HOWZAT

It’s almost three years since The Sunday Times discovered Thom in the basement of her flat in Tooting, London, playing over the internet to audiences of more than 60,000. Her web tour, 21 Nights From Tooting, attracted more than 250,000 fans worldwide and generated enormous publicity for the unknown singer from Macduff. It led to the re-release of her first single, I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker, and propelled it to the top of the charts.

There was, inevitably, a backlash. Bloggers claimed Thom’s rags-to- riches story was no more than a public-relations stunt, but it didn’t stop the record label, RCA, signing up the singer in a £1m deal.

Thom looks back on that time with bemusement. “All this success around you is like a giant wave. It takes you up and pulls you away. If you don’t have some perspective, it can ruin you.”

What kept her grounded? “My mother,” she laughs. “And the band. I’ve been with my band for a long time and they would not hesitate to pull me down if I started thinking I was Johnny Big Banana.”

Thom’s boyfriend, Jake Field, who is also her producer, is another stabilising influence. But she recalls one moment in 2006 when she could have got caught up in the fame illusion.

“It was the maddest time of my life. I was in New York, walking down Seventh Avenue, pretty bleary and looking for coffee and I ended up in Times Square and there, up on a video screen, was my video. It was just so weird. Tears were streaming down my face and I remember thinking to myself, this is the moment when you could get carried away with it all or you could just keep your feet on the ground.”

With the success of her first album, Thom was under pressure to deliver a commercially popular follow-up. The Pink and the Lily came out last summer but to date sales have been disappointing. “The second album was incredibly hard for me,” she admits. “I felt under pressure to make it. I am disappointed in myself that I never made my diva demands about needing more time and working on it more. That really annoyed me.

“I would never have chosen The Devil’s Beat as the first single. It was like a Catch-22 situation. I didn’t want to piss off the record company because at the end of the day they are dealing with your career.

“But it’s a shame because I do not think that the second album is me. The original lyrics for Saturday Night, for example, were about drugs, so the record company changed them. In a way I feel cheated but they are a pop label and they don’t put out things like that.”

The experience has left Thom determined to do things differently next time. She has decided that she will make her third album as an independent artist. She is not cutting her ties with RCA just yet but if it does not like what she comes up with, she will sever ties and return to her independent roots.

“It’s a bold move,” she says. “I went from being an independent artist with no money and no exposure to a major label artist with lots of money and exposure but now people know who I am and I am willing to take the independence road again. Artistically, not politically,” she adds quickly.

Thom is excited about her new direction. “I feel released,” she says. “My first and second albums are by no means the best music I am capable of making. I want to make new music and push boundaries.”

At the end of last year, Thom and Field moved from London to Brighton. It was a wrench to leave the flat in Tooting where she found success but the couple wanted to live by the sea. “I was devastated by the idea of someone painting over the walls of the basement where we had all written messages during the web tour but it turns out the people who bought the flat are musicians so they want to keep the basement as a studio and keep the messages on the walls, which is great.”

Now Thom is looking forward to sitting in coffee houses in Brighton experimenting with new music on her laptop. “I’ve been sitting on the fence between soul and folk for so long. I want to find that perfect blend that works for me.”

Before that, she has her tour of Scottish venues and later this month, a trip to America, where she will sing Caledonia at the Library of Congress in Washington.

After that, she’ll pursue her new direction.

“It’s time to break out of being a stereotypical folk-singing Scot,” she says. “I want to be inspired again.”

Details of Sandi Thom’s Scottish tour available at www.sandithom.com

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