Scott Bywater is nothing out of the ordinary. Ordinary height, ordinary blue eyes, ordinary greying hair. Just your average espresso-drinking kind of guy. At least, that’s what the self-effacing Tasmanian would have you believe.
The fat biography of Muhammad peeping from under one arm tells a different story. So do the two volumes of Bywater’s own poetry crammed under the other, the latest of which, one sky/many skies, launched last week. As does his position in Phnom Penh rock ‘n’ roll history as one of the original line-up of the Cambodian Space Project, soloist in his own right and newly recruited frontman of the Lazy Drunks. “Poet of the bar-room”, thoughtful musician and ceaselessly rolling stone, it’s safe to say Bywater is probably one of the most extraordinary ordinary guys around.
That’s not what he tells people, of course; ‘(kind of a music guy)(writes a bit)’ his card advertises apologetically. “I got sick of reading on everyone’s cards ‘CEO this, Master of the Universe that,’” he says in explanation. “That’s what I am, and it doesn’t get anyone’s hopes up too much.” He laughs quietly.
So did he always want to be a music guy who writes a bit? “The first thing I ever wanted to be was a writer, when I was so high,” (indicating something not very high at all). “In my family, that’s what you aspire to. We’re not taught to be engineers or doctors or lawyers; the high ideals are the arts.”
However, the siren song of convention proved irresistible and for the earlier part of his life Bywater eschewed Art, labouring instead on the treadmill of domesticity in his home town of Hobart. But something wasn’t right. “I don’t know, sometimes I talk very negatively about Tasmania and I don’t want to do that… I had to get out of that regular kind of life. I thought I could get more from it, and it turned out I just… I just couldn’t.”
Wary of openly criticising domestic bliss, he need not be so cautious; his poems do so for him. Both volumes (available from under Scott’s arm at $5 a piece) are paeans to adventure, to the open road and its freedoms. Little mention is made of home or hearth, as Bywater’s poetic world is that of the outdoors, of a boundless sea and sky through which the narrator roams ‘in pursuit of the unlimit’.
Bywater readily admits to a fascination with the unlimit as both an artist and as a man. “It appeals to me, to be always moving. At this stage I’m down to a suitcase and a guitar or two. It’s the idea that the journey is more important than the destination. Arrival is always the same but the journey is always different.”
His creative process is similarly spontaneous; akin to the improvisation of a jazz tune, with big ideas bubbling away below the surface of his consciousness before bursting forth almost fully formed. Bywater just has to “improvise on a theme I’ve had in there for a while. That’s when spectacular things happen.”
Realising that the description of his work as ‘spectacular’ is rather uncharacteristic for someone normally so self-effacing, he politely back-peddles. “But I’m never sure about my stuff. It’s not academic poetry,” he says, layering ‘academic’ with fake import. “I think that my writing appeals to people who don’t like poetry; I’m not so much a poet for the poetry society as for the bar. A poet for people who don’t read poetry.”
Whatever kind of poet he is, Bywater’s fascination with being on the road has led him to adopt the kind of peripatetic lifestyle that would leave a younger man (he was born in 1967) begging for a break. “Because I don’t have other routines, I have to listen to my underlying rhythms. Without getting too hippy trippy about it I think, ‘What shall I do next?’ and something comes up.”
Since 2011 those rhythms have taken him to Phnom Penh, France and then back again, sometimes writing a bit, touring Europe with the Space Project, sometimes going solo. Then there was the Krash Project, a two-man endeavour on French island La Reunion, which saw Bywater and his Space Project companion Alex playing to “fresh audiences in tiny bars overlooking the Indian Ocean”.
His musical style is multifaceted enough to encompass such different gigs, audiences and locations, redolent of chansonniers like Jacques Brel as well as Anglophonic troubadours Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. Bywater of course sidesteps such laudatory comparisons: “It’s not like I see any link at all between what I do musically and Dylan. People see the harmonica rack and the guitar and assume my stuff is like Dylan, but I don’t think it’s anything like him.”
That isn’t to say Dylan hasn’t been a huge influence on Bywater. Bywater acknowledges he “fell pretty hard for Dylan” in his mid-teens, working his way through the classics onto Dylan’s obscurities and albums of the last decade, which Bywater considers among his best works. And like Dylan he delights in not playing by the rules, experimenting with electronica and dub, then going back to his acoustic roots before jumping off into spoken word poetry. “I’ll give everything a shot; there aren’t any rules. I’m just as comfortable playing solo at Riverside Bistro as I am playing rhythm with the Space Project.”
Bywater was there at the very beginning of the now legendary Cambodian Space Project. A compatriot of co-founder Julien Poulson, Bywater found himself sitting in behind Poulson and Srey Thy on their first gig more than three years ago. Since then he’s played regularly with the band, finding himself at the helm for a while at the close of 2010 (which he describes as “an interesting time”) and touring with them in 2012.
Since returning to Cambodia from the Krash Project, Bywater says he’s “rarely been so active, without having to hustle or anything!” The astonishment in his voice is audible. Taking advantage of this good fortune he’s accepted the gauntlet thrown down to him by The Lazy Drunks, the first band he ever played with in Phnom Penh, to become a bona fide frontman. “Their lead singer suddenly went back to England, and I already knew all the songs. I thought about it and I thought, ‘Here’s a real challenge, to be a real lead singer’. To connect with the audience on that level, I’ve never been very good at it. I always feel very self-conscious, but this is a chance to bring out the Steve-Tyler-Mick-Jagger thing inside.” And how is he working on bringing it out? For a moment Bywater looks nonplussed, then brightens. “Well, I’m going to wear a pink shirt…”
Scott Bywater: musician, poet, and definitely one of the least ordinary guys you’re likely to meet this year.
WHO: Scott Bywater
WHAT: Kind of a music guy. Writes a bit.
WHERE: Riverside Bistro, Sisowath Quay, and Rubies, St. 19 and 240
WHEN: Thursdays from 8pm (Riverside Birsto) and Sundays from 6pm (Rubies)
WHY: He’s extraordinary