May 17, 2024 • 58 mins
From: https://tombreiding.com/about
Many would say that country music as well as the broader Americana genre are the musical heart and soul of our nation, but singer/songwriter (and working rock guitarist) Tom Breiding has been creating a sub-genre of Americana for decades. A celebrated writer, Breiding focuses on the true heart and soul of America: our laborers and union members. Hailing from West Virginia, a state with a large populous of mine workers and laborers, Breiding has shared an intense artistic connection with the working class heroes of the United States, most especially United Mine Workers of America.
Former Collins Music Corporation staff writer, Tom has spent the entirety of his career as a chronicler of small town America and the past decade as a musician in residence for the United Mine Workers of America. Commissioned to write songs by the UMWA, Breiding's anthems were instrumental in preserving the health care and pensions for tens of thousands of retirees and their families in both the “Fairness at Patriot” fight and the "Keep the Promise" campaign. His original ballads have retold the stories and have punctuated the commemorations of many of the most important labor events of the 20th century where Tom has performed them. Breiding’s work with and passion for the UMWA and Wheeling’s Appalachian Institute have taken him all over the U.S. and through every back road and coal town of his home state, West Virginia.
Tom has been invited to perform at the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Woody's hometown of Okemah, OK for the past four consecutive years and his 2020 release "Love Commits Me Here" is Tom’s most recent tribute the hard wrought labors of mining, steel, and growing up.
In addition to providing the songs for the "Fairness at Patriot" and "Keep the Promise" rallies, Tom Breiding was commissioned by the United Mine Workers Union to write and perform original songs for the the 100 year commemoration of the Ludlow Massacre, the 50 year commemoration of the Farmington mine disaster, the International Inaugurations of Officers, and International President Cecil Roberts lifetime award from the Labor Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Many would say that country music as well as the broader Americana genre are the musical heart and soul of our nation, but singer/songwriter (and working rock guitarist) Tom Breiding has been creating a sub-genre of Americana for decades. A celebrated writer, Breiding focuses on the true heart and soul of America: our laborers and union members. Hailing from West Virginia, a state with a large populous of mine workers and laborers, Breiding has shared an intense artistic connection with the working class heroes of the United States, most especially United Mine Workers of America.
Former Collins Music Corporation staff writer, Tom has spent the entirety of his career as a chronicler of small town America and the past decade as a musician in residence for the United Mine Workers of America. Commissioned to write songs by the UMWA, Breiding's anthems were instrumental in preserving the health care and pensions for tens of thousands of retirees and their families in both the “Fairness at Patriot” fight and the "Keep the Promise" campaign. His original ballads have retold the stories and have punctuated the commemorations of many of the most important labor events of the 20th century where Tom has performed them. Breiding’s work with and passion for the UMWA and Wheeling’s Appalachian Institute have taken him all over the U.S. and through every back road and coal town of his home state, West Virginia.
Tom has been invited to perform at the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Woody's hometown of Okemah, OK for the past four consecutive years and his 2020 release "Love Commits Me Here" is Tom’s most recent tribute the hard wrought labors of mining, steel, and growing up.
In addition to providing the songs for the "Fairness at Patriot" and "Keep the Promise" rallies, Tom Breiding was commissioned by the United Mine Workers Union to write and perform original songs for the the 100 year commemoration of the Ludlow Massacre, the 50 year commemoration of the Farmington mine disaster, the International Inaugurations of Officers, and International President Cecil Roberts lifetime award from the Labor Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
God knows it. This isn't avideot and you are I'll bless your heart.
This is the code of podcast Pittsburgh'smusic scene and welcome in. I'm
your host Johnny Hartwell along with AndyPugar. Today we talked to the man
(00:23):
who has the heartbeat of coal Mineand steel Town, Tom Briding. Is
it in West Virginia. It's inOkeema, Oklahoma, Oklahoma? The guth
three. Oh that's oh the Guthrie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did
you meet Arlogu three? Yep.Arlow bought me coffee and donuts one day.
