The past couple of weeks have been fertile time for DADDY, that notable music collective Will Kimbrough and I assembled, with Paul Griffith on drums and percussion, Dave Jacques on bass and John Deaderick on keys.  Four first-call musicians… and me! 

Will and I did a sneak attack acoustic gig at Brown’s Diner, just the two of us on Sunday January the 4th.  It was to give a host of shutterbugs a chance to catch us in our natural habitat for images perhaps destined for iconic cover art and DADDY imagery, and it all turned into one fun hot gig on top of that.  We wanted to play a gig at Brown’s because, well, our new record sounds like Brown’s Diner, in a way.
 
Then the whole band assembled at Norm’s River Road House for a packed-house, immensely satisfying gig (speaking for myself and quoting others who seemed to be quite happy with what they heard).  The new Daddy record, in the can btw, also sounds quite a bit like Norm’s, which isn’t that far a stretch from Brown’s, both being incredibly cool places broken in like an old shoe.

For me, waiting for the Norm’s gig to come was like waiting for Christmas.  If you like to LISTEN to DADDY, imagine how much fun I have BEING in the middle of all that sound!  DADDY is the sound of four shit-hot players – and me! – let off the leash.  These aren’t sessions where these guys play “to order”, and you can heard the joy in it.  I’ve always wanted to be in a jam band.  But I’ve always liked tightly structured songs and arrangements.  DADDY is an amazing combination of both kinds of music.  We’re tight but loose, like Led Zeppelin, or The Band.  We’re The Dead for people who like ragtime.
 
The new DADDY record drops Father’s Day (June 16 ’09).  In my 24 years of doing this crazy music thing, the new DADDY record is one of the best things I’ve ever been involved in.  I can’t wait until you’re able to hear it.  We plan on mixing and getting the cover art together by Valentine’s Day. Wish us luck.

There will be appearances in Nashville for the Tin Pan South festival (tentatively slated for April 1st at the Mercy Lounge) and before that, in March, we’ll be in Austin at SXSW.  When I know where and when we’re playing, I’ll pass it along.

Please check out our new web looks and sounds at the following sites:

DADDY (Will Kimbrough & Tommy Womack) on MySpace
DADDY (Will Kimbrough & Tommy Womack) on ReverbNation

I’ll be in Hopkinsville, KY Friday and at Norm’s here in Nashville Saturday.  More to come on that later.  For now, please check out DADDY, sign up to be a friend, street-teamer, or just dig on the posted tunes from out first record (“At The Women’s Club”) as well as recent videos of the aforementioned gigs and – yes – the odd teasing snippet of what is to come.

Who’s your Daddy?

Tommy

In the new screed, read my political manifesto of truce. (It’s very short.) Otherwise, there is much news to tell of Daddy happenings, but today isn’t the day for it. Today is a day for listening, contemplation and prayer.

Wherever you are in the world today celebrating the Inauguration of Barack Obama, may The Lord bless and keep you, may He make His face to shine upon and give you Peace.

God Bless,

Tommy

“It’s a whole new way of walking.”
- Michael Gough

INSOMNIAC RAVINGS AT 2:16 AM

First, this cool email from Marshall Chapman. Cheese Chronicles press love from Knoxville. Thank you Todd Steed.

…what Frank Zappa, Marshall Chapman, Tommy Womack, and Iggy Pop (and Mark Twain, sort of) have in common!

http://www.metropulse.com/news/2008/jul/02/local-exerts-opinions-summer-reading/

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I just saw and heard a great rock and roll show. My ears feel like I’m wearing muffs in the house. I can literally feel them.

Warner Hodges And Friends (Jonell Mosser, Stacie Collins, Dan Baird, John Coleman, Al Collins and Mike Grando) were just loud enough, tight as a tick, and for the fan of loud guitar that lives within me, it was porn. I needed this. Thank you God.

I didn’t hurt that Warner got me up to sing on two numbers. Life is good.

