Hello and welcome to Soda Jerker on songwriting, Episode 303. It's Simon and Brian here, and

joining us today is an English musician and songwriter, whose uniquely witty wordsmithery and

Deb Pan Delivery have earned him both a deeply devoted fan base and much critical acclaim

since his emergence just over two decades ago. His brand new album, Al Barone, produced by our former guest Paul Epworth and recorded

at the church studios in North London, is arguably his finest work to date.

It's certainly one of our favourite records of the year, so we're understandably excited to welcome

the excellent Baxter Jory to the show.

Our guest was born in Wingrave

in Buckinghamshire in 1971 into a highly creative environment. His mother, Betty Rathmell,

was a gifted painter and his dad, Ian Jury, then an art teacher and frontman of pub rockers

Kilburn and the High Roads, was just a few years away from national pop stardom as leader

of the blockheads. A quick side note, Baxter is the cheeky young scamp pictured with Ian

on the cover of his classic 1977 solo album, New Boots and Panties.

Following his parents' separation when he was still an infant,

Baxter was raised by his mum in Aylesbury.

Later on, the family moved to West London,

where a chunk of his

decidedly wayward adolescence was spent in the company of his eccentric father and his fearsome

mind at the sulfate strangler. The latter proved to be an unexpectedly influential figure in Baxter's

life, and features heavily in his 2021 memoir about that period, Shea's Long, which is well worth

your time, by the way. As a small boy, Baxter loved singers like Elvis Presley and Gene Vincent,

then pop bands like madness, before discovering funk, soul, jazz and hip-hop in his early teens.

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