(00:43):
Really, yeah, the first dayI met him. Alice, Yeah,
yeah, it is Actually John Fulbright'ssister had the place that I told
him. After I met him,I said, I stopped by to give
him a copy of my discs andm I said, I'm going up for
(01:04):
uh to get some coffee. Doyou want me to bring anything back for
you? He said, no,I'll walk up with you. Oh nice,
right on. I can't tell youhow many times I listened to Alice's
restaurant back in the day. Idon't remember a lot of it, but
well then you you listened to Ruthfor the Right Way. Oh yeah,
how are you all? Set?Yeah, I'm good, Tom Brady,
how are How the heck are you? Bud? I'm good, Johnny?
(01:26):
How are you? How's good?I's good? Danny? You doing all
right? I'm just great? Thankyou? All right? So, Uh,
usually I like to kind of goand get the history of where you
started, you know, where youwhere the love of music started. But
let's start with, uh, whatyou're currently working on. Let's let's talk
about where you are today. Let'sgo first. Let's go that. Let's
(01:48):
do so if there's anything that youknow that you're you know, you have,
you know, tons of albums andyou work with you know, Bill
thoms and things like that. Sowhat what, what's what? What are
you doing today? What are youdoing this year? Yes? I just
laughed because I'm kind of all overthe map. As you've said. I
play in Bill Thomson Hard Rain withthe Soulville Horns, so that's a nine
(02:10):
piece rock and soul outfit. Butmy solo career, most of my time
is dedicated to writing songs of laborand labor history, you know, growing
up in this region just big partof my upbringing, I guess and who
(02:31):
I became as an adult and writingabout my home state, people of West
Virginia, which of course would bethe coal miners. I've developed a relationship
with the United mind Workers of America, their union, and so just two
weeks ago, on Sunday, Iperformed for a ceremony to honor one hundred
(02:54):
and nineteen miners who died in Benwood, West Virginia. You know when mind
is asters were pretty common throughout thetwentieth century and earlier, and so yeah,
I spent a lot of time.I write songs for their rallies,
for their commemorations, for their events, inaugurations and so forth. And that
(03:15):
keeps me pretty busy. So you'rekind of a you know, two weeks
ago we interviewed Bill Tomms and thenand then we had folk music right last
week, Hey, and this iskind of a marriage of the boat.
That's right. Well, it's funny, Johnny. I that weekend, you
know, we played too. Iwas with Bill and the Boys in Columbus,
(03:36):
Ohio. We played to a soldout audience in Columbus, Ohio at
Natalie's Grand View, and you know, kind of living in the life of
the rock star. In the nextafternoon, I was in West Virginia with
the Mineworkers Union honoring one hundred andnineteen miners who had perished in the mind.
So it's come kind of blessed.I get to do a little bit
of everything, all right. Sotake me to the beginning. When did
(03:58):
you discover music? Well, themusic thing, you know, it was
never a choice. It was justmy earliest memories are associated with music,
so it was always in me.My mother loved music, always playing,
she danced, you know, allthe time she was carrying me. So
I've always attributed my you know,natural inclination of music to that. But
(04:24):
yeah, so it was it wasnever a conscious choice, and I just
I was the kind of kid thatI always spend my time looking like when
we'd go to my grandmother's house andI would sit at the piano for you
know, a couple hours and justplunk away at a piano and anything I
could get my hands on. Andthen of course I got my first guitar
when I was fifteen, and thatwas pretty much it. Did you have
(04:44):
other did you have other family memberswho were interested in music? My brother
Paul still plays guitar to this day, not professionally or anything. It's up
more of a hobby for him.But I guess because the two of us
were the closest in age, sowe grew up list to a lot of
the same music. And who's older. I'm older, you're older? So
he did you discover music before him? Oh? I don't know, all
(05:10):
right. So when you were dancingon your mother's hip, yeah you were
young. What kind of music didshe what? What kind of music did
she listen to? And what kindof music did you listen to as a
kid. Well, I was bornin sixty three, so whenever she was
listening to then, it was youknow, the the dance music of the
of the day or whatever, ifyou will. So, and you know,
(05:31):
I remember her name's Mary, Sowe always joked. You've always loved
the Creden's clear Water song Proud Mary. You grew up in Wheeling, I
did, Yeah, close and Wheeling. Yeah all right, So what kind
of what kind of radio did youlisten to as a kid. Well,
there was wn e U sixteen hundred, There was wk w K fourteen hundred.
