This song has my darkest set of lyrics. Drop Dead is a serial killer, so called because he is spectacularly ugly. He drugs his victims and parades them about in public. People assume he’s actually very romantically successful despite his looks.

They don’t realise the hideous things he does. There is no light, just darkness.

Still, it’s a good song, eh? Great lead guitar stuff courtesy of Gareth Cole and great drumming from Michael Cairns

Demon is out!

It’s an album about wizards and demons and tentacles and murderers. But it is also an album about me, about family, friends and home. It’s just none of those things are in the lyrics.

That means all the autobiographical stuff is in the harmony, chord choices, structure and allusions. One song is about changing career and moving to a new part of town, though you wouldn’t know it from the lyrics. Another contains parts of three different pieces of music, sketching out my history as a songwriter. Another uses crossword clue lyrics to say what I really think about humans (hint – I’m not a fan). One is all about the things that haunt us and the reasons we sometimes wake up with an awful taste in our mouths.

And the whole thing is about family and about joy. No it is, really honestly. Yes I know it contains murders and demons. It’s still joyous. It is!

You can hear all the songs and all the stories that go with them by joining the mailing list by clicking here.

If you do, I’ll send you links for all the songs and all the origin stories. It’ll be ace.

Join the list

The first review of Demon is out, in the 100th edition of Prog mag no less.

…And before I talk about that review here’s a service announcement: if you like prog rock, please buy that magazine. It’s a great supporter of the scene and a great publication.

Here’s pic of that review. I genuinely think that the reviewer is a bit confused by the album. Which is definitely on brand for me. But it says some nice things and I am very happy with it.

There are also a couple of nice previews up.

House of Prog: “Demon” is the new album from Tom Slatter, and will be released by Bad Elephant Music on 26th July 2019.

Following on from his highly acclaimed “Happy People” album, and the Murder and Parliament instrumental project, Tom returns with his most personal album yet, heavily influenced by indie rock albums of the mid 90’s.  Read more here.

Power of Prog: “The worlds gone horrible at the moment, so I thought it time for another album”, says Tom of Demon, his sixth full-length album, and fourth release for Bad Elephant Music. Read more here.

Isn’t that nice? People are hearing the thing and no-one’s sent me an envelope full of vomit in return, so that’s not a bad start, eh?

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You can hear three Demonic tracks by clicking here and joining the Demon list.

You can pre-order the album here.

If you’re not gigging, are you a real musician? What’s better, gigging online or in the real world? How much effort should I put into being a live musician?

When you’re a kid dreaming of being a musician you want to be on stage. That’s where the magic happens, that’s what being a musician really is. Now I’m older and some of the more annoying bits of life get in the way, but that’s still part of what I want to be doing. If I could I’d perform every day. But… there’s always a but.

Over the last few weeks I’ve played a little online gig every Sunday morning on Facebook live, later posted on youtube.  I haven’t given any warning or promoted them, they’ve just been experiments to find out how the system works. The Facebook figures tell me those three gigs have been watched about 200 times.

Contrast that with the last Tom Slatter band gig which had about ten people in the room. In fact, I can guarantee that more people listened to my little fan club only ‘bootleg’ recording of that gig than heard it live in person.

The Tom Slatter band gig before that had a bigger audience and was probably the most fun I’ve had on stage playing my own music. If I could make gigs like that happen on a consistent basis I would do so.

Playing live is fun. Rehearsing is fun. The travel and expenses are not, and at the level we’re playing at the gig fees do not cover all the costs.

Playing online is also fun. It is not as fun as playing with a band, but I still enjoy it.

So where do I put my efforts?

In the short term, I need to be practical. I have a full-time job that at certain times of the year can be very busy indeed (like now. July is mad for us. I am tiiiiiiiiired). I have time to make the occasional social media post on weekdays and find a few hours at the weekend to either record some music or sing a few songs online.

People tend not to come out to see a concert on a Sunday morning. But listening to some acoustic songs online on a Sunday morning? That’s maybe a thing.