So I must mess with it. I just brewed half a Bunn coffee pot full of Irish breakfast tea, a recipe for disaster considering I woke up around 4 AM Saturday morning, and then again at 7 ish, spent the day with Nathan, fixed dinner (yes, me! My signature Italian sausage spaghetti sauce. It’s the only thing I cook.) took my first shower in two or maybe three days, shaved, went to a great show, got reminded that I love rock and roll, now it’s time for the third-shifters to take their first union break - and instead of taking one of the sedatives in the cabinet, I have opted to gun the engine and run the risk Beth will awake to see me hunched over the laptop with drool on my chin, seeing bats swoop around me. Three-day tea-jags are my low-rent 46-year-old take on the Hunter Thompson ether binge. It’s really as far as I want to go down the devil’s path these days.

Jimi Hendrix and the Band of Gypsies are playing “Machine Gun” on my iTunes shuffle right now. I love shuffle. It wakes up an appreciation of songs you’ve heard a million times, when they’re thrown at you out of “order.” I wish Jimi were here with us to play The Star Spangled Banner at the Inauguration Tuesday. Wouldn’t that be a kick! You know, he’d be… give me a second. 65? Damn. He sounds so great right now on my little speakers. What a genius. Dead from drugs at 27. Oh, now he’s throwing “Taps” into the middle of “Machine Gun”. The man painted a bigass canvas of sound, he did.

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Okay, to completely change the subject, again. I want to tell you about Polk Miller. He was the first man to assemble a group of black and white musicians together on a recording. He essentially, made the first integrated record. It is my proud honor to point you the way to Polk Miller if you haven’t heard the re-issue. Check out polkmiller.com or tompkinssq.com/polk_miller_quartette.html if my words whet your interest.

Two of my oldest, best buddies from college collaborated on a really impressive – sonically and visually – reissue of the Polk Miller recordings. And dig this, they’re nominated for a Grammy. No shit. My homies! First, Nashville Pussy, now these guys.

Ken Flaherty I first saw dressed as a nun in the infield of Derby Day, Louisville ’82. The nun next to him was Skot Willis, my future partner in crime in Government Cheese. A year later, I wound up playing in a band and sharing a house with these guys, and indeed have worn the sacred habit myself at a gig in the Sig Ep basement. Reissuing Polk Miller was his brainchild and he runs the label out of his house in Michigan. Ken is – and has always been – a person with a contagious enthusiasm. When he loves something, he loves it. When we were living together, we were playing Undertones covers at night but he was also pre-med and very focused. That focus he has is something I envy. He fulfills all orders out of his house; it takes a month for me to mail anything. In 1984 I looked up to Ken and Skot as cooler rockers than I was, and still do that now. He’s married to a great lady, Jen, and they have twin young boys.

So, dig this, when we all moved out of that house in May ’84, I moved into another house with Keith Etter, who now lives in Austin, TX, and who happens to be the artist/designer who executed the captivating ’78 RPM-sized package the Polk Miller CD/booklet comes in. I try and see Keith every time I get to Austin. I was in his wedding and he was at mine. We saw the second show of the Born In The USA tour in Cincinnati in ’85 together, and the night before we crashed on his brother’s apartment floor in Lexington and saw R.E.M. do “Radio Free Europe” and “South Central Rain” on Letterman. Our ties run deep.

We actually look a bit alike too. He’s taller, but the spectacles and the troubled, distracted look are something we both wear with resolution.

Keith creates amazing art – and it can be dangerous! – He employs sharp objects like nails and glass protruding from the canvas or frame. It’s not a home you want to get stumbling drunk in. You’ll lose an eye. It’s a good thing Keith doesn’t drink. (He used to. I have great memories of The Pretenders with The Alarm in April ’84 at Vandy Gym. Keith was at the same show, right next to me as a matter of fact, and has no memory at all of being in Nashville, much less attending the concert.) Keith’s work and my work share some themes actually, a predilection for religious icons/imagery/references.

Keith is one of the most truly decent fellows I know, and it continually pisses him off that society in general doesn’t live up to the same sense of decency he reflexively lives at. It’s not that he’ll rant to you about it. He’s not like that. He just feels the world’s contradictions on his shoulders. Hey, he was one of the first people in Bowling Green, KY I ever met who had a safety-pin in his ear, and spiky hair, and gloves with no fingers. He’s that guy. I love him, and Ken too. I’m proud of them. This would be a great year for them to win the Grammy too. The symbolism is so strong this year. What with MLK Day and the Inauguration the next. Too cool. Go Polk!