(05:55):
Uh, there was w w VA, which was the big country music
radio station, and you know,I was all across the dial. I
listened to just anything anything on theradio. And then you know, I
inherited an older cousin's record collection andit had a lot of heavy stuff like
Steppenwolf and Grand Funk Railroad and albumslike that, and there was just nothing
(06:17):
that wasn't on my playlist, anythingthat I just enjoyed music and listening to
anything that was you know, thatjust sounded good to me. And that
was just about everything. So nota lot has changed. You're still you
have a very across the board.Yeah, that's awesome. Uh so at
fifteen, you picked up the guitarfor the first time. Yeah, where'd
(06:39):
you get the guitar? Well,actually it's I was thirteen when I picked
up the first electric guitar. Okay, it was my friend Mark Kzlowski.
It was his older brothers and Ihave that guitar today. I still have
it. But uh yeah, justone little brush across those strings, and
I decided that's what I wanted toplay, was the electric guitar that was
(07:00):
plugged in through an amplifier. Andyeah, it's just yeah, that pivotal
moments, that first stroke of theguitar strings of the electric guitar, and
then I saved up money and hadto buy my first guitar, get my
first job, and saved up myyou know, first several paychecks and bought
an electric guitar for myself. Howquickly did you pick it up? Well,
you know, I was. I'mthe kind of person that if you
(07:24):
hand me an instrument, any instrument, I can probably make some music with
it after a few minutes. Butyou know that, so it comes naturally
in one regard. But you know, even to this day, I struggled
to play as well as I'd liketo. It took a lot of work,
and I was lucky that my timejust passed playing the guitar. I
(07:47):
just loved to do it. Youknow. There were nights in high school
I want to go home early justso I could pick up my guitar and
play. My friends thought I wascrazy, you know, and it comes
back. You know. You meetpeople they say, oh, I've always
wanted to play guitar, and youknow, in my head, my first
reaction is, no, you reallydidn't. I wanted to play the guitar,
(08:07):
and I made it my business toplay every day, and to this
day I can. I seldom walkpast the guitar without picking it up.
For fifteen twenty seconds. I can'twalk past one without picking it up.
So all right, so you're you'rea teenager. You you're figuring out the
guitar. So what happened then?Did you join? Did a bunch of
(08:30):
your fellows, you know, buddies, Yeah, form a band? What?
Yeah? So actually, yes,I'm in ninth tenth grade, I
guess, and playing with my friendsand we're playing things like Cheap Trick in
ac DC and you know, Aerosmith, things of that that age, which
really caught my ear at that time. And then when I was a junior
(08:52):
in high school, a friend namedChris Cambletti, and Chris was an absolute
brilliant piano player, and uh,for whatever reason, you know, we
didn't become friends until, you know, maybe like our junior year, late
junior year, and he invited meto his house and I came over and
his older brothers were listening to theAlmond Brothers live at the Fillmore East,
(09:15):
and I would sit and I wouldlisten to Chris play. He had a
grand piano in his living room becausehis father was a concert pianist. And
that's when I discovered, you know, the blues if you will and that
set the tone for the rest ofmy life. It changed changed my whole
attitude about what I was listening toat the time and uh what I where
(09:37):
my focus would be on what Iwanted to learn and how I wanted to
play all those things. So thatwas pivotal. It was this kind of
a seminal moment. You're going fromcheap trick to you know, ye Roy
Buchanan and the Almond Brothers and uh, you know B. B. King
and Johnny Winter and all the bluespeople came a little bit before me.
(09:58):
So kind of grew up in thatmoment. Huh, yeah, I sure
did. So did you form aband? Yeah, so the first band
that I formed, I was well, I was lucky. I played in
a band. It was the hokiestthing. It was called Hot Ice and
it was There were three women thatthis young fella grew up in a household
with his two his aunt, hisgrandmother, and his mother, and he
(10:22):
was a drummer. He lived twoblocks This is in mcmeeck in West Virginia.
