Tom Tikka picked up the guitar at the age of six after hearing Paul Anka’s “Lonely Boy” in his father’s old Chevrolet. Soon after, he began writing songs. Tikka's first recording contract was a solo deal with a small Finnish indie label Olarin Musiikki. Unfortunately, the EP he recorded for the label vanished as quickly as it was released. Disappointed, Tikka withdrew from music for a few years but began writing songs again once his brother Lappe Holopainen suggested that they form a songwriting team. Lappe had founded a group he was convinced would go far. This group was Carmen Gray. Carmen Gray was signed to Sony/BMG in 2005.
By Kamil Bobin
Discovered via Musosoup
Hey Tom Tikka & The Missing Hubcaps, super nice to have the chance to chat with you. How has the time gone for you since our last interview?
Time flies. That was a year and a half ago, wasn’t it? “By 2022” had just come out.
It’s hard to keep track of time. My debut novel “Perfect Reflections” came out in February. It was a great experience to write it. It’s based on my father’s adventures in South America as a young merchant marine. My dad’s passed on but writing the book really brought him back to life. I had recordings of him telling a bunch of sailor stories. Listening to them was fantastic, albeit a bit sad.
But anyway, 2022 turned out to be a great year. I won an ISSA award for male vocalist of the year and scored a #2 iTunes hit with “I’m Done With Blues”. The “Better Man” album was well liked by the critics and fans alike – I really can’t complain.
How do you balance your time in the studio with other commitments such as a part-time job, family, admin?
Well, I have six kids and I’m a university lecturer … and then there’s the music. I write and record fast and I have a studio at my home, so it all works out just fine. I spend most of my day at my day job and with my kids. I steal a moment or two here and there to write and record. It’s enough. I don’t drop albums every six months. I consider that too often. Once a year or every two years is enough. It takes a long time to put an album together, especially if you want it to be a good one.
Your latest song is 'Venetian Rubber Boots'. Can you tell us more about the making of it and if there were any unusual things happening during the process?
The unusual happenings were that I got burned out a bit when trying to finish writing and recording the track. I was on a deadline and was out of ideas. I had been writing many months nonstop. I was writing the tune for a fundraiser album by Minds Behind The Music and for some reason, I kept hitting a brick wall when it came to the lyrics. Luckily, my wife helped me with the lyrics and she did a great job. Not that that’s necessarily an unusual happening as I do collaborate with her on occasion. I guess what was unusual was the writer’s block that hit for the first time ever.
Another thing that springs to mind was that the vocals were very time-consuming to record. I wanted to get the timbre just right and it didn’t help that some parts were very low and others extremely high. Take those Beach Boys-flavored harmonies at the end, for instance. It took hours to get it spot on.
How do you know when a work is finished?
Well, you don’t really. It’s like a line drawn in water, isn’t it? You could always find something new to tweak in a song. Luckily, I’m not alone with these decisions. I have my label and my producer to help me make that call. I suppose when everything is in balance and the sounds cut the mustard, it’s done.
It takes me about two months to finish a track, so there are always many, many versions to choose from. Sometimes you never get quite what you had in mind and wish you could go back. That was the case with for instance The Impersonators’ “Rodeo”. I still feel we could tweak it a bit more. Yet, it hit #1 on iTunes, so who am I to say it wasn’t ready. Just pointing out that the artist isn’t always the best judge of these things.
How do you find yourself in the music business? When you started out in music, did you know it would be like this?
Absolutely not!
Entering the music business is a bit like getting married. Once you’ve figured out what all is entailed and what it’s really like, it’s usually too late to turn back [laughing]. You’ve got too much invested and it doesn’t make any sense to give up, no matter how tired or burned out you are. If I had known how long it’d take me to get to the point where I am now, I would have probably chosen another path. But hey, I am one of the lucky ones. I’ve gotten awarded, received many Top 10 hits, written songs for Sony/BMG and enjoyed great critical success. It’s been a fantastic ride. The good outweighs the bad for sure.
Describe your favorite and least favorite part about being a musician.
This is a hard one to answer because the best part has to do with the fact that you get to do what you are passionate about and the least favorite part has to do with the industry itself.
I think it’s wonderful when your records sell and your songs are charting and not so great when your songs bomb. Each album you release, at least if you are a professional, should have a hit single. So, there’s always this humongous pressure. Will my album succeed? How are the new songs going to fare?
What’s your scariest experience?
Being robbed in Mexico a long time ago. Staring into the barrel of a pistol is terrifying. I’ve never found my wallet or taken off my wristwatch faster than at that moment. I really thought they were going to off me anyway. Thank God they didn’t.
If you could change anything about the industry, what would it be?
I would bring back quality control by letting only labels release music. Right now, there is way too much music released, most of which really isn’t performed, recorded or mixed to a professional standard.
I understand that people want to release music independently and I am sympathetic to that but the problem is that if there are tens of thousands of new releases every month, it doesn’t just make it impossible for any of those artists to get discovered but creates a fertile ground for what my songwriting partner Antti Autio calls “the dark music business”, where you get PR shysters who charge young artists an arm and leg to promote their releases, releases that quality or image wise don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell to succeed. But hey, they’ll praise them and market them in blogs and webpages that nobody reads – anything for money, right?
What social issues are you most passionate about?
Saving the planet. That’s what I wanted to contribute to with “Venetian Rubber Boots” or at least make people aware of how acute the effects of climate change are. Nearly twenty years ago, Al Gore tried to wake us all up by making the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”. Sadly, things have just gotten worse since then: lakes are drying up, glaciers are melting, super tornados are destroying everything on their path, sea levels are rising, bees are dying. We’ve moved past the period of consequences. If more drastic measures are not employed, we’ll soon cross the point of no return. That’s where we are now and I just want to do everything in my power to try to raise environmental awareness.
What can we expect from Tom Tikka & The Missing Hubcaps in the near future?
A new twelve-track album called “Rainbows & Dead Flowers”. It’ll come out either in the summer or in the fall. It’s mixed and mastered and good to go but we still need to make the music videos and the booklet and plan the release – a lot of work goes toward these additional bits and pieces.