Billboard has given a glowing review to the Dan Baird And Homemade Sin record, which I had a hand in writing the songs for. I even get a plug in the piece. The writer calls me “perennially underappreciated.” Heh. So it hasn’t been my imagination all this time!

Something’s been on my mind lately and I want to share it with you. Back in April, Will Kimbrough and I played a gig in Birmingham, AL and had a nice preview blurb in the local paper. The local critic gave us a good write-up (by his standards anyway!) with the caveat that the audience should hope “the two of them don’t start congratulating each other for their outrageous political views.”

I don’t think my views have been outrageous at all. Here are the stats: I was fighting mad at all America’s enemies after 9/11. I opposed the Iraq war, and still do, because I believe it to be pointless, ill-conceived and basically as daft as bombing Cuba because Mexico attacked. Oh, and I have asserted that George W. Bush will go down in history as the worst U.S. president ever. I have plenty of academics and journalists who back me up on that. And by the way, the end of that last sentence is not one big long link. Each word goes to a separate article! I’m not alone. Not by a long shot!

Is any of that “outrageous”? Not to me it isn’t. Impassioned maybe, but hardly outrageous. And for a rock critic, of all people, to level such a charge makes my butt tighten up. The conduct of our highest elected officials the last 7 1/2 years, that to me is outrageous.

That’s all I have for now.

love,
Tommy

Howdy, Hope you’re doing well. I’m a busy little beaver. Here’s what’s up.

I just got the Dan Baird & Homemade Sin record in the mail and it rocks like a damn atom bomb. Run out and get it. It’s out in Europe now and out in the States soon. Dan Baird you know from the Georgia Satellites and “Keep Your Hands To Yourself”; the rest of the band is none other than my personal guitar hero Warner Hodges (Jason & the Scorchers) on lead guitar, Keith Christopher on bass and the guy who sounds like a cannon on drums, Mauro Magellan of the Georgia Satellites. I am pleased - very pleased - to say I co-wrote four of the songs on the record with Dan and Warner.

I got the proof copy of The Lavender Boys And Elsie in the mail Friday. It’s a wonderful feeling to hold my new book in my hands and know it’s real. It’ll be printed up and available very, very soon. I plan to put up an online book order form shortly. Actually, I plan to get someone else to do it FOR me. That’s how I ride. I’m very excited to be an author again. I’m going to be appearing at Eddie’s Attic 8/31 as part of the Decatur Book Festival and with Marshall Chapman at the Bluebird 10/11 as part of her annual Literary Night in consort with the Southern Festival of Books. So don’t be surprised if start walking around being all literary and shit, using five-dollar words and all. Wait, I already do that.

Speaking of Marshall, I just had the distinct pleasure of playing with her three nights in a row. Marshall Chapman is an incandescent goddess of rock and roll, she’s simply awesome, wonderfully funny, and to be onstage next to her is to feel heat. We played Friday and Saturday at Swallow At the Hollow in Roswell, GA, joined by the equally phenomenal Tim Krekel. (I know I’m bandying platitudinal adjectives like Rona Barret, but these people deserve it.) It’s a real treat to hear Tim playing lead guitar over my stuff. Saturday night was especially thrilling. Some nights, a force takes over onstage and everybody gets game in a big way. I’m still flying high from that show.

Daddy, my band with Will Kimbrough, John Deaderick, Paul Griffith and Dave Jacques, will be getting together the second week of August to complete work on the second Daddy record. The stuff sounds great so far and I can’t wait to get back to it. My goal is to have a mixed and mastered new Daddy record to listen to before I leave for England 9/17.

The Government Cheese 2-CD Anthology is humming right along. I have a sequence for Disc One that Skot has signed off on and now I just have to mail it to the other guys and make sure they’re cool with it. But I want to get Disc Two sequenced and send them both in the same package and I’m still working on that disc. It’s exciting to be bringing this project to a resolution. Nobody intended it to take this long but ‘There, I Said It!’ got in the way and praise God for it! I’d attach an mp3 teaser to this blog if I had any idea how. Maybe I can figure that out or e-mail one to Mary and she can put it up. (Go Mary Sack! My totally awesome manager! God, I sound like a Valley Girl now.)

I have also started voicing Cheese Chronicles, the audiobook version. That’s a lot of fun. It’ll be long - the introduction alone is 28 minutes in length - but I don’t know if I can abridge it, don’t know if I want to take the trouble and brain anguish to do a Reader’s Digest-type condensation so it’ll all fit on 2 CDs. Maybe I should pop some ephedrine, snort some helium and read it really, really fast. Let me think about that. I hope to release it simultaneous with the Government Cheese recordings and we’ll have a big party with dancing girls and fire eaters.

The record I’m producing on Tonya Mills (as part of the American Slider production team) is into the mixing stage and it’s good to be coming to a resolution on that project. When you can make a record only at night in stolen three-hour snatches of time, it takes a while, but it’s getting there. Tonya’s got some great songs and the voice of an angel, and it feels great to help her get her music heard.

For the first time in my life, I weigh a 150 pounds! People are commenting on how healthy I look lately, that I’ve put on some pounds and my face looks fuller, with some color to it. I’m happy it shows. A lot of people had been worried about me wasting away to nothing the last couple of years, and there was reason for worry, more reasons than I’ve ever let on about in these news flashes and screeds! Let’s just say it’s nice to be eating more normally nowadays, and to not be doing some other things to myself that made nutrition seem superfluous at times. (Sleep too!) I’ve been behaving myself long enough now that the physical results are showing, hopefully artistic results as well. (The screeds about chopping my penis off, I believe, were subconscious experiements to see how sick and demented I could get sober. I’m pleased with the results. Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I’m Tommy Womack and therefore, I’m pleased.) Remember the Buddhist anology about washing bowls from a couple months back? Well, I guess you could say I’ve been busy washing bowls, from all that’s evidenced here. I hope you’ve been busy washing yours. The past cannot be changed, the future isn’t guaranteed, today is a gift - that’s why they call it The Present.

God bless,

Tommy

There’s got to be a morning after…

What would Scooby Doo?

 There, I Said It! Podcast 07.04.08 Tommy Womack: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download