He lived two blocks from an allnight hours club called the Brandywine and
he played drums. And the threewomen were so proud of him and wanted
to showcase his talents, so theykept a band around him to play every
Friday and Saturday night at the AllHours club, the Brandywine, and I
(10:43):
was included in that. So Imay have even been fifteen years old,
but certainly by the time I wassixteen years old, I was playing on
a stage every Friday and Saturday nightfor four hours. And that's where I
really honed my craft. And thatband we played, you know, everything
from popular music to the time,the sixties, classics to what what we
(11:07):
wanted to play. You know,we had liberties because you know, Patty
made sure that her son was surroundedby good musicians. So I got to
meet a lot of great musicians andthen we would work songs and we wanted
to play, and that was anincredible experience. Do you remember your first
paycheck, your first time you gotpaid to play? I don't, Uh,
I don't specifically remember that, butyou you know, you have to
(11:31):
remember I was, you know,I dove in like. I did this
for three years till I was eighteenor nineteen years old. Uh, playing
every single Friday and Saturday night.I was making more money on the weekends
playing in the bar in this barthan I was on the loading dock at
my part time job after school everyday. Wow, and yeah, it
(11:52):
was just just you know, keepingbusy. What happened to Patty's son,
did? He continued Brian Yost.I'm still Facebook friends with him. If
he catches wind to this somehow,say hello. And Patty passed on just
about two years ago. And Pattyand I had some We had some tough
times too. We were both verystubborn people. And I made amends with
(12:18):
her about six months before she died, and I'm so glad to this day.
I just stopped by one day andour conversation ended. I told her
I loved her, and she saidI love you too, Tom. And
yeah, So you're fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old playing after hours club
till two am. Did they lookat you with as like, you know,
(12:41):
here's this sixteen year old kid afterhours or you just it didn't matter?
I don't know. It was McKmeckin, which is a very small
community. And of course, sowe were able to do that at my
age because of the three chaperones Pattyand her sister and her mother who were
there as chaperones that's how we wereable to play in an after hours club.
(13:03):
But it's a very small community.So you have to remember everybody that
was in that bar knew those threeand it was a block from their house,
and that was It was just thatkind of thing. And you know,
the band always sounded good. Wealways had good people playing. We
rehearsed once a week and it waslate. I was going to say,
did you rehearse quite a bit?Oh yeah, once a week with Patty.
Yeah. She was like she wasthe manager show. Okay, she
(13:24):
made us toe the line and shewas a drill master that yeah. Yeah,
it's funny, but it was.It was great, I mean,
and then the local people loved us. So all right, So after that
period of time, you're sixteen,seventeen, eighteen years, you know,
where where did the music go fromthe after that? So that's an interesting
(13:46):
story. I met my wife whenshe was eighteen. I was nineteen,
and so I met her on aNew Year's Eve nineteen eighty two at the
Stanley Theater and I'm nineteen years oldand I start telling her. I started
telling her, I said, oh, yeah, I play in a band
right now. And I was notin a band at the moment and told
her, yeah, I played guitarand you know, stretching the truth or
(14:09):
whatever. And after our first date, after that, I decided, well
I really need to follow three withthis. So I started calling my buddies
and put you know, we gotto get a band together. I want
to put a band together, right, So put a four piece band together
called Substitute. And that was afun band. It was, you know,
some of my best friends at thetime and one of them still one
(14:31):
of my best my closest friends.And it was a fun era. You
know. It was nineteen eighty threeand we were playing Joe Jackson and the
Who and uh, you know,all the all the loud, obnoxious stuff
and having a blast doing it.So and you and you became a truth
teller. Yeah that's right. Yeah, well I was. I've always had
(14:54):
integrity. I've always been honest here. I think you get a little leeway
when you're nineteen and you need apretty girl. And you know, I
wasn't lying lying, but I didn'twant to tell her. I didn't want
to tell her. I'm an inactivemusician at the moment. Any any musician
is always looking for the next gig, so not technically wrong, right,
(15:16):
that's right, all right, Sowhen we're gonna book, I want to
get back to that, but Iwant to I want to ask you about
songwriting. When did you start writingmusic and songs? Well, I became
a school teacher, and I movedto Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, and uh started
teaching in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, and kept the band I was in
(15:37):
at the time, which was areally great band. I was the youngest
person in that band by ten years. It was called Studebaker Hawk. It
was based out of Ohio, whichof course is much closer to Wheeling,
and uh when I started to teach, you know, I held on to
the you know, my role inthat band as long as I could,
but uh, you know, itwas hard to give it the attention.
