory lane, and it wasn't there. It’s like smell, isn’t it? To really be transported, it can’t be premeditated.

And I suppose it is songs of my youth. I saw Placebo play at Latitude a couple of years ago. They were a huge band for me growing up as they were the kind of... I was listening to gangsta rap, which as amazing as the music was, it didn't necessarily speak to who I was as this skinny little virgin growing up in Essex, singing about pimps and hustling and all this! So finding Placebo and having music I could relate to a bit more, it was a really big album for me. So then when I saw Placebo doing a 20 year anniversary of that first album at Latitude, that was great. They played loads of album tracks as well – I might try and remember what it was like to be a teenager and put one of their obvious tunes, but an album track that I hadn't heard for years... It's like, "woooow, I remember this!". A kid with smoke in my lungs in a ditch on the side of town, ripping my jeans, painting my nails and stuff like that.

I guess that's one of the purposes of music really isn't it? To be able to capture a moment in your life. And that's why a song can mean so much to so many different people.

That was an amazing story! I love the idea of you listening to gangsta rap as a “skinny teenage virgin”!

Yeah man, I had raps! Me and my mate were in a hip hop duo called The Blind Judges. And it was like... "I'll steal your bitch and your hoes, and take all your dough while I'm at it..." And you know, I was like a fucking virgin!

On your website, I’ve seen that you describe yourself as a poet, and this is a theme that's quite continuous throughout your music, in your song 'Things' you say you see the poetry in everything in life - which is really exciting for us at Poems by Post! We speak to a lot of people about poetry, and we do occasionally hear people tell us that they’re “not interested in poetry".

What would you say to those people?

Well, it's probably just how they're probably what poetry is. I mean, there's poetry in the way that you walk, in the way that you dress, isn't there? At the same time, you can see why the idea of someone really po-faced and serious standing up to a hushed room and baring their soul wouldn’t sound like a party to a lot of people. But, what song doesn't have poetry in it? I would consider myself a songwriter over a poet, really, but I understand that there's a huge aspect of poetry within all songwriting - through the words and the music as well.

I like to think of poetry a sort of majestic thing that binds everything together, a sort of explanation of us trying to make sense of the world around us. It's a word to me like 'art' which just covers such a huge, broad range that it'd be foolish to say you don't like it. But I wouldn't go out of my way to try and convince someone. I'd just be like, "well, crack on - I'm not fussed!"

All of your albums, which you release every year on your birthday, tend to be a chronicle of your past year – both of world events and personal things that you've gone through. Last year you released two albums on the same day, Knee Deep in Nostalgia and the Unforeseeable Future. What was the reasoning behind that?

Fucking covid, in short! Knee Deep in Nostalgia was the album that would have happened anyway. It was coming out on my 40th birthday, and the overarching theme of the album was going to be sort of autobiographical, looking back through my life. I think I'd written the nine songs that are on the album in January last year and had things gone a different way then I just would have written more songs in that manner. And then this time last year when everything started going fucking doolally, every time I picked up a guitar, I didn't feel like whimsically walking down memory lane. It was more than I've ever used songs as a sort of therapy for myself than ever before. The world was changing at such a fast rate that I just felt the need to write about it and release the songs. So basically then I just realised that I had these two piles of songs that wouldn't sit together happily at all.

So, fuck it, I'll just do two records. So the songs that were written before I still produced with Frank Turner; we did a nine track album that was like fully produced. In between lockdowns I went round to Frank's and recorded my bits on the guitar, and then every musician in the world was sat at home with nothing to do. So we got some amazing musicians on it! We just emailed them the track, and sometimes an hour later the song would come back. Never have musicians been so easy to pin down! So we created a band via email effectively.

And the Unforeseeable Future was just recorded on my phone! I'd write a song and record it just on my phone, which was what I had to hand. And the idea of trying to go back into a studio and recreate the feeling of being in the middle of a pandemic later on, when I had a fucking recording of me in the middle of it, it was just foolish. I didn't make a point of telling everyone that it was recorded on my phone, just let everybody believe that I have more of a fancy recording up at home...

But yeah, we just mastered the tunes straight off the phone and put them on a record!

And the one thing that was quite interesting; it was purely an artistic choice to release two records, it was because the songs wouldn’t fit together. And I didn't really think any more than that. But the financial hole that had been left in my life from lack of touring and gigging... Basically selling two records meant I made more money. So it's good when your creative decisions end up being secretly business savvy!

