INTERVIEW: Bailey Tomkinson on ‘Silent Suffering,’ UK country and more

We interview up and coming UK singer-songwriter Bailey Tomkinson about her single ‘Silent Suffering,’ her rise and more. 

Hi Bailey! How have the past few months been for you? I feel like you’ve been a lot busier than most during the pandemic…

I’ve been trying to be as busy as I can. It’s been alright, I can’t complain really because I live in St Ives – it’s a nice place to be.

It must be nice to be out surfing rather than staying in the house. 

Yeah!

It’ll still be nice to be out gigging again. You had so much success at the top end of last year with your sold-out show at The O2 in Islington and then going into the rest of the year, it must have been a whirlwind to wrap your head around? 

Yeah, last year started off with me being in London quite a lot and doing different shows and it being really exciting and stuff. Then we went to going into lockdown, I went from being here, there and everywhere to being stationary. It’s been good that I’ve had time to write and do things like that but I do miss all the shows and seeing people.

You did a recent show for Music Feeds. It must have been nice to do something but still missing that live element. 

Exactly, what’s really cool with Music Feeds was that when you watched it there was a comments section of people, so it was cool to see people enjoying the music and to see people interacting with it – like you were at a gig. The line-up was great and we really enjoyed it, we watched it both nights.

Obviously last year you also released ‘Silent Suffering,’ it was a stunning track – can you talk a bit about writing that track? Was it one you’d had your hands on for a while? 

I wrote that one before lockdown and I wrote it in winter one evening. I was feeling a bit blue one evening, I’m not much of a winter person and I think the idea of it being colder and not being on the beach and not being out doing festivals and stuff. I was just feeling a bit down. I wrote it, and then when we went into lockdown I thought that a lot of people would be able to connect with the song. I thought if I could make one person feel less alone then I’d have done my job as an artist. I released ‘Silent Suffering’ because it was very on topic.

You also released ‘Rounds’ with Amy Lawton last year, can you talk a bit about how that one came together and how Amy came to be a part of that? 

Amy was in London and I was visiting. We were messaging online and I think we’d made contact through Instagram or something like that. We decided to meet up and write together. We did that, we met in a park and were just chatting about our past and ex-relationships and stuff. We both had that in common – we’d both been with a guy who probably wasn’t very good for us. We wrote ‘Rounds’ and that was a really cool experience. We were just out in a park and no-one was really paying any attention, we were almost in our own little world. It was really cool.

You’re a big part of this burgeoning UK country scene, what has that experience been like for you?

Growing up I loved artists like John Denver and The Chicks, I think because they were all story-tellers. When I first started writing at eleven, I naturally fell into story-writing – I think because that was how I loved to get my stories out. I think I naturally fell into that kind of sound and genre. As I’ve got older, I still am heavily country influenced but I wouldn’t necessarily say that I was a country artist. I’m influenced by a lot of different genres and artists but I think that country does play a big part in that.

Do you know what’s next up for you in the coming months? 

Yeah so I’ve been working at the Sawmill with John Cornfield on an EP and I’m really excited about that because he’s legendary. I’m really proud of this material and I’ve been working really hard on it. It’s a new sound, it’s still me but I’ve evolved and I’ve matured and I’m really proud of how it’s sounding so far. I’ve been inspired by artists like Fleetwood Mac and Springsteen and I want to make an EP that sounds new and fresh and doesn’t sound like anyone else, it sounds like me. I’m really excited about it.

Thanks for taking the time to chat with me!

Thank you.