Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Tommy Womack

Last year I was fortunate enough to be introduced to a man by the name of Tommy Womack. I was on a trip to Nashville TN, with my friend Paul from Mohawk Visuals, to see Jason & the Scorchers play a benefit show for their original drummer - Perry Baggs. (For those who visit MySpace, I blogged about the trip last June)

Paul had met Tommy previously, and had arranged for him to act as a 'guide' for part of our trip - in return for which we shot some photos for possible promo use in the future. One that he really wanted was a shot of him 'busking' in front of a piece of local graffiti - unfortunately the graffiti gets painted over on a regular basis, but thanks to the power of the net I managed to find a picture of it, and thanks to the power of Photoshop I created the shot that Tommy had wanted.




Tommy is a great guy, and so much more than the 'singer songwriter' that you'll see him billed as in some quarters.

He started out in a college rock band by the name of Government Cheese - about whom he wrote a great book, The Cheese Chronicles. I thoroughly recommend this as a read for anyone with designs on a career in music, and especially for anyone currently performing in a 'small' band - if only because you'll undoubtedly recognise so much of it. Having been presented with a copy when we left Nashville, I proceeded to read it and discover that among other claims to fame, Tommy and his band were occasional stage-mates of a young group from Athens GA by the name of REM, and were also supported by a bizarre trio of Python-esque characters who would later make themselves known to the world as Primus.

I won't attempt to re-tell Tommy's life story, but this gives you a flavour of where he came from. These days he's a musician, a great songwriter, an author, a blogger, and a voice of slightly madcap reason among the throngs. What's more he's a Scorchers fan, which is always good enough for me.

As well as his solo material, which I've seen him perform both electrically and acoustically, he also produced a stunning blues-rock live recording along with his friend Will Kimbrough, under the name Daddy (sadly this doesn't appear to be on the UK Amazon site, but take a look anyway - it's worth it!). Will and Tommy are currently working on another Daddy record, which promises to be something special, but in the meantime Tommy is due in the UK next week for a short series of dates playing with a local band by the name of Dawson & The Dissenters.

So if you have any interest at all in real music; rock, acoustic, blues, check out his site, or some of his stuff on YouTube, or whatever other sources you might find to get a feel for what he's all about.

Then do yourself a favour and get to one of these dates. They'll be low key, and Tommy might appear so nervous at times that you think he might just freeze up, but you'll be in for a real treat - that I promise.