Tasman Archer's Musical Journey

British singer-songwriter Tasman Archer shares her journey from chart-topping success with "Sleeping Satellite" to her current independent music career. She discusses her upcoming album release, creative rebirth during the pandemic, and finding freedom outside the major label system.

• Working independently on a new album "A Cauldron of Random Notes" releasing September 12th
• Discovering hundreds of unfinished songs during the pandemic sparked her creative revival
• Creating music without pressure led to more authentic expression and artistic satisfaction
• The challenges and rewards of managing all aspects of music creation as an independent artist
• Finding freedom after feeling like a "commodity" during her time with EMI Records
• Growing up in Bradford surrounded by diverse musical influences from Nat King Cole to Sex Pistols
• Overcoming initial shyness about her voice to eventually win a BRIT Award
• Planning future releases including a rockier EP following the album

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

My career in the entertainment industry has enabled me to work with a diverse range of talent. Through my years of experience, I've recognized two essential aspects. Industry professionals, whether famous stars or behind-the-scenes staff, have fascinating stories to tell. Secondly, audiences are eager to listen to these stories, which offer a glimpse into their lives and the evolution of their life stories. This podcast aims to share these narratives, providing information on how they evolved into their chosen career. We will delve into their journey to stardom, discuss their struggles and successes, and hear from people who help them achieve their goals. Get ready for intriguing behind-the-scenes stories and insights into the fascinating world of entertainment. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Almost Live Nashville. Today we're thrilled to welcome Tasman Archer, the celebrated British singer-songwriter whose soulful voice and heartfelt lyrics have left an indeligable mark on music. Bursting onto the scene from Bradford, England, Tasman captivated the world with her 1992 chart-topping hit Sleeping Satellite from her debut album Great Expectations. Earning a Brit Award for Best British Breakthrough Act in 1993, she's known for her seamless blend of pop, rock, and soul, infused with heartfelt storytelling. From her early days as a seamstress to becoming a beloved voice in British music, Tasma's journey is as inspiring as her songs. Today she's here to share reflections on her remarkable career and offer a glimpse into what's next on her inspiring journey. So before we dive into our episode, we'll be right back with an uninterrupted show right after a word from our sponsors. Thanks for coming on. Yes, it's great to have you on. I understand you're working on a new project. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 2:16

We've released our second single off the album, which is called Segregation Seeds, and that was uploaded to our YouTube channel just on Friday. And we're also on with all the other aspects of that of releasing the next single just before the release of the album. So there's quite a lot to do still. It's ongoing really because we're actually building up my profile again, as it's been such a long time since I've released anything. So yeah, we've done everything ourselves. We've done all the videos, we've done all the mixing and the getting the mastering sorted out and all the artwork and the website, and you know, the list goes on when you're an independent artist. So yeah, it's it's full on all the time.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

That's a lot of work. I have an independent label here in Nashville, and I completely understand.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

I really appreciate what you're doing because that sure is a lot of work.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

It is. You've got to learn a lot of the things, how it's done, and how you proceed to actually get onto certain platforms or even input your own music to the right places and things like that, which we did on our last independent release, which was back in 2006. But it's a lot more, I mean, there's a lot more going on now, a lot more opportunities and some more platforms, and so yeah, it's full on, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Yeah, that's a lot of work. It's changed a lot in the last 10 years, even the last five years.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

There are just so many things that you can do to put your music out there to get an audience for it.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

That's right. Um, like I say, I mean, I've been away for a while, so we're not expecting like number one hits in the Billboard charts and things like that. If that happened, that's great. That's icing on the cake.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

But um, realistically, I mean, we're looking at it as building up, you know, the profile again and getting things moving that way.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Yeah, that's great. Now, being away, what was the fuel that ignited the flame to get started again?

