Tom: Hmm, man I don’t know, probably wouldn’t believe it, it's kind of hard to fathom. See, when I first picked up a guitar, I was about playing for the love of music. For me, it was never about being famous and making a lot of money, it was just something that I really loved and enjoyed. The success I guess, if I could sum up what you are talking about in one word, would be fortunate. I feel very fortunate to be able to sit here today and look back with Cinderella and the incredible success we had and it continues now with my solo project. I still feel fortunate and I am still blown away everyday. It is kind of like a pinch yourself moment.
DDR: Really? Even after your long and successful career?
Tom: Well yeah, because I try never to forget that I am lucky. I am fortunate to have the success that I have had. The music business is hard. I mean life is hard and in any business it's hard to be successful. The odds of achieving what we did with Cinderella and continue to keep doing it thirty years later, I try not to forget how fortunate I am. I think a young teenage Tom would have a hard time wrapping his head around that, because I still kind of do. I feel good that I am able to make a living from playing music because at this point, I couldn’t picture myself doing anything else. I always try to maintain the feeling of “I haven’t arrived”.(laughing) I don’t want any grass growing beneath my feet. You have to keep working, so that’s my attitude with everything.
DDR: On this solo album, your voice is in fantastic form. I know in the past you've had problems with your voice, how is everything working for you now?
Tom: Well it's a very long battle with a
neurological condition which left my left vocal cord partially paralyzed. Partial paralysis on a vocal cord reeks havoc on your singing voice and even affected my speaking voice for a period of time. But now it's as strong as it ever was, maybe even stronger. I was told at the time of being diagnosed with it that I would never sing again and most people don’t . There is not a medical cure for the condition, there is no surgery or pill you can take to fix it. Your only prayer is to try and retrain the chord to respond correctly and you do that with speech pathology and vocal coaches. It's not an exact science, and it has taken me years to try and figure it out and get it where it is stable. Now I have a routine that I do everyday that keeps it in shape. But the last few years I have been touring it's felt really great and I am happy about that!
DDR: Getting back to the new album, when did the idea of a solo album first come about?
Tom: Well the very first thought of it was in the mid 90's when Cinderella first broke up, and we broke up for no other
reason than we didn’t have an outlet for our music anymore. Most of the bands from the 80's where being dropped from their labels as we were. There was a whole changing of the guard with the Seattle Grunge thing coming in and all, and I thought about doing it then. That’s when I moved to Nashville and started writing with people here and started working towards a solo record and I had even cut a lot of stuff that's still sitting on the shelf that I had done. I think what I did there for a while was run from the sound of what we did with Cinderella.