BIOGRAPHY

My mom found an old cassette tape of me on which she wrote on it in her loopy cursive - Tom Age 6. She said they laughed for hours. A treasure of sorts from a time where few moments were memorialized and archived. Everything analog or gone in the air. 

I was probably around 6 and dubbing myself on a small Radioshack Single Speaker Cassette Radio Player over the chorus of Hall and Oates “Out of Touch”. I’d “punch” myself in and out, trying to keep the tempo with the radio - factoring in the lag as I pushed down the buttons. Listening back. Doing it again. The entire process to me was so satisfying. Mystifying. I could record myself. I could hear myself. More overdubbed songs followed. A few months later, my mom bought me a tapioca colored medium sized CASIO keyboard with chord buttons and drum beat dials. First it was recording improvised nonsense onto the same cassette recorder, then little motifs, and finally variety skits with toilet humor and interludes. I used my ears. I used mimicry. I began learning what I liked in terms of pre-programmed beats, melodies and chords. Soon after I started taking piano lessons, and joined an organized city wide youth chorus. That led to some regional opera and holiday concerts. I loved singing. I used my ears. I used mimicry. This was the beginning of the foundation of my love for music, creation and performance. I was around 7.

Born in Athens, Greece to postwar parents, but raised in the US, I was a child of the pop and neon of the 80s and came into my own in the baggy earth tones of the 90s. Somehow the AM pop of the 70s snuck its way in. All kinds of music was in the ether around me. I loved all of it. I love all of it. Alto Saxophone and subsequent lessons came in 5th grade only due to me refusing clarinet. The deal with my mother was I wouldn’t quit. I would take lessons. I would barely practice. I wanted to give up the saxophone on several occasions. It wasn’t until I picked up guitar and recreational drugs at 15, that I started to really love and appreciate the saxophone, but I was obsessed with the guitar, and it was catapulted even further by my love of writing essays and poems and crafting stories. These obsessions lead me to some of my very first original songs. I graduated from the cassette player to a Tascam 424 4-track where the spark and fascination grew further with multi-tracking. Next came my first theory courses in high school, taking saxophone more seriously, getting stronger at guitar and deciding to go to college for performance and music business where my love for writing and recording exploded with my access to the Sound Recording department and all the musicians to collaborate with that came with a music campus. Simultaneously, and in a parallel trajectory, I was playing jazz on saxophone - small groups and big bands and latin jazz and free jazz - and 20th century music on baritone saxophone on a level I never imagined I would be on. I had to parse out my time accordingly between writing and recording songs on guitar, and shedding saxophone. It wasn’t until after I  graduated college that I decided to put more focus on playing, writing and being in bands. Saxophone finally took a secondary role to writing. Shortly after college, I also picked up the electric bass, and began getting more interested in synthesizers and drum programming. 

From the age of 16 until my mid 30s, I was always stubbornly connected to one original band or another for better or worse. It was fraternal and communal. It was frustrating and transcendent. Taking ourselves far too seriously. Some bands were mildly successful - relatively speaking; touring a little, signed to small indies, releasing records, getting reviewed, playing festivals, creating and selling merch, licensing music to TV. Some never saw a stage. I was always writing more music than the bands I played in could learn. I started to keep songs for myself.

Through my profession, and somehow tangentially related to saxophone, my career and the proximity to some of my heroes of jazz through work led me into more professional (non-indie rock) recording settings. I was now in the midst of some icons and found myself working on their records in different capacities. I somehow found myself one individual away from Miles Davis. It was surreal. Grammy nominations and awards for those artists would become an annual race and it wasn’t long before I worked on some of those nominated or winning records. 

Meanwhile, in the background, in addition to being in bands and working with my heroes, I still was writing and recording myself. There was never a thought of stopping to write and record regardless of bands, and as those bands became less active and dormant, my time and fascination with producing my own music - singing and playing all the instruments - took over with a whole new sense of wonder and ability. 

It wasn’t until recently that I’ve finally decided to do everything on my own and release everything on my own under my own name. No band or pseudonym - just the hyper vulnerability of releasing original music under your own name. It still has the mystical quality it did when I was 6 or 16 or 26. It’s still ideas in the background of my mind slowly forming into something. Hooks and improvising leading to structure and songs. It’s the closest I’ve come to sounding like myself with my love of the pop neon of the 80s, the baggy earth tones of the 90s and the AM Radio pop of the 70s all in there. I’m not taking myself too seriously - and it’s the most fun I’ve ever had doing it. 

- Tom