Talking to: Tommy Newport
Tommy Newport, a British born singer/songwriter living in Wichita, Kansas, got pretty famous by mistake at the age of sixteen. His self-recorded album released under his birth surname Milmine accidentally racked up millions of streams when he released it just for his friends and family to enjoy in 2016. He was soon snapped up by a manager and has been releasing music under his new moniker Tommy Newport ever since. Since 2018 he has toured the USA extensively, and when touring Europe went viral after recording a live set in Berlin for YouTube channel COLORS.
Tommy Newport has a mission to keep on moving and developing his music, and his recent offerings have moved on quite some way from sixteen year old Milner’s guitar-based pop-rock. His new single Stargazer, with its laconic, rap-driven vocals over a rich, swooping bassline, follows hot on the heels of his latest EP Ultra Mango; an indie-pop, summer-tinged take on the transition from teenhood to adulthood. His distinctive vocals and firm nods to funk and 2000s indie-rock are the common thread running through all of his music, and we’re excited to hear where Tommy Newport is going next.
Tell me a little bit about yourself and the music you are making right now.
I think at the moment I am finally getting a little more comfortable with my skills and my ability to make music. I started pretty young and I didn’t know what I was doing, and I didn’t have much thought or rhyme and reason to what I was doing in those initial early days. Now it’s been a few years and I kind of know what my inspirations are and I know what I am doing. I have messed around enough now and I am kind of forming my own sound and my own habits. I think that is where my music is going currently and I am really excited about it.
What would you say is your sound?
It’s definitely like a lot of the things I grew up listening to subconsciously coming through. I never learnt music theory or studied music. I play completely by ear, so anything I am doing or grew up doing it has come from something I heard or other people. I grew up listening to a lot of early 2000s rock and a lot of classic rock, like 70s and 80s rock, so I think when I listen to my music I can only assume it is a mashup of all of that. You can only produce what you already know. So I guess it’s indie rock, and sometimes heavier rock and sometimes a little more funky and dance, and sometimes it is even pop.
I feel like I have never made the same song or even close twice. Some artists who I listen to, and even love, their catalogue is similar and has cohesiveness, and I love that sometimes, but I feel like I can’t do that because I am always trying to make something that sounds different from the last one… When people ask ‘What is your sound? What is your music?’; honestly, it is always changing, I have no idea myself, it's what happens on the day. I hope in five years I have a few albums and they are all distinguishable from each other. I like stepping out of the box.
How old are you now and how old were you when you started making music?
I’m 21 now and I picked up my first instrument, which was a guitar, just before I turned 15. I didn’t know how to play it, I didn’t know what I was doing. I started recording my guitar when I was sixteen because by then I had gotten a bit better. I didn’t know it was this whole world, that there is so much that goes into recording music, I was so naive to it I just did it the easiest way I could; I just googled “how to record guitar” or “how to record a song” and just learnt from there.
I did an album under a different name and put that out there, just for me and my friends and my family really. I used my birth surname Milmine, I didn’t think about the name at the time because I wasn’t trying to be a famous musician, I just wanted to see it on iTunes, I just thought that was the coolest part. It wasn’t properly mixed or mastered, it was just me messing around and trying to figure out how to write music. Somehow that caught the attention of some people and today I think that album has about 10,000,000 streams across everything. That is how I found my team today and we decided to take it on seriously and come up with a new direction.
Wow, so that is a bit like a fairy tale for a sixteen year old then? Just releasing something out there and everyone loving it, I think that is what everyone would want, isn’t it?
Yeah I mean, it’s crazy looking at it now, and there are people out there who do exactly the same thing and it goes absolutely crazy; billions of streams. That would have been really nerve wracking if that had happened, I think it was perfect that it just grabbed the audience that it did, it didn’t scare me away and get me overwhelmed. It was just enough for me to think “wow, people care, people like this, I must be doing something right”.
It was then when I realised that there are no rules to music. I didn't have radio-quality songs, no mixing and mastering, I didn’t put any money into it, and when I gained an audience from just that I realised that there are no rules here. It's just a weird natural community, people listening to music. You can make whatever you want, just put it out there.
So you play the guitar, what else do you play, and do you do your own production now as well?
I play piano; I started when I began recording music. I got a piano because I wanted to see how similar it was to playing guitar. It kind of is, I am not the best at playing piano, but I can use it decently as a tool. I also started learning drums a couple of years ago. Basically, with the music I am doing now, I record most of it on my own, I record a demo version where I do all the drums and guitars and vocals, I will do the whole song then I share that demo with my producer and he will have a few ideas, then we will work together. My producer is also my manager and he will help bring everything into a nice sounding song. I am all over the shop, like when I was sixteen I just throw it all in there and think that it is done, but he will take it and work on it for weeks and I will listen to it again and it is a completely polished, amazing sounding song. I am grateful for that.
Where are you based?
Right now I live in midwestern America, in Wichita, Kansas. It is where I grew up; I moved here when I was eleven or twelve. Right now with the pandemic I just wanted to stay here and I was planning on moving to the west coast, but this last year I have just wanted to stay here and ride this moment in the world out.
How has the pandemic been for you? Have you just been concentrating on your music?