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Okay, answer me this one… Has anyone, anyone anywhere, actually ever HEARD THE PRESIDENT’S WEEKLY RADIO ADDRESS? I’ve got NPR on every time I flip on the bathroom light, AM Talk in the car, I’ve never caught it! Does it run at 11 at night on the Spanish station? Please, share with me: have you ever heard it? Be honest now.

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Here’s one that kills me every time I hear it in a commercial…

“Please consult your doctor before beginning an aspirin regimen.”

Are you kidding me?

Does anyone seriously expect me to make an appointment with my primary care physician to see about adding one Bayer baby aspirin to my diet once a day? After all I’ve done to my body and brain, I’m going to go to a doctor to have the following conversation?…

Dr. BalmProsciutto: “Now, Mr. Womack, what brings you in today?”

Me: “Well, I was thinking about beginning an aspirin regimen.”

Dr. BalmProsciutto: “Fine. What we have is a two-step process. First, I tell you to take one Bayer baby aspirin a day. It’ll thin your blood or some shit.”

Me: “Okay, what’s the second part.”

Dr. BalmProsciutto: “The second part is I bill your Blue Cross $274.87 and you pay $20 out of pocket before you leave. Oh, and there is a third thing.”

Me: “Yes?”

Dr. BalmProsciutto: “Pull down your pants so I can get a broomstick and shove it halfway up your large intestine, you dumb sonofabitch. Get the hell out of my office and stop watching the news.”

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Speaking of news! Until further notice, I officially do not give one tiny little bit of a damn what song the space shuttle astronauts woke up to today. It affects my life naught. I wish to be informed only if their lives are in jeopardy. If the news day’s that slow, just put on some aquarium footage. That’s what cable news needs so much more of: aquarium footage.

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And when they show the people standing on the balcony at the New York Stock Exchange… They’re standing there applauding as a bell gets rung. What am I missing here? Why are they applauding anything they do, given their recent behavior, much less the mundane ringing of a bell. My son is ten years old and can keep a hat, snare and kick beat going, with the occasional tom fill! That kicks any money-grubber’s bell-ringing all to hell as far as I’m concerned.

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I’m raving about bell-ringers. It’s time to stop and pick up my sparkly purple Danalectro 12-string electric guitar. It’s a beauty. I brought it out for the Daddy gig, might bring it to Norm’s next Saturday. I’ve been practicing “Oh Well” by Fleetwood Mac and “The Wind Cries Mary” by the aforementioned maestro Mr. Hendrix. Those are fun songs to play. And guitar is a good thing to do when you’ve had half a Bunn pot full of Irish breakfast tea and it’ll be 4 AM in 3 minutes. Prine’s playing. “Killing The Blues”. Kill ‘em John. God bless us all. Everyone. Namaste. Namaheel. Good girl. XO, Tommy

What a year it was.

In 2008 I played 118 gigs over 145 days away from home. I published a book, recorded a new Daddy record, spent a month in the UK, traveled approximately 27,500 miles, got three speeding tickets and cleared $184.73.

Okay, so that last bit isn’t true. But even if it were, for 2008 that would still be extraordinary. To have made any semblance of a living as a troubadour this past year should be hailed as a triumph. God bless Mary Sack is all I can say.

I knew early on this would be a special year when, one spring morning, I filled up my tank in North Carolina right after checking out of a Motel 6, and it cost more to fill the tank than the room cost. That was a new one. And it just got more interesting from there. This is the year that I and practically all my friends got used to playing reeeeeeeaallly intimate gigs, if not all the time, at least a great deal of it. Even the big names were hurting in ‘08.

So basically, my life in ‘08 was very likely a lot like yours! I’m just grateful to God and Mary and Beth and Nathan and Will and Dan and Lisa and Fenner and Paul and Jason and Paul and Warner and Dan and Dawson and Annie and Simon and Steve and Dan and Paddy and Ron and Dan that I – like you – am allowed the privilege of standing in 2009’s front door with my palms up, crooking my fingers and saying “yeah, c’mon, whaddya got?!”

Don’t let the bastards get you down. Not now. Not when so many of them are about to go away.

God bless,

Tommy