It was a loverly week of DADDY stuff at the AMA (Americana Music Association) Festival here in Nashtown last week. Will and I did a day of video and radio stuff Friday and then Friday night played the Basement at 11 PM. (I dug the guy before us, Patrick Sweany, a lot. Google dat mannnn!)

One thing among many that I love about Daddy gigs is that we go a little further “out there” each time. I do believe we are on the way – as a musical unit – closer and closer to our ultimate ideal: a jam band for people who like ragtime.

If you read this in time, and live in or near Bowling Green, Ky, I’m playing the Java City at noon tomorrow (Tuesday) in the Helm Library on WKU’s campus. It’s an hour-long set in a building I spent much time in studying a quarter century ago.

Last time I played there I had some hippie types sitting cross-legged down in front, which is like the coolest thing I could hope for. Hippies sitting cross-legged at your gig means you’re happening when playing a college. Peace, brothers and sisters.

And if you live in or near Pasadena, Tesas, I’ll be playing Kenny Pipes’ “Almost Austin House Concert Series” this Saturday the 26th. (Email kpipesjr@aol.com or call 713-947-8752 (Kenny), for reservations. Showtime: 8:00 pm.)

My last gig there inspired the only hate mail in Kenny’s eight years of concerts. Apparently, that night I was comedically riffing on my new religion I’m founding, Tommy Womack’s Fuzzy Buddhist Methodism, at length, and then I have one song (“Alpha Male & The Canine Mystery Blood”) that questions the Resurrection, and another (“The Highway’s Coming”) that questions the Rapture and, well, it’s obvious that I’m some sort of spiritual deviant, right?

Well, this one concertgoer certainly thought such after my performance. She dispatched a strongly worded e-mail to Kenny calling me a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and other unclean things.

It’s MY first hate mail too, by the way. I’m almost surprised it took this long for me to get one.

Tomorrow afternoon is my first Leadership Music function. It’s a 2 ½ hour orientation for the new class at the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel at 4 PM, followed by a reception with LM alumni.

I’m excited and nervous. For a guy like me who’s been iconoclastic to a fault, the notion of being invited to participate in this kind of a program is sobering.

I’ve got a chance to make a lot of first-impressions in the next 24 hours. I’d appreciate your prayers in those regards. Dis could be a really good ting. I could learn a lot from these folks – and pass the savings on to you.

God bless,

Tommy

One of the best parts about what I do is getting to see so many things I wouldn’t otherwise have gotten to. If I hadn’t taken the plunge and decided to waste my life in rock and roll, who knows if I’d ever seen New York City yet to this day, or London, or the Mediterranean off the Sicilian coast, or my latest vista: Yellowstone National Park.

Everyone should see the mountains or the ocean once every six months or so. The vastness is therapeutic; it makes all your problems, indeed your whole life, seem very small in comparison to God’s handiwork.

Tom Cook (with who’s band I played with out in Montana) was an excellent host and drove me all over Yellowstone. It’s an amazing feeling to be on one ridge of the Rockies and be looking out across a great valley to the ridge on the opposite side, with the air so clean you feel like you can reach out and pluck the tiny little trees out of the ground.

I didn’t know before that Yellowstone is a great big volcano. The whole thing is a percolating earthen pore. It blew a few million years ago and scattered gush all the way to the Pacific. It’s going to blow again, too. It could happen in another million years or next Tuesday at 6 PM. Nobody knows. But when it blows, it’s going to get peoples’ attention, if we’re still here then. Imagine a volcano with a rim the size of Rhode Island, full of grass, trees, bison, elk, bears, tourists… and steam!

There are thermal vents dotting the landscape all around, as one might expect from a volcano, and steam is escaping from holes in the ground 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You have to fight the urge to assume it’s somehow man-made, that when Old Faithful goes off, some fellow cranks open a valve and lets off pressure from deep inside the world. There are no human hands involved, though; it’s the planet behaving as a living, breathing thing, bowing to higher wisdom and a consistency of purpose that humans come woefully short in the face of.

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I just saw the artwork for “Halcyon Times”, the new Jason & The Scorchers record. I was already excited about this record (I co-wrote five songs on it) and seeing Paul Needham’s great artwork (centered on a great shot of the prairie with a boiling sky shot through with sunlight) makes me all the more excited. I’m the one who suggested such an image to Paul, and he ran with it.

It’s an amazing record, absolutely one of their all-time best. I don’t know when the release date is but keep an eye out for it. Anyone who thought the band was over and done with are in for a huge surprise. Brad Jones produced it, which is a fantasy fulfilled. I’d always been curious what that pairing would have yielded, and now I know. Soon you shall as well.

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This coming week is the Americana Music Association festival here in Nashville. I’m playing an official showcase with Daddy, at the Basement, Friday the 18th at 11 PM. If you’re in the neighborhood, I hope you come on out.

I always look forward to gigs, but Daddy gigs especially. Playing with those guys is like being inside a great musical beast. And I have the pleasure of knowing it won’t be our only hurrah this autumn. We’re playing the Magnolia Fest in Live Oak, FL, and a handful of dates in the Midwest in the next couple of months.

I’m sure this week I’ll also be at one or two official affairs where finger food is served and I spend my time making small talk, attempting eye contact and trying to stay away from the bar. Ah, the music business! Weeks like this coming one put the lie to the “starving artist” idiom because, if you work it right, there’s a lot of free food to be had, assuming you don’t mind eating standing up, talking about Taylor Swift like you know her and making gestures with a half-eaten Swedish meatball on the end of a clear plastic fork.

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I just gave Nathan the choice of taking a shower, practicing his horn, or doing his homework. He chose to take a shower. He’s only 11. I would have lost money on a bet regarding this.

I could use a shower myself. I had one when I got home but I still feel a little road on me. At least the pants I have on now are clean. Beth can’t understand how I can leave town for four days and take only one pair of black jeans. Women.

God bless,

Tommy