(15:58):
I was focused on beginning a newcareer and uh, you know, of
course, you know, you don'tjust quit playing music. And uh so
I turned to writing songs and andactually in that band too, those there
were two songwriters in the band.Actually all three of them wrote, but
two wrote most of the stuff.And uh so they they kind of,
(16:19):
uh you know, they pushed meto write songs and I'd written one or
two songs that they they really liked. I mean the first two songs I
had ever written, even first attemptedto write my own songs. They just
they loved them, and they becamestaples in our shows. Uh So when
I had to focus on teaching andless, you know, going out on
(16:40):
the weekends, I uh, that'swhere I turned was to write. And
I wrote every day. I wroteand wrote and wrote, and you know,
I thought, well, you know, I'm a songwriter. I'm a
songwriter. And it wasn't until laterthat I realized, like the first hundred
songs I wrote, I don't thinkany pieces of those even exist anymore.
And uh, you know, oneday I wrote a song and h I
(17:03):
finished, and I listened to thetape back, and I thought, you
know, this is a real song, Like I think I've written a real
song here. And from there itbecame a lot easier. And yeah,
what'd you teach? What was Itaught English? I figure, dad,
if you writer? Yeah, okay, that song that song that you talked
(17:25):
about? Yea, what was thatsong? What was it called? Railroad
Town? Okay, So that's becauseI want to talk about the evolution of
your music. But that's that's kindof you know, your railroad town.
That was definitive moment that song forsure. And where did that come from?
Growing up in Wheeling and playing onthe railroad tracks, you know,
(17:48):
that was my playground, was therailroad tracks and the river, you know,
And because I actually grew up inWarwood up until third or fourth grade,
well I went to school there soto eighth grade, and just played
on the railroad tracks. I mean, when you grew up along the river,
you know, in a milltown likethat, those images they're just ingrained
in you. You know, sittingat a red light in your parents' car
(18:11):
and you know, for fifteen minuteswatching a train go by on right down
the street, you know, therailroad tracks right down sixteenth Street, wheel
East, Wheeling, and those imagesjust burned into my brain. And then
having moved away, actually I rememberexactly what sparked that song was my dad.
I had a phone conversation with himand he was telling me about how
(18:33):
they were putting up the bike trails, the rails to trails thing, and
you know just how wonderful it was, and you know, I was agreeing
with him and everything, and Iremember getting off the phone and thinking,
yeah, it's kind of sad though, you know. And it's kind of
sad because those you know, thetracks are gone now. So I have
I have if I could play someof that song for you, if you'd
(18:55):
like to love it. I hopeif I can remember this, I haven't
played it in probably years. Let'ssee if we can move this up there.
We got area. This one wasa little bit behind the mountain,
(19:21):
far from the shining glass, freefrom the shadows of the over pass.
Rails of rusty steel, though theywere built to last, have been forgotten.
(19:42):
This twenty years went past. ButI remember the sound the whistle of
my father's railroad town. I couldhear the sun going down inside the box
(20:22):
car. The little children play,you should have seen it. That's what
their father say. They tell themstories of the break away. Their day
(20:42):
of labor is twenty years away.They don't remember the sound the whistle of
their fathers rid road town, orhere the sun going down over the mountains.
(21:27):
Far from this broken glass, underthe shadows of the overpass, girders
of shining steel are being built tolast by men who've seen the pass of
(21:51):
their father's silver wheel. Thank you. It's kind of like Russ Belt Jimmy
Buffett. I don't know that song. No, I mean you you were
(22:12):
like Jimmy Buffet. It just itjust you know, because it gets nostalgic
and you get a visual of ofyou know, the overpass and you know
the steel wheels and things like thatwith the overpass and then here the sun
going down. That's an interesting way. Yeah, that was one of the
(22:33):
lines I was the most proud of. And uh, you know I got
signed by Collins Music. That wasone of the one of three songs three
song demo that got me signed asa staff writer on Music Row. And
uh yeah, somehow that line foundits way into a hit song. And
I don't I don't, I don'trecall who really somebody borrowed it. I
(22:55):
think so familiar, that's that's acompliment, right, It was that good
it is. It's sort of kindof it's a shame the rest of the
song did in the company. Sohow familiar with the with the railroad life?
