there for a while was run from the sound of what we did with Cinderella.
The things I initially recorded then probably reflected my Americana roots, like Fogerty and Skynyrd, which was a part of me, I grew up on that stuff. The stuff I cut in the 90's was much along those lines. Stepping back from it, it didn’t sound 100% like me. The reason I got to step back from that is because Cinderella reformed because we got a record deal with a major label and we started working on a record, so my solo project went on the back burner while we where doing that. Unfortunately, we worked for several years and then had a falling out with that label and it ended up in a lawsuit. The record was never recorded and we ended up being legally restricted from recording together by some clauses that where in the record contract. At that point, which was around 2002, I came back to the thought of doing a solo project again. I actually started cutting the tracks and producing around 2003, then made a decision to do it without a label involved due to what we just went through with Cinderella. I didn’t want to deal with lawyers or any of that bullshit. It started out not being about making a record, it was just about making music and working with people I loved and I thought where talented. I started writing with my wife Savannah and she started co-producing some songs with me and Chuck Turner who was the other producer on these songs. We just cut a song at a time and different things would take me away from the record, or the recording process. Cinderella, at the time, was still an active touring band and we would tour for five or six months at a time. I would listen to a note of what I had recorded and over a nine year period I would keep cutting these tracks and they would go on the pile. I would keep coming back and would say this sucks, or we have to change that, this one don’t touch it. I woke up one day, nine years later and realized I had a record!(laughing) That’s how the record came together.
DDR: Wow
Tom: Yeah, then we selected the fourteen songs that seemed to make sense, or the most sense being together and then had it mastered. We took the finished record and started shopping labels and we hooked up with Merovee records. They have been fantastic and really supportive of the whole project. Everything works out the way it's supposed to, right?
DDR: That's one thing I wanted to say about you new album. It doesn’t sound rushed, you seem to have taken your time and you pretty much confirmed my thought.
Tom: (laughing) Well, sometimes a song needs to sit there and simmer. For example, the first song “Solid Ground”, I had that lyric and melody for a while, but it was just the chorus. Savannah and I were sitting around with the guitars one night in the living room and I ran my chorus by her, and thirty minutes later we had the whole song. Now in contrast to that, the song “A Different Light”, is a song that Savannah had. She brought me that title one night and it took almost a year and a half to write that song. It took a bit of time but they all come together in different ways. One
thing I have learned over the years is you don’t force writing. If you force it, its going to sound forced. I have always tried to not do that. If I have a line in my head and nothing else is coming, I just wait until it does. If I forget that line, it means that it was not that memorable, so on to the next.
DDR: You have been said by many sources as being a prolific song writer. When you hear that, how does it make you feel?
Tom: I don’t know. When I think of prolific, I think of people that wake up and write amazing stuff all day long (laughing) I don’t do that. I am proud of the songs I have written, but I wouldn’t consider them prolific. I always say I don’t get writers block because I never force writing. The only way you will ever get writers block is if you try and force it. I can sit and not write a song for two years and I don’t get freaked out, some people get freaked out by that. I know something is going to come. Usually when one does, the antenna comes up and then you have five or six you are going to start working on. So I don’t know if you could categorize that as prolific. (laughing)