West Sussex singer celebrates family life with new video

The track is the first single as he works towards the release of a new album.

“It’s a song about having young children, and the song and video seem to be tugging on people’s heart strings! The song is called Daddy’s Girl.

“I can pinpoint what happened pretty much exactly.

“It started eight years ago when my second daughter was born.

“We were out having something to eat somewhere, and the waitress came across and was saying ‘Isn’t she cute!’ about our baby. And my older daughter was a bit miffed.

“The song is about that fairly universal feeling! There are four years between.

“My eldest daughter was old enough to be aware that she wasn’t the centre of attention!”

The girls in question are Ellie, now 12 and Bonnie, now eight – who have since been joined by Cassidy, now six.

“I wrote the basis of the song all that time ago and I put down the ideas but I wasn’t really sure about it because it was so personal.

“But I have been putting songs together in the lockdowns and I have been writing a new album, and this is now the first single that I am releasing from the new album.

“I have been writing some new songs but I have also gone back to some things that I have written in the past. I am thinking about releasing the album later this year.

“What I am going to do is release the songs one at a time and then release the new album.

“It is ten songs, all about different things. It is not all about being a parent.

“There are different things, songs that tell different stories.

“It is country-Americana. There is no particular thread running through it, just stories and different songs.”

Tom’s first album was called The Long Game.

His working title for the new album is a title he is thinking of taking from one of the songs, Half Way To Somewhere: “I hope to find out where that somewhere is!”

It comes as the music world maybe starts to open up a bit.

In the olden days, pre-pandemic, Tom was used to doing maybe a couple of hundred gigs a year.

“And even though I enjoyed doing them, I suppose I was just doing them all the time and maybe didn’t really appreciate it.

“Having had the break, I am finding that I am enjoying it all the more for its own sake. I am enjoying it all now as much as I did when I was a teenager.

“I know that I have literally fallen in love with my guitar again, just sitting there playing it and loving doing it… and that is great if you can love what you do as your job even when you know you are not being paid for it and you can’t get out there and do it with an audience!

“But actually to give me something to aim for I have been doing a YouTube channel weekly.

“You have got to set yourself goals… and I have managed it apart from when we all got Covid and I was really bad.

“I was in bed for two weeks. I felt really unwell. It took a few weeks to get back to normal.

“But I know that I have been lucky because some people still have the symptoms for months. I have been lucky enough to make a full recovery.”