Did you have anybody in your familythat that worked on the railroad or
if you just threw vicariously, youknow, just by being in the in
(23:18):
that town and with railroads being soyou know, prevalent in your yeah,
in your being out in the town. And yeah, you know, I
grew up right next to the armatureworks and then Wheeling stamping Works was a
half block down the street, andthe trains would pull in and out of
there, and when you're a kid, I mean, those hulking, massive
trains, you just you know,there's just so impressed. You're so impressive
(23:41):
to a small child. Like Isaid, those are just images that are
ingrained to me. But it's funnyyou asked, because you know, these
are things I didn't think about ordwell on as as I was growing up.
It's that's what I think writing does, is you know, when I
when I first started writing, Iturned all the images. I started to
realize I'm using the same images.The rivers and the hills and the railroads
(24:03):
and the mills and the and theand the characters and the songs. They
were all the blue collar you know, beer drinking, shot in the beer
kind of working class people. Andyou know, I think, you know,
you start to ask yourself, like, well, these things are occurring
again and again in my music,so there must be a reason. You
realize how important your upbringing really is, and how impressionable on a young child
(24:26):
growing up in a city like Wheelingwas for me, I guess so.
And the same with the coal industry. Might you know. I didn't have
anybody in the coal industry on myside of the family. I had friends
whose fathers went into the coal mines. And then you know, you're driving
down the street listening to WWVA inthe middle of the afternoon. They have
the mind report telling you goes onfor twenty minutes, telling you which minds
(24:48):
are open, which minds are closed, which workers have to report, which
ones can stay home that day,Little things like that, and yeah,
those are things you just don't reallyforget, I guess. So it's kind
of funny, you know. Youtalk about, you know, listening to
kind of pop rock, you know, the Cheap Trick, and then you
get exposed to the Almond Brothers,and then when did you kind of figure
(25:15):
out this this folkish kind of rock. Well that actually so, you know,
that's I try to go chronologically.But before that, when I was
a child, you know Don McLean'sAmerican Pie, you know, I'd call
radio station and request the song.When I was nine years ten, years
old. You know, the storysongs I've always loved and I even the
(25:36):
even the soul music at that time, they had stories to them, and
uh yeah, I was always abig fan of the story. I wanted
to listen to the song and andand and what happened? You know?
This the story behind the song?I guess, uh people, that's why
I was drawn to people like JimCrochey and uh just I don't know,
you know, I think that's somethingthat's missing from today's music, is the
(26:00):
story. And uh so, Iguess that was always I guess that's where
that that really came from, thatfocused kind of side of things, and
not so much the genre of thesong, but the stories behind the songs.
I was always drawn to that.So where so did you have?
(26:21):
Where did that song come from?Then? Where did did it? When
you you remember? How? Whatwhat inspired that song? Well? Do
you have to remember, as Isaid, I wrote about one hundred songs.
I was writing every single day.Was it a variety of music?
Well as as much of a varietyas you can get with just an acoustic
guitar sitting in a room by yoursin my apartment, by myself, you
(26:42):
know, if that makes sense,but I guess it was. Yes,
some were quieter or somewhere. Theytend to be quieter, I think just
because of the instrument itself, theacoustic guitar, and uh, excuse me,
but I was writing every day anduh and and thinking I was doing
a good job at it until Iwrote Railroad Town, and then I realized,
(27:04):
like, Okay, this is whereI need to be. I need
to be able to sit down andwrite songs like this for that song,
which came first the words of themusic, well pretty much, okay,
So I'd say eighty percent of thesongs I write begin with just a little
you know chord or you know chordprogression that I like, and then I'll
(27:26):
hum along and then I'll find aline or two that fits that tune that
I like, and hopefully it's youknow, it's a good enough hook or
whatever to develop into a lyric,and then I'll sit down with a pen
and paper and put it all together. But I've written songs about every way
(27:47):
you can possibly write a song,and including the proverbia waking up in the
middle of the night with a songin my head and running to the recorder
before I forgot it. So doyou visualize what you're writing about as you
write? Is there a real visualbecause you're that one song had so many
visual imageries. Yeah, so theimagery is a big part of what you
(28:11):
know. And even you know Collins, the you know, the publisher I
wrote for in Nashville, He's Iremember him stopping at his desk one time
and turning off a song I wasplaying, and he said, you know,
you're painting pictures. And nobody hadquite explained it to me that way
before, so I guess I becamemore conscious of it. But yeah,
(28:32):
so I don't know, Annie,I don't know if I if I actually
am, I don't know how consciousI am. Well, they were really
strong images. I mean again,Johnny at one line about the overpass,
I saw that. Yes, youknow, so very strong imagery. Beautiful,
beautiful, thank you. If youlook at my phone, I probably
have over four thousand photographs, youknow. So I love to take pictures,
(28:59):
you know. I used to drawwhen I was a kid. But
yeah, images are a lot Idon't know. Images. Well, it's
part of storytelling anyway. It's abig part of storytelling for me. If
you can make somebody else see whatyou're seeing, right, then they're going
to understand the story. That's right. So not only you musician, you
musician, you were also a teacher. And then tell me a little bit
(29:19):
about writing in Nashville and you knowwhat was that like and how did you
get that job? And well whatwas that like? Yeah? For me,
it was mostly commuting. And youknow, I was at a small
Catholic school, Saint Thomas Moore,and I had a principal, John Lennok,
who when I got my deal,I had this big life storm.
