CREEM ONLINE: Badly Drawn Boy

Three-and-a-half hours before he'll put on a two-hour show, complete with intermission, Damon Gough is sucking down cigarettes and sipping a Jack Daniel's and Coke in the back of the 9:30 Club. The scraggly and jovial Gough, better known as Badly Drawn Boy, is an artist with few vices. This is either surprising or not, considering his often quirky, anti-depression music. It's tempting to think someone would have to be on drugs to write a song for which the only lyrics are "Just keep saying ‘body rap' till it hurts!"

"I smoke too much and I drink too much," Gough said. "That's kind of not unique. It's the British way." Playing wasted was more common for him in the late 1990s, when he was less comfortable in front of an audience. He said he has fuzzy recollections from that period of gigs he could barely stand through. In learning to enjoy the concert experience, Gough, 34, took a cue from his idols in Guided By Voices. He said he only drinks enough now to feel detached and confident before he goes on. (That doesn't mean he won't keep chugging once the show starts.) Luckily, Gough's performance style doesn't require him to dance. "I'd probably trip myself," he said. At least slightly dulled senses can be good on stage, Gough said. Performing could only really be easy for "an egotistical, I-love-myself person," he added, something he contends he's not. "I never wanted to be stood above or in front of people like I was some kind of showoff," he said.

Seeing a Badly Drawn Boy concert is a little like watching a "David the Gnome" marathon on Nickelodeon. Wearing his signature bright red stocking cap and oversized gray-green jacket, the already short Gough appears downright dwarfish. The name of his last album—"Have You Fed the Fish?"—implies that he's an animal lover, too.

Instead of Swift the red fox who helps David the Gnome, Gough's pet goldfish, Cliff and Wurtzel, help him teach audiences a lesson of hope and love. "Life can actually be something you can enjoy," he said.

When discussing his friend singer-songwriter Elliot Smith's "troubled soul," Gough regretted that Smith, who recently committed suicide, seemed to find solace only in music. For, as Gough declares in "You Were Right," "Songs are never quite the answer/Just the soundtrack to a life."

"I do get solace from writing songs," Gough said. But he gets it from the people around him, too. Gough's wife and children stay at home in Manchester, England, while he's on the road—because he'd "have to have about a billion pounds" to take them on tour and they'd be "bored out their brains." But 3-year-old Edie, 2-year-old Oscar and their mother figure prominently in Badly Drawn Boy's music.

The simple things Gough writes about are inspired by experiences he's had with loved ones. For instance, he told the Washington crowd that the "Fish" song "What Is It Now?" was written after he learned that his "super sperm" had made him a father again.

At this mostly acoustic concert, Gough also dedicated tunes to his friends, his fish, his wife, his mother and his kids.

His attempt at getting to the very essence of life in his writing is what he said most links his whimsical songs to those of his biggest influence, Bruce Springsteen. "The real comparison lies in trying to convey a message about human spirit," Gough said.

At times Gough's positive attitude can be positively annoying. When he passes a photo of his kids around the crowd, you wonder if he's going to stub out his cigarette, reveal himself as Raffi and belt out "Baby Beluga" for his next ditty.

But given the tradition of tortured artists—including Smith—Gough's uplifting approach can also be refreshing. And in spite of writing happy, even hokey songs, he's not naïve. "I'm just trying to spread the message that life is OK even if you live in a shit hole," he said on stage in Washington. The tears in his eyes when he drops Smith's name into "You Were Right" are a reminder that Gough knows pain, too.

A family man whose self-preservation response is fully in check, he's just unwilling to succumb to the hurt. His music is a prayer that, eventually, everything will be OK.

And sometimes, it is.

—Crystal K. Wiebe
December 2003