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Yeah, um, I think after I think we found that a little bit too, I don't know, I don't know. It wasn't the greatest experience, let's put it that way. It was tough going. It was a very sick learning curve for us, even recording in such a small setup that we have in our own personal studio to get a quality that was just at least touching on the same sort of quality you get in a plushed-out sort of studio with all the sort of amenities and all the expertise that goes with that as well. So we did a lot of learning. And throughout that time, after that experience, we still didn't give up writing, but actually our priorities had changed a little bit, our life priorities, and we were looking at other areas of music and perhaps putting our music in sync and other media. At that time, we thought, well, we came with a conclusion, it was a reluctant conclusion that we thought we weren't going to release any more Tasman Archer music.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

So, what changed your mind?

SPEAKER_01 5:00

It was only during the pandemic that we kind of like changed our minds because we had a lot of time to reflect on things and there was a lot of space for us to consider what we wanted to do with the music that we'd been accumulating over those many, many years. Because we'd looked and we'd found hundreds and hundreds of songs that were in various stages of completion. And a lot of them were really, really good. And we thought, well, why not just finish it? Just to satisfy our muse, really. We didn't put any pressure on ourselves and we weren't thinking, well, we're going to release these. And even if we thought that at the back of our mind, we weren't gonna go full-blown with anything. Maybe we'd just throw something up and let people listen.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

That makes perfect sense and it's a great plan. What happened next?

SPEAKER_01 5:40

So it kind of developed from there. We got the, I don't know, we got the the feel of the vibe at that time that we felt we had a lot to say about things. I mean, at that time over the years that have gone by, we've all gone through some pretty bad things during that time period, and I think it was just too much for us. We were kind of bubbling up with a lot of different ideas and things that we had to say, and we do it through music, so all of that combined together, that's what gave us the impetus to go forward.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Plus, music is a very powerful tool.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

You can listen to a song and go a couple of years back, or you can listen to a song and go 20 or 30 or 40 years back. Powerful.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

Not many other things can do that. I think it's great that you took your time to do it the way that you wanted to do it. It must have felt really good. You're not putting any pressure on yourself, you're just doing it the way that you want to do it. You're not doing it with any great expectations, you're just doing it because you want to, and then when people start hearing it and liking it, that's just the beauty of it.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Yeah, I mean, during that time period that we when we did set the plan to kind of complete at least we looked at completing 30 out of the many hundreds that we had, and we thought that we'd pick and choose out of those which would be work out to be albums or even EPs or whatever. Yeah, that's how we came about choosing the songs for a cauldron of random notes was from that batch of 30 that we'd actually completed, fully completed. They're in the pipeline now, so we're actually going to be releasing music in quicker succession than what we used to do. So yeah, there's no massive gap.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Absolutely, because if you roll it back to the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, there was a certain protocol that the major labels would go by to release to radio.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Now you can pretty much do what you want to do when you want to do it. After being away from recording like you were for several years, how did it feel? What were the emotions that you thought you might have and those that you did have of getting back into the studio to record your own material again?

SPEAKER_01 7:45

I think I think when you've been you haven't been doing it for a while, I think you feel like you're a newborn again. You feel like it's the first time that you've ever even been in a studio or stood behind a microphone. And I used to get like real microphone fear for a little while there, you know, and I'd be singing away off mic brilliantly, and it's always been that way with me in the past as well. So I didn't expect to be. I think actually I did expect it to be different. I thought, well, I'm a bit of a veteran now, I know what I'm doing, blah, blah. And uh yeah, I still kind of felt that that hesitation of whether it'd be good or not. I kind of had to get through that feeling and just forget everything and just channel what was coming out and stop trying to analyse things so much. So, and and also when you're doing it in an environment that we've set up, you want to get the best sound quality you possibly can get. So occasionally maybe you'd hear a plane going over, so it'd stop, you'd have to get do another take and then conjure it up to get the best performance you can. So you're dealing with a lot of, I wouldn't say restraints, but you're dealing with a lot of difficulties that you have to overcome to make sure that the music is, you know, is really kicking it, it it's sounding good.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Sure, I get that completely. It has to be the best it can be. Are you planning on performing soon?

SPEAKER_01 8:56

No, um, at the moment, like I say, because we're such we're on a roll with everything and everything's in line and we've got like our things coming through the pipeline. We don't want to kind of like stop in the middle of that and then rehearse and go and do a gig, and then the whole momentum's lost. So we want to really try and make sure that we find that gap, that suitable gap between making music and we've also got music that was still ongoing with compound, you know, in the pile of the other stuff that we're gonna be looking at and complete. So we have to find the perfect spot, if you like, to be able to take time away and then do something that we feel is gonna work well with the material that we've got, the kind of setup that we'll have, what kind of instrumentation, what setup it's gonna be. So all of that has to be really considered before we even go out and do any live music. I'd like to do that because I went to see a really great artist a couple of months back, Joseph Arthur, and he just did it with the the pedals and things, and it was just so amazing. I mean, it just brought it back then, and I felt the spark again to be able to maybe, oh, I could see myself doing it again now. Yeah. So it was inspiring to see somebody do it in that way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Yeah, that's good. I think you're really doing it the correct way by not pushing yourself to get out there too soon. No. Then when you finish your CD, you've got the satisfaction of thinking that you did it exactly the way that you wanted to do it. Yeah. Then that next step can be performing if you want to, because there is nothing that says there's any way that you have to do this as long as you're happy with what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Yeah, and I think that you can fall into a trap when you have a big machine behind you like a big record company. There's so many then music by committee, it's performance by committee, it's video by committee, it's everything. Seems like it's been taken out of your hands. And that is not as if you've gone about and you've said, I've chosen this specific person I feel is on the same wavelength as me, and we can kind of like prove our way through how we want to express ourselves in a video, say, in any other aspect of music. But you don't have that within a company. That the company comes as it is, it's a package. The people involved in that don't always see the same vision as you do. Sometimes they see a better vision or that they can add to it. It's just a coincidental thing that happens occasionally. But yeah, to do it on your own terms is very satisfying because you know the journey is the journey that you've actually chosen for yourself without pressure.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Yeah, you brought up the difference of being independent as you are now or having the machine of a big label behind you.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

A few years ago, you actually had that major label. You had some hit records out there, you won some awards. I did. So now you reflect back on the hits that you had with that major label. What are some of the feelings that you felt like you learned from that that you can use to help yourself in what you're trying to do today?

SPEAKER_01 11:49

I think I don't know. I think basically it's just the confidence of knowing that you can do it because being there and you've done it before, it was partly your for the most part, 90% of it is partly something that's coming from you. All they're doing is marketing you. The marketing side is something that you have to work out for yourself when you're an independent. That's another aspect totally. Yeah, I think I've learned that you can you can actually do it. You can actually do it by yourself, and there is no real magic that happens apart from the fact that they do have gatekeepers within that system, and that you have to work your way through those gatekeepers to get your music out there, and also to make sure that you are actually doing the best from your part to get the best sound quality, the best, you know, everything that you can do to make sure that that's on a par with what you'd expect when you're listening to other people who are actually on a big label. But you have to do that within the restraints of what you've got, the resources of what you've got. And a lot of that comes with just years and years of learning. And I think we gave ourselves that space, intentionally, unintentionally, whatever. It worked out that John has always had John, my partner, writing partner, and co-writing partner. He's always had that desire to look at the whole thing and to actually do everything properly and not to skimp on things. And if you can't afford to do it in a certain way, then find a way that it's equally as good with the resources that you've got. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Sure, that makes perfect sense. Now, you were on one of the largest record labels in the world, and that was EMI.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

They had the marketing power, they had the purpose to get you out there, and they helped you, and then you wound up going on your own, which a lot of people do. So by taking time away and just regenerating, when you came back, what was your mindset? How did you feel about the music that you were getting ready to record and put out there?

SPEAKER_01 13:38

I think I felt optimistic about that at that time because the time that we we spent with EMI during the last period, the period that was soured, if you like, it gave me that impetus anyway to think, well, I don't really want to be in that kind of environment. I want to be in an environment where I feel I'm doing the best that I can with who I am and how I respond to things. I don't respond too well for people to imagine that we're going to keep doing the same record or producing the same thing over and over and over again just because the business side of the music wants it that way.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

That's a great point to have.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

I don't feel that that's the best way to approach music or to be an artist. I think you have to have a space to take things in, to take life in. When we did Great Expectations, before we signed to the label, we had all those years of growing up through influences through music to your own life and your perspective. And the three of us had that. And so it's like condensed down into one album. All those the good things, however you want to put it, is condensed into one album from many, many years of experience of each of us. And so you have to have a bit of a space then to make space within yourself to take other things in. If you're constantly on the move and you're on the on the road, for me personally, I couldn't write on the road. I have to have a life and do other things. I have to have variety, I have to have, you know, the spice of life to be able to bring out life with it from me. That wasn't happening with um being with a big record label. Although when we first were looking to get signed, I always wanted to go with virgin music because I had known that their catalogue of the people that they had on their roster, they gave them time to develop. There wasn't a thing, well, okay, well, this wasn't a success, so bye-bye. It wasn't like that. And I knew that at that time, but it wasn't to be. We had more of an interest from EMI. And so that's how it panned out. But when we left all of that and I was then engaging into going into our own thing, which is independent, setting up our own independent label, and I felt free again. I felt like I'd taken back my own power.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Yes, I completely understand that for sure. Now, you were born in Bradford.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Yes, I was, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

So growing up there, who were some of your influences that you listened to that ultimately helped you evolve as a singer and of course as a songwriter?

SPEAKER_01 16:06

From a young age, there's always been music that's always been played in our house. And I'm the youngest of four, two older brothers and one older sister. My parents listened to a variety of range of music. It was Nat King Cole to, I don't know, Joel Stafford, to anything really reggae. And sometimes they'd listen to a lot of pop music. They'd like some of the pop music from Queen and things like that. So my sister was into more funk and soul, more like uh Marvin Gay and all that kind of stuff. Into the real sort of deep black funk type soul music. And um my other brother, the oldest one, he was into Kate Bush and ABBA and things like that. And then my other brother was one year and a bit older than me, he was into sex pistols and mitz and some reggae stuff and classical music. He had a wide, wide range of music that he was into.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

That's a wide range of music, but it's all very good.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Yeah, all good, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

With all that music around you, from your parents to your brothers to your sister, do you think in the back of your mind that that's kind of what gave you the mindset to create a journey for music in your life?

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Well, whenever I was listening to music, I was always recording myself afterwards, after I'd listened to it over and over again. I had an album that I had on a little record player that I had, and I had it on repeat. It was by Joe Stafford. Yeah, and she was probably the pop star of the the day back in what is it, the 50s. My mother gave me that album. I just used to play it and play it and play it and fall asleep to it sometimes. And then I'd just kind of like listen again and sing myself and try to make sure that I was honing my voice to sound just as good and breathing in the right places and getting the right quality. I did that with many, many records. Then I'd also make up my own songs and have them on a little tape and put them in a briefcase under my bed so nobody could see them or hear them. And so I was quite shy at that time. Even at school, I was in sort of a choir and the chorus things because we used to do musicals at school and I never used to want to be in the front of anything. I didn't want to people to notice my voice. In fact, I was tiny shy of anybody hearing my voice. I didn't think that my voice was, I don't know, the typical type of voice. That's how I heard myself. I used to think, well, I like the sound of it, but is it really fitting in with anybody else's voice? If I sing out, is people gonna like go, oh my god? Until one day my parents heard me at Christmas and we all had a girl singing.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

How'd that happen? And then what was their response to it?

SPEAKER_01 18:36

My father brought first um tape cassette thing with a microphone, a little flat thing. And so when it came on my turn, I had to do it. So I sung and they were all like flambergasted. Like, oh wow. That kind of gave me a little bit of confidence, knowing that they were very pleased about hearing my voice, although I never sung very much in front of them. And then I joined bands when I left school.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Yes, I understand that you did some singing after you got out of school.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

Did backing vocals for people, and I worked at a recording studio of the guy that I knew from one of the bands, and through that he kind of introduced me to do some back-in vocals for local bands in the area in Bradford. Um, there were all types of bands, they were goth type. I think at that time Southern Death Cult were around. They're called the cult now. Ian Asprey used to come at that studio, and there was quite a few different types of bands. And if they wanted a back-end singer and they felt my voice was suitable, then I'd go ahead and do that until one day I became the lead singer in a band and just doing like clubs and things like that and covers. Never anything original until later on. And it was always people writing, if it was anything, they would write the song and then just give it to me. And I wasn't very happy about that. I didn't want to be a voice on a stick. This is what I used to say at the time, until I met John Hughes and John Beck, and they encouraged me to start writing, and then I started writing with them, and that's how it took off.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Yeah, that's great. And one of the first songs that you released was Sleeping Satellite, correct?

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Sleeping Satellite, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Yes, that song did really, really good for you. So I can just imagine that that helped your confidence to grow and know that you could do this.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Yeah, it was leading up to that. We actually had Sleeping Satellite on a lot of the demos that we did. Sleeping Satellite and Laws of New Church, and a lot of the songs that were on Great Expectation were on this demo that we sent out to record companies and publishers, and they still didn't hear what we heard. It wasn't until we got a publisher on board, and then that publisher led to us getting a manager, and then between all three of us, we persuaded EMI to sign us. Then they kind of probably got the vibe that we were giving out that sleeping satellite was something special and a lot of the other tracks too. And eventually we got a really good producer on board, Julian Mendelssohn and Wickens, who Paul Wickens, who was actually with um Paul McCartney and Paul McCartney's band who came on board to record the songs with us. But he had to leave halfway through because obviously he had other duties elsewhere with Paul McCartney, and then got another guy on board, a really good guy called Peter Kaye, who started working alongside Julian Mendelssohn, and we completed the album then. So yeah, it was tough going to build it all up from the start.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

It is very tough in this business for sure. The good thing is that out of all this recording and everything you went through, you had a number one song in the UK and around the world. Yeah. The album did well. I think it went top ten. Then you got nominated for the breakthrough act, and then you won that.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

That's a really good resume.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

It is. Yeah, we got nominated for an MTV award as well. It was in a different category to normal, it's sort of like uh an indie type category for best newcomer video or something like that. And it was in your care, which I can totally understand because in your care is quite gritty and a little bit different as well. So there's a lot of flavours in Gret Expectations on the album, which there are on Bloom as well, which we did with Mitchell Froome and Chad Blake. They did a brilliant job with. That in my opinion. Like I say, EMI really loved it at first, and until personnel changed, that was when they sat on it from 1995.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Yeah. I've been in this music business for so long, and I've seen so many artists that have gotten hurt by major labels because they sat on things. The good thing is, is they promoted you and you got a lot of good things from it.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

And then you was allowed to evolve into this.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

I am I'm grateful for that. I don't know how that I wouldn't have felt that way at the time because I felt a little bit like um commodity at the time. I just felt disillusioned by the whole thing. So at that time when we split, it was to me it was a relief and I felt free. Like I say, I just felt free.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

That's great. You have to feel good about yourself and what you're doing. Now you're working on your new single, you've already had one out. What's next on the agenda after that?

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Well, when the album's out, because the album's out on the 12th of September, there will be another single out just before the album's release, the week before, I think, or something. Yeah, so and then after that, when the album's out, obviously we'll be trying to push a profile for that and keep that going. And then we have to now look at the other tracks that we have in the pipeline. Um, we're thinking perhaps it'll be an EP. It'll be an EP that'll be released next, and they'll have a lot different flavour to them. It'll be about four tracks on the EP. I don't know how many we'll put on, but anyway, I think it'll be a bit more rocky, I think. And they'll have their own flavour, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Well, this podcast will be released sometime in October. So by the time it's released, you'll have it all out, and you should be rocking by then. That's great.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

So it sounds like you've got a tremendous plan.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

Uh well, we've got a good plan. Like we we've taken time out to make sure that we're making everything going its right in the right time at the right, you know.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Absolutely. Everything you're doing makes complete sense. Yeah. Well, this has been really good. Great conversation, great information, just a great story that you have. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

I appreciate you having me on. Thank you. I'd like to come on when we got our later on when the the album's out and things like that. I'll come on again, beat too. It's been really, really good.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Yes, it's been fun and really enjoyable. Thanks again. This has been a Tony Mantor production. For more information, contact media at plateau music.com.