You know, I just I justgot engaged to be married. I was
(29:40):
beginning my teaching career, and thenI got signed by the largest independent publisher
on music Row and all of thesethings, you know, within months,
and so I just tried. Itwas the juggling act, you know,
but they were so helpful to me. I would go into the principal's office
and sit at his desk. Hewould give me his desk to hash out
(30:00):
a line or two that I had, you know, on a song that
I was working on with another writerwho would call me or something, and
you know, it was quite theexperience. So a lot of it was
commuting so I just still did mostof my writing at home. But the
most invaluable thing was sitting down withhis hit writers, you know, for
the month or so of time overyou know, a year's period that I
was actually there going to work everyday and sit with these writers and learning,
(30:25):
you know, the craft, ifyou will. So I've never met
anybody that did that line of work. What is it like? What do
you do on a daily basis?Well, you show up at the office.
Now, this is now, youhadn't remember. This is in the
nineteen nineties. So I don't knowhow much things have changed now, especially
with the big corporations. Everything's buildings. But in those days, music row
it was all they were publishing houses. They were homes. So you'd go
(30:48):
up to the kitchen and you know, have some coffee and sit and talk
to everybody. And then you'd sitin a room with designated writer or writers
and you'd work for a couple hours. Did you bring a passion? Oh
yeah, you always had your guitarwith you had, yeah, and and
right for you know, an houror two, and then go to lunch
(31:08):
and sit somewhere and talk more aboutmusic. And they come back and for
another hour or two and play thelegend. I was hoping you kind of
pride myself on being a good storyteller. I was trying to get there.
But uh huh, yeah, it'sliving the dream, so to speak,
for sure. But it's hard workthough I can't, you know, So
(31:29):
it is really hard work putting asong together for a publisher in Nashville.
The criteria that you have to meetlyric wise, and uh, it's just
it's really every single line and it'sit's hard work, but it isn't you
know. You know, I'm sureyou've heard the legendary you know, Briille
(31:49):
Building in New York and then HarryNielsen, you know, did it out
out in LA And so when yousit down and you work with somebody,
the collaboration, is that something thatyou that is still part of you?
Is the collaboration or is it?No? Pretty much, I've always been
uncomfortable with it. I'm very introvertedand I've always I've never preferred to sit
(32:13):
in a room and write with somebodyelse, unless it's somebody like my friend
Steve Dean, who is just sucha genius just draws out the best in
you. And you know, Ifeel like I'm just kind of on the
sidelines observing and the next thing,you know, I have four lines in
this tremendous song that you know,that quote we wrote together, the kind
of thing, you know, butthe best four lines. Yeah, but
(32:38):
yeah, I'm the kind of personand just this to shear. So when
I write, I get up,I walk from room to room, I
carry things with me. I can'tsit still, and it's hard for me
to sit still and just and thinkand write. I need to move and
be active, and I need topick up my guitar every three or four
minutes and you know, sing itdifferent ways to come up with another line,
(33:01):
and it's it's very active process forme. It's not just sitting there.
And when you're with somebody else ina room, you know, the
the silence is painful to me.Sometimes you know, you're you're, you're,
you're on the spot to come upwith a line and nobody speaks for
a minute, and it's just likeI wish lunch would come pretty soon.
So so pick us up where youknow, we kind of left off as
(33:23):
far as chronological order of your yourcareer. You know, you're playing in
a you know, after hours club, You, you met your wife,
you you you