One song which I think that did kind of cross the divide between the two and was written before the pandemic, is a song called 'Album of the Day'. It’s about spending a day with my 3-year-old daughter. It's about being at home, just the two of us listening to music. When I wrote the song, that was an activity that didn't happen very regularly because I was always away and this and that. And then… I spent the whole year and we haven't been apart. We dance to music every day - I mean the music that we listen to has changed a lot since she started making some of the decisions, there's a lot more Frozen soundtrack now than there is Dire Straits, but… that song felt like a really nice thing to release into the world. It was at that time when it was tough for people, being at home with the same people day in day out, and being able to take a song about how great it can be to spend time with your family... it felt like a nice thing to be able to put in place. And to me that kind of bridged the records, and helped them join together.

Preparing for this interview was rather difficult because you're so honest and open, I felt like you almost answer everything just through your music!

It means I live a really blessed life, because wherever I go, people are always like "I feel like I know you!" And they probably do, as much as I know me! It's sort of like I have like built-in friends scattered around who generally turn up to see me play.

I can't think of any other thing apart from the arts where you could literally stay in a different stranger's house every night. And get taken out in the town! Early touring, for me was like "Oh, we got to show you the best bar, and you got to see this place, and you can sleep in our bed and wake up with a cup of tea and send you on your merry way!" It was more than having friends, it was like having family in every town. And I just equalled it to me putting my heart out on the line, basically.

We’re excited about live music coming back, partly because we actually have tickets to see you at Chalk in Brighton.

Great one! Incredible venue!

Silly question... But how do you feel about live music coming back?

Oh, man, I can't wait. I’ve missed gigging on so many levels - the people, as we were saying, and even the kind of process of songwriting. Normally if I'm halfway through writing a song, I'll play it a gig in order to find out where the song's going to go and how I'm going to finish it. And it's been quite weird not having that final hurdle of the songwriting process. I'm going to try not to just do gigs and be like "Here's loads of new half-finished songs, that I need to test run on you guys!"

Me and my daughter got caterpillars, and I feel that we're in the cocoon at the moment, and we're ready to emerge as beautiful butterflies. Yeah, you won't be able to fucking shut me up when the gigs start again!

I think it will be an easing in as well. The Chalk thing is a socially distant gig. But also… being completely honest I did quite a lot of gigs last year. In between lockdowns you could do socially distanced gigs and it was quite a weird format where you could do a gig outside with people sat down in groups of six. There’s not a huge amount of music that's good for that setting, but what I do is fucking perfect for that setting! So a whole bunch of calls came in to play in car parks and sheep farms and something called We Are Not A Festival. That was quite near Brighton, actually, Ashdown Forest. It kind of looked and felt a little bit like a festival, but people were just further away from each other.

In a sheep farm, is that is that the weirdest place you've ever played at?

Fuck no - but it was good! It was a place called the Big Sheep in Biddeford, in Devon. There was a big field where they were doing the gig but they had a toy train set that went around and they had a big room full of baby animals. There were puppies, lambs, piglets, baby goats, all in one room! It was a reminder; "This is why you like gigging, you get fucking baby animals, and little train rides!"

In terms of the craziest place I’ve ever played… I don't know whether this is the wildest, but I did a hip hop battle in Oakland. I was part of this very strange cabaret performance, run by the grandson of the guy that invented Scientology. It was in a huge old warehouse, and everybody had like a 15 minute turn, basically. There were fire breathers and jugglers and acrobats, and I went on and did like three tunes. Just as I was coming off, I was pretty pissed, someone asked if I wanted to sign up for the hip hop battle?

I said "fuck, yeah, let's do it”! And it was like a proper fucking 8 Mile moment. I'm shit at freestyling, so I just did one of my songs to this hip hop beat. It went down well and everyone went "Wwaaay!" and then this other guy, he had his go and basically took the piss out me.

And then I won! I won that first round. But they were like, "You didn't really do it... You're not supposed to just do a rap. You're supposed to rap about the person next to you". So I went back on for round 2 and I just did the same thing again, I did another one of my songs. And then they said, "No, you're getting it wrong, you have to diss this guy!". And so I just walked off the stage. "How's this for a diss!?", you know? And… I was disqualified for not playing the game properly. But I'd like to think I was the people's champion.

But it actually brought out the worst in me because we went drinking later that night and I saw the guy that I'd lost the battle to. I'm not an aggressive person at all but I found myself being all… [looks angry] and I had to go and talk to him to ease my mind! There had been this purposely instigated bad vibe between the two of us, and I'd carried it with me so I was being a bad sport. But, I'd like to think I was the people's champion of the Tourette's Without Regrets hip hop battle in Oakland that day!

Beans, thank you so much for taking the time to chat to us.

My pleasure, very nice to talk to you! Looks like a great project that you're working on there so best of luck with it all, and I'll see you at Chalk!

Thanks Beans! Get your tickets to see Beans at Chalk in Brighton here, or visit his website at www.beansontoastmusic.com to see a full list of tour dates.