METALTALK • OCTOBER 2021
Wayward Sons
Interview: Toby Jepson Time stops for no one, but the Toby Jepson fronted Wayward Sons have just released their third album, Even Up The Score, to huge acclaim, the response from critics and fans radiant. The band, consisting of Jepson, guitarist Sam Wood, bass player Nic Wastell and drummer Phil Martini, have toured relentlessly since forming a seemingly scant four years ago and built up a loyal following and hugely impressive reputation for their energetic live shows and crowd-pleasing but intelligent hook-filled hard rock. MetalTalk finds the energetic singer/ songwriter in vivacious form as we look back through his career and find Jepson, “known as the guy with the long curly blonde hair,” in the musical form of his life. “I cut my hair off recently,” Jepson told MetalTalk. “There were two factions in the fans. One was like, ‘why did you cut your hair off? It’s terrible’. There’s another faction saying, ‘oh my God, you look so much younger’. I thought, ‘well, how old did I look before?’ “I started feeling a bit awkward about having hair like that, and so it was just
one of those sorts of funny decisions. I was really glad to get rid of it, and I don’t feel any different whatsoever.” Jepson was one of many who embraced the first lockdown, and he found running cathartic. “The one thing about getting older that you can’t avoid is the inevitable nature of wear and tear,” Toby says. “Running has been very therapeutic, mentally and physically. I’ve had a back issue, largely caused by working in the building trade when I was a young lad, but also caused by holding guitars all the time. I’ve had various nerve problems and things like that but getting into running gave me a total sense of release. I escaped from the worry and concern about the pandemic, and it gave me that sort of sense of isolation. Plus, it gave me physicality, and I started to experience my physical ailments improving. So that was a really massive benefit, and I’ve kept it up.” Lockdown was a big reset. “I had to face the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to go and play. I had a load of shows I had to cancel, so that was 24
a real struggle because that was my bread and butter. Contrary to popular belief, most musicians, including me, don’t own yachts, Ferraris or have huge castles. We’re all normal people trying to make ends meet. It made a big dent.” Jepson also had a couple of production projects fall by the wayside. One, a big film project, completely disappeared. “So, I just looked at my guitar one day,” he says, “and I have got the songs I’ve written through my life, and I have got this voice in my head, so what can I do with that?” The answer was an illuminating trip down memory lane as Toby played online shows for three months “solidly, pretty much every Thursday, and that was an amazing experience,” he says. “It made me look at my life, my music and my work in an entirely different way. I went back in time and listened to a lot of the Little Angels music, songs that I had forgotten about and relearnt them.” It was a liberating experience. “I relooked at the words and was able to remember where I was when I wrote the
