Music Spotlight: Adam Baxter

Launching his third album in as many years, educator and entertainer Adam Baxter peels back the layers with his honest and emotional album Domestic.

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Summer vacation, for many of us, is a time of relaxation. Putting the feet up, if you will. For educator and musician Adam Baxter, the summer season serves up prime opportunity to hit the road and pursue perhaps his greatest passion.

Hitting the Road 

“I’m a teacher man,” Baxter shares in an interview with The Herald. “I’ll take the whole school year and write and record a new record. I’ll still play gigs on the weekends, whenever I can get hired. The main goal is that near the end of the school year, put out a record and the second I can I’m hitting the road. I’ve always heard people kind of scoff at the idea of teachers being musicians, saying you can’t have a proper career doing it because you’re so consumed with your profession. This is my way of saying I think you can do it, to be honest with you. I’m doing pretty darn good with it.”

As if by clockwork, Baxter has released his third studio album in three years. Domestic sees the Lewisporte native grapple with the underlying themes of house, home and family, combining folky undercurrents with genre trappings plucked from a lifetime of music fandom. 

“I think, for me, that’s what I set out to do, have an underlying theme for every song on the record,” says Baxter. “I guess I sort of made it a writing exercise, but one that turned into a great materialization. I think that’s pretty cool. 

“This one has a wider colour spectrum of any of the other records. This one is late ’90s emo with modern folk and then you have some Bon Iver influence in there. It’s like ambient folk, I guess we’ll go with. Those are the words we’ve been bouncing back and forth in terms of the stylistic pigeonhole of the record.” 

Upping the ante by combining his duel careers as artist and educator, Baxter’s Domestic utilizes a proverbial bandcamp of instruments. From horns to trumpets, saxophones and tubas, Domestic is perhaps Baxter’s most realized creation to date, the most candid snapshot of the man himself in this stage of his life and career.

“This record is the most honest to me thing I’ve ever put out in my life. I said when I heard the last mix, I don’t care if this album doesn’t sell a drop. If nobody likes it, that’s fine. I’m happy with it. We’ve made art that was an expression of what we were doing at the time and what I was feeling.”

Educating & Entertaining

Embarking on a lengthy Atlantic Canadian tour, Baxter is making the most of his opportunities in a relatively short span. He has been afforded the rare window to live out both dreams of educating and entertaining, something he wishes to pass on to his students present and future. 

“I always see it as an opportunity to be a role-model,” Baxter says of his music. “The kids all know that I love music, it’s my life’s passion, but if I on my own time am doing my life’s passion, maybe they can take from that too. If you love doing what you’re doing then go for it and it will pay off. I know that sounds lame, but when you’re in that environment and you live in that environment constantly, it kind of rings true.”

For a full list of tour dates and more visit adambaxtermusic.ca Domestic is available now digitally and wherever local music is sold. 

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