It feels like it's been forever, I have just been here for the last year, staying safe, cooped up. I think the first half of the year was the most stressful, because none of us really knew much about it. I am a very paranoid person, I just stayed inside, I didn’t go anywhere. Then I started getting more comfortable with the masks in public and since then it's been better for sure, and it's getting better where I live. I have been trying to make the most of the time. It has been tough, I had to try and do three music videos here on my own, just doing it the best way I can, emailing files and all that kind of stuff. You just have to make use of the time and try and be creative… it's been an experience!
What’s the music scene like where you are?
Surprisingly, there is a lot going on. There are some artists starting up who are doing really well. There are three or four of them from my city alone who are doing well. It's surprising because it is small town midwest America here; there are thousands of places like where I live. So, to see that there is a real community here, that there are some kids breaking out into the city, it's pretty cool, it's impressive.
You mentioned earlier about your influences growing up; who were your main influences and who are they now?
So, just the reason I love music so much, is my parents went to see The Killers in Manchester in 2000 and there were like 100 people there, no one knew who The Killers were. They had the CDs very early on and I remember when I was four or five I had a CD player and little headphones and I would listen to The Killers all day long, I just loved them. And I still do to this day; I think they are the reason I wanted to make music. But of course I listened to a lot of other things, some of the legendaries; Freddie Mercury, Jagger, David Bowie. Then there’s Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys, a huge inspiration to me. I think as well Morrissey, Echo and The Bunnymen, Joy Division, all those 80s bands, there's a lot that inspired me.
Tell us about your latest releases.
So the EP [Ultra Mango] just came out, it has six songs on it, four of them have been out for a bit, the two newest ones are Sweetener and Ultra Mango. Those are the ones that we kept to the side, I think I held off on the two songs I liked the most, just sonically, definitely those ones could go together as the EP came out. They were done in LA, so that was pretty cool. Over the course of the last couple of years I have had a few trips to LA to record, these six songs were all the ones I felt fitted well together out of the sessions we were recording.
What has been the overarching idea behind the EP? What fits those songs together?
The subject matter or the story pertains to, in my life, I quickly went from being a kid or teenager with not much thought of what I was doing, then all of a sudden I turn twenty and have a lot of responsibilities. We did a huge tour across the US, I was trying to manage my music and myself as a business, you need to think smart and be smart about your money and that kind of stuff. I think that shift was so quick, I went from messing around in my room to this whole operation where you have to focus and be on top of your game.
I was reflecting on what I was like as a kid, how naive you can be, in relationships and life in general, but then how quickly you can become more self aware and look back. I think the general theme about the EP was just the fragileness of the teenage or younger thought processes and brain. I used that parallel of your thoughts being like a piece of fruit when you are a kid; they are colourful and sweet but they can spoil really quickly. It's a little deep and introspective, a little silly as well.
You have had a couple of big hits on Youtube, I know you went pretty viral at one point. Tell me a bit about that and that experience.
Yes, so we were fortunate enough in 2019 to tour over on your side of the pond, we did a tour in Europe, UK, Germany, Brussels, a few other places. I was lucky enough to do a live performance on COLORS, a live performing YouTube page, which was shot in Berlin. I had no expectations, I went in there and I sang Movie Screen and they aired it and people seemed to love it, it has had over 1,000,000 views, and that definitely jump-started a lot for me. It translated over to Spotify and iTunes, so COLORS, that live performance really helped.
What’s been your favourite gig when touring? What has been the stand out for you?
My first show, we kind of winged it. I have a band who tours with me; we were invited to do this small show in California in 2019, so we all packed up and we went down there and did it. There weren’t that many people there, we didn’t play that well, it just wasn’t that great, and then I think we were going to leave two days later and I had just got my booking agent a week or two prior, and he called me and asked if I wanted to open up at La Fonda in LA for Sticky Fingers, which was at the time one of my favourite bands. It was unreal, it was a sold out show with 3500 people there, and I asked the band and they were nervous, and I was nervous, because that show the day before with twenty people was our first show. But we all just agreed we would do it, and we got ourselves on the stage in front of 3500 people and just winged it, it was unreal.
So now I always say that was our first show and it is still one of my favourites. Then thankfully Sticky Fingers asked us to go all around the country with them on their following tour, and it was just phenomenal, a phenomenal time. There are just so many great cities in the US. I think my all time favourite venue was in Montreal at the Corona, it is just a beautiful theatre. I enjoyed that one.
Do you have any plans to come back this way to the UK when the world opens again?
I would love to do just a UK tour at some point, I would love to spend a couple of weeks there. I love the UK and people love music there, it is important to me to do that.
What is next for you? What is coming up?
I have more music coming, another EP in a couple of months, and I hope we can start doing shows again in the next year. I have some of my favourite music I have made coming up, and I really hope we can find the time to make an album. I don’t want to do that here [at home] I want to do my next album with friends, with other musicians, and have a good time and create some cool music.
[My new music] is a lot different, I don’t want to say more mature, but it is a different page I think. I’m excited to see what people think, I am really proud of it. It's a little different to my usual indie-pop, indie-rock; let’s see how it goes!
Stargazer is one of the tracks featured on The Everyday Earwax May playlist.
Follow Tommy Newport on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. His latest releases are available on all the usual platforms including Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp.
Recipes
