Scarfboy

Indie / Folk

Wales

Billboard

Ambitious and currently underachieving. Probably the best way to describe the Scarfboy effort so far. I'm Thom, a welsh-born singer/songwriter with a passion for lyrics and simple melodies; this solo project was a way to take all the songs that I had written throughout college & general life, when I was away from my band, Marshal Plan. Some songs just didn't fit. Trying to put on a rock persona, I felt the songs that I'd written had too many words in, plus they dealt more with feelings, rather than the stories which is what we as a band had tried to write about. It also meant that I could experiment with more than one different sound.

Realising drums were a little hard to take into a cramped uni room, I bought my first guitar off my old boss and packed it up in the car and went off to college in 2003. The plan was to get away from smalltown living, experience life some more and write material that the band could practise and record and use the time to steer off being forced to get a proper job for another few years. But, without my friends/bandmates with me, I turned to the guitar, learned some chords and let the words just flow as easily as they always had but with a different direction and purpose. Not being able to get home, jam and gig as often as I'd liked really got to me. Then other things start to happen like friends, socialising and deadlines. You can't just dismiss them. In the end, they helped me write.

Always having a passion for acoustic music, lonely sounds became the norm on the stereo. I began to jam with college friends, rather then other 'solid' musicians, which in turn became a musical collective, The Craws, but I loved it because the music was so much more honest. When you've spent 3 hours practising a song, knowing the tape is rolling and you can't make a mistake, and you don't want to, the finished result is an amazing feeling. That's what I wanted to keep doing, so in my last year away from home, I spent money on better equipment and time recording songs when I should have been cooking books. From the top bedroom of my shared accomodation, I took a week off, picked up the Scarfboy moniker - because it was winter and scarfs are cool - and set about creating a few ragged edged but heartfelt songs that were circulated around friends. Things haven't progressed commercially all that much in the 18 months since but the songs keep coming and the catalogue will continue to grow, so watch this space...