So the regular Tom Slatter gigs will be those.

That is absolutely not to say I don’t intend for there to be more Tom Slatter Band gigs in the future, or more acoustic gigs come to that. All these things will happen.

I’m just saying there won’t be loads and loads of those gigs, and they won’t be the main focus for a while. At least until there’s a bit of a change in circumstance with the whole having-to-earn-a-living thing.

That… that still means I’m a proper musician though, right?

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Here’s the third live video. This uses the camera on my laptop, which doesn’t look good, but that allows me to use my audio interface so it sounds better than the first two. I reckon I’m sticking with this set-up if and until I can afford a better camera. It is music after all, so sound probably matters.

My sixth album, Demon, can now be pre-ordered from bandcamp. The demon is about to be unleashed. Run away! Run away!

Or maybe, go have a listen to the studio version of Wizards of this Town that’s now up on the bandcamp page as the first single from the album.

Wizards is a song that has been in my live set for a couple of years, first as an acoustic song and then with the Tom Slatter Band. It’s a song about drunkard wizards trying to fix their town through magic. But it is also a personal song. It’s about how I felt when I changed career from teaching – a job that was deeply destructive to my mental health – to the world of charity, and the place I moved to at the same time. It’s about the joy of having people request my songs, about singalong choruses and family and also, yes, about urban magic and drunk inner-city dryads.

Demon has lyrics about wizards and demons and serial killers. But it is also about family and history and my actual real life. I can’t wait for you to hear it, and you nearly can. Just the small matter of finishing up CD printing. Nearly there!

Here’s the pre-order link.

The first Tom Slatter Band gig happened last Thursday at The Fiddler’s Elbow, as part of a triple bill with IT and Circu5.

Did we do well?

Yes, we did!

I’ve wanted to play some of these songs with a proper band for a very long time. Three Rows of Teeth was released in 2013 and this was the first time that Mother’s Been Talking to Ghosts Again and Dance, Dance, Dance have been played live.  It was also the first time Some of The Creatures… has been played in its entirety, rather than the truncated acoustic version. I even got the mad guitar solo right, which I wasn’t expecting (and which made up for the mistake in Mother’s where I forgot to repeat one guitar bit).

This was the first time I’ve played guitar and fronted a full electric band for a very, very long time and I’m really happy with how it went. Partly that’s because Michael, Gareth and Keith played a blinder (yes, the only big mistakes were mine, unsurprisingly). But also it’s because of the audience. Were there hundreds of people? Of course not! But were there more people than I expected? Yes, there were and plenty of them came along specifically to see our set. The Immoral Supporters were out in force, tentacle fingers and all, which really made my night.

The other acts on the bill were also really good. Circu5 played a great set that was equal parts prog cleverness and singalong choruses. Here’s a link – I really like the song Stars in particular.

I’d seen IT before at the Bedford in Balham a year or so ago, so knew I was in for something proggy but with a groove and pop sensibility that you don’t always find in the genre. They definitely didn’t disappoint.  Highlights for me were ‘Revolution’ and ‘Hands

I can’t deny, I thoroughly enjoyed myself at this gig. After more than a year off stage, this was an exhilarating return to performing. Thanks to IT and Chris of the London Prog Gigs facebook page for making the gig happen.

I’m really looking forward to the next gig which will be in May at the Raising Steam steampunk festival May 10th-12th in Bromsgrove. We’re playing early on the Saturday afternoon, at about 1pm.

All the info is at this link.

Next week’s debut Tom Slatter Band gig (we’re not calling it that. Are we calling it that?) includes a couple of songs from Three Rows of Teeth that have never been played live before:

Mother’s Been Talking To Ghosts Again

This is a tale of duplicitous spiritualists hoodwinking the bereaved and gullible. It’s got bits in 4/4, 5/8, 6/8, and three flavours of 9/8. I didn’t write with so many different time signatures to annoy Gareth Cole, but I am glad they’ve had this effect.