Joshua Idehen

Eat Your Own Ears presents Baxter Dury at Eventim Apollo. How does the tale of Baxter Dury’s greatest album to date, his masterpiece, begin? Serendipitously... It was Sunday June 28, 2024, and Baxter had just stepped from a rapturously received set on The Park Stage at Glastonbury Festival. After towelling himself down, a familiar figure approached him backstage. It was Paul Epworth, the lauded producer/songwriter whose creations have draped themselves across the airwaves of the 21st Century more successfully than any other Briton. You’ll know his work from huge global hits with Florence + The Machine, Glass Animals, Paul McCartney, U2 and, most significantly, Adele, amongst many others, but you won’t have heard very much from him since his own solo album, Voyager, in 2020. Because what does the producer with the Midas touch do when he’s already turned so much to gold? He waits for a passion project to emerge, something or someone about which he can be truly, deeply enthused. Baxter Dury’s Glastonbury performance had flicked that very switch within him. Together they dreamt up Allbarone’s nine-track tour-de-force, stripping everything away and building Baxter’s most melodically direct, futuristic collection in intense three-hour daily shifts throughout December and January. “It’s more than genius really,” says Baxter of Epworth. “It’s like he’s telepathic or something; he sees music in a shape and form that nobody else I’ve ever met does. He doesn’t care what you think: he just wants to make it brilliant, otherwise it goes in the bin.” Support from Joshua Idehen. Age restriction 14s and under to be accompanied by an adult. No under 3s permitted