Music's never been a steady profession, which is why most players have a back-up plan. Not so for Nottingham´s Callum Burrows aka Saint Raymond - 2014´s indie-pop heir apparent.
“I went to college for an hour and then dropped out,” he explains, guiltily. “I didn´t do too badly
at school, but as soon I knew I wanted to do music, I took my eye off it.”
He´s focused elsewhere, though: the 18-year-old recently toured Europe with band-of-the- moment Haim and is garnering plentiful radio play of his new Young Blood EP. “People might see me and think, ‘This is a really quick thing,´” says Callum. “But I was gigging for years and last year I was away writing, so I tried to put a lot of the foundations in before I really went for it.”
In his battle for teenage hearts and minds, Callum´s weapons of choice are a Fender Blues Deluxe and a Gibson ES-335 (tuned to open C), which you´ll see in use come his UK headline tour in March.
“You always think, ‘Is anyone going to be there?´” he admits. “On the last tour, I played one of my [most obscure songs] and loads of people were singing it back. That was a special moment. This acoustic song that I wrote in my bedroom - and now the people of Glasgow are singing it back to me.” Back-up plans be damned!
For more information visit the official Saint Raymond website, or connect with him on Facebook or Twitter.