Adam Baxter’s childhood home was a more-than 200-year-old house on a dairy farm and his latest single, “By The Fire” is a celebration of everything that entails. It’s an ode to simple pleasures and, in particular, the comfort and vital necessity of any solid homestead: the fireplace.
With a video filmed by Brady Huxter of Huxx Films at Over the Top Museum in Birchy Bay, NL, “By The Fire” makes use of Over the Top Museum’s “Winter’s Tilt” building – a replica building offering visual insight into how people once lived in the area.
The term “rustic” is going to get thrown around a lot here, but for the Fogo Island fisherman who first settled Birchy Bay, this style of house would have been a great comfort throughout the winters. Naturally, at the heart of these homes would have been the fireplace; their sole heat source, their kitchen, and their hub of social activity.
Baxter says that when he wrote the song, he knew that Winter’s Tilt at the Over The top Museum in Birchy Bay would be the “perfect backdrop for this song.”
While the video might be a nod to Newfoundland’s past, for Baxter the song very much represented the experiences of his own childhood. The stripped-down folk-pop song paints a quaint picture of blissfully sitting by the fire, relatively content even during a winter power outage.
“The fireplaces in the house were a household staple, especially when the lights won’t turn on,” says Baxter. “Inspiration has come from the thought of cooking on the fireplace, playing board games by candlelight, and just enjoying time disconnected from all the distractions that surround us.”
Appropriate to the quaint nature of the song, Baxter decided that a single, uplifting acoustic guitar and vocals would best serve the song, rather than going all out with a full band for the single. It also makes it all the easier to imagine someone picking up a guitar and having at it by the fireside.
“I sometimes like to step away from producing full band arrangements and offer a snapshot of what a live solo performance looks like. It’s a gamble to see if a stripped-down single will do well, but I feel I owe it to the song to present it in a way that I feel best serves the song,” says Baxter.
“By the Fire” is the fifth single to be released from Baxter’s seven-song album, titled Connections. Despite the single’s solo performance by Baxter, the album was conceived with the intention of united artists and musicians, largely across Newfoundland, in hopes of remaining connected while the music industry has been having a bit of a hiatus. The album is set to officially release in August of 2021.