Interview with Frazer Lowrie

“Thighs of steel” probably aren’t something you’d expect an artist to have if you were asked what they might have gained by the end of their first proper tour. But speaking down the phone from Nottingham, where he’s based, Frazer Lowrie explains how after getting ‘ridiculously drunk’ one night at one of his gigs he decided that his music needed something more.  And so, he dug out his dad’s old kick drum, which he’ll be playing alongside singing and his guitar. “I just started belting it and it sounded really good. Hopefully it should definitely turn a few heads because not a lot of people do it, it’s pretty hard.”

Frazer’s been an unsigned solo artist for about two years now, and at the moment he’s busy getting ready for the tour of his new EP, which is out now. Inspired deeply by what he calls ‘dark folk’ such as Mumford & Sons, his unique voice and self-written lyrics are full of energy and passion. And this is important to him. “Lyrics are the only way to get how you feel across to the audience. If your lyrics are more intimate then your audience are going to relate to you more and as a listener you feel more attached to the artist.” With singers like Ed Sheeran getting such negative reviews for his lyrics, it’s a fresh change to talk to someone who appreciates them. And Frazer really does. “It's these artists,” he says, referring to Ed, Example and Wretch 32, “who continue to prove that writing your own music and lyrics is the way forward.”

As we discuss his inspirations, he says how much his recent move to Nottingham has changed his views on music and breaking into the industry. “I think the music industry will always be a struggle to break into for any new artist. It's not a walk in the park. I didn’t gig for a long time because I thought, it’s all online these days, but as soon as I did my first gig in Nottingham I realised how wrong I was.” Moving to Nottingham showed Frazer a side to music that he’d not seen before-live folk music-and this inspired him to change he style completely. “After I played my first gig in Nottingham I realised that I needed to write new songs with new meanings relevant to my current situations.”

For someone who describes chart music as ‘generic’ and ‘meaningless’, I’m interested as to why he’s covered so much of it on his YouTube.  Again, it stems back to his move to Nottingham. “I used to love top 40 music, but I’ve recently become less attached to it,” he says “It seems to me at the moment that people actually prefer watching me do it live. The folk scene is very big around here and live music is appreciated a lot more.”

Despite his love for live music, he reckons he wouldn’t get half his gigs without having an official website. “I couldn’t believe how much it helped my profile on the gig circuit, especially when booking my tour. People assumed I was someone big!” But even though he seems to take quite a positive attitude to social networking and having an online profile, he definitely seems to see live music as the way forward for unsigned artists like himself. “It [the internet] makes a lot of us lazy. It's too easy to sit at your computer and advertise online but the real way to do it is to get out into the big wide world and gig. With gigging you get to meet other bands and you get to meet the promoters that put on the gig and they often know other promoters. It’s an on-going spiral and you’re bound to meet some very interesting people.”

From speaking to Frazer for a good while, it’s clear that he’s very pleased with the position that he’s in right now-“Now I’m in a position where I couldn’t be happier with the music I’m playing.” He might not yet be famous, but he definitely aims to be, and with such a unique take on the music industry that so directly affects him and such a huge passion for his genre, it seems he feels his time could be coming very soon. “I couldn't be in a better scenario at the moment, folk is becoming popular, guys with guitars are in the picture again and the public are starting to care about real musicians.”

Frazer's newest EP 'Things have changed', plus all his other music, can be found on his official website. His covers and videos can also be viewed on his YouTube channel.