Gareth Bawden has been slowly making a name for himself in Phnom Penh both through open mics and restaurants about town. This Saturday he revives The Brexiteers, adding Nathan Fanoni on bass and Troy Campbell on drums, at Bosporus, to play a mixture of his own songs and carefully selected covers. He sat down at Golden Home with Leng Pleng to talk songwriting and open mics.
So are you a singer-songwriter? Guitarist? Performer? Entertainer? “I always describe myself as a singer/songwriter. Sometimes people call me a musician, but I don’t see myself as a musician. I lean more towards being a poet who uses music as a medium to share his poetry. In any given environment I use music to connect to people.”
Gareth is very much a believer – through experience – of the therapeutic value of songwriting. “I’ve often used it as a therapeutic tool. If I’m going through something I can put my emotion into music, and that turns into a conduit for healing. At the same time, if someone else enjoys that song and they tell me they connected to it, that helps with the healing. It turns what might have been a traumatising experience into a positive one. And in those terms I feel like music has an alchemic, magical facet to it.”
Like many musicians, it’s the creating and playing that drives him. “I’m not very good at all the business stuff. I’m definitely an artist. Some people like the technical side and the business side of it, and making money. I find the whole fame side of it to be romantically interesting, I don’t think it essentially means anything. It’s not got the benefits that people think it has. I’m generally looking for joy and connection and healing through my songwriting. That’s why I usually go to open mics more than I want gigs. Open mics are more collaborative and you can to connect to people.
“I have a number of friends who say they started playing the guitar because they wanted girls to notice them, and I’ve never been able to relate to that. Certain kinds of people are very into sports or very into numbers and facts, and if they’re into music as well they’ll be into how many albums and how many songs and so on. A creative person will be more interested in the feelings than the facts. So there are those who are more informational and gain joy from the stability of the facts; for me music has always been a healing and emotional thing.”
Even the birth of his songwriting was deeply rooted in emotion and catharsis. “I was hurt by a friend who turned out to be a compulsive liar, a kid with some serious issues. He lied to my parents, he lied to me, and then my parents connected with his parents and the game was up. He accused my dad of trying to stab him. I remember going up to my room, still fairly new on the guitar, started playing some chords and singing about this guy just off the top of my head. And instantly I felt really good. Oh, my friend is a loser, he’s a liar, loser. And oh, that’s good, there’s a power in that that’s making me feel better. And I felt like I’d stumbled on something magical.
“The first song I ever wrote was from a broken heart; the pain motivated me to write a song. My girlfriend broke up with me on New Year’s Day and I was crushed. I wanted her to know how I was feeling, so I wrote a poem, I put it to a song, recorded it on a tape and I gave it to her. And she said that it made her cry. And I thought, well, yes, I wanted you to feel how I was feeling.
“So in some ways I can be grateful that she did that, because it sowed the seed of my creativity. Maybe without that I wouldn’t have had the balls to write a song. My songwriting wasn’t coming from a place of look at me, I can write a song, aren’t I amazing? It came from I’m crushed and I need to put my emotions into something. And typically, ever since that point, if I’m going through great love, joy, depression, any strong feeling, I can put it into a song. The magic of the emotion has created something worthwhile. If I’m kind of bored or things are going okay, just so-so, the songwriting kind of suffers.”
So a singer-songwriter, but also a poet; I asked him about the line between the two, and how fine it is. “My skills as a poet help me find the right rhymes when I’m writing a song. I call myself a poet because I was writing poetry long before I started doing music. I was inspired by Roald Dahl, he wrote books of poetry, cheeky poetry, kind of funny. At school I would write gross poems and give them to my friends – the boys would always find them hilarious but the girls thought there was something wrong with me.
“When my mum died, back in 97, I just started writing poems all the time, pouring my emotions into words, turning my pain and my experience into something more positive. Alphabet Sea was one of those poems. I had a riff, and the lyrics really worked well. I used all the words, then came up with you make me wonder, and the song was pretty much written. But I’ve never been able to have that since.”
So is it words before the music or vice versa? “It’s mostly the music first. And then I’ll build the words and the lines around the music. Usually it’s a riff or a structure, and I’ll sing lines, ad lib, and then put words to it. It’s a very organic approach. And I’ll focus on the emotion.
“I wrote my now wife Kayleen a song before I met her. I was very much in love, and used that emotion to write the words. It’s called China. It started as just a cool riff and I just built the words around that. See me through I don’t really remember writing. I think it was a bit more poetic that time, but I was going through a depression after my mum died. Poetry and music are interconnected but they don’t always sit together. I just keep working until something comes up.
“I can’t force the song to come out, I can just let it sit there – nothing’s coming right now, I’ll come back to it tomorrow, if not this week I’ll back to it next week. I’ve started writing ideas on my phone – I’ve got loads of them on there now – and I’ll come back to them later and maybe develop them. The songs that I sing today are the same ones I was writing in my teens. I’ve got some from my 20s, I’ve got a couple of that I picked up in Canada. A lot of them fall by the wayside, particularly if I’m not getting a good vibe from other people.”
He’s lived in England, in China, and in Canada, and now Gareth feels very much at home in Cambodia. “I don’t really want to go back to England. And I really love Asia. I wouldn’t mind retiring here. Kayleen and I met in China, and then we moved to Saskatchewan in Canada, where she is from. I arrived there in my late 20s, my 30th and my 40th birthdays there, then we moved to Cambodia.”
Cambodia has many delights, including the music. “I love the music scene here, if you’re a musician there’s so much you can do. People will jam with you. There’s some really quality open mic nights, and great communities. Open mics have been part of my life since I was 19. That’s where most of my performing experience has happened. I started in Huddersfield, Leeds, North Yorkshire at large, and then Scotland. Then China and Canada. And now Cambodia.
“If you’re moving to a new place and you want to become part of a community, there’s nothing better, as a singer-songwriter, than to hit the open mics. If I was into sports I’d probably join a local football team, to build new friendships, not just having work friends. Everybody likes to hear some feedback on their music, and if someone comes off the mic and you say I really like your music, you’ve got an instant best friend. Thank you so much! And they usually say I liked your songs too, or they’ll watching you when you play, because you complemented them. And it’s sincere. Someone listened? You were listening? When I die they’ll say: Gareth Bawden went to a lot of open mics.
Gareth is at Bosporus on Saturday night with The Brexiteers (and Scoddy Acoustic Trio) – $5 on the door. You may also run into him at the newly restarted Sundowner Sessions at Tacos Kokopelli, the longest running open mic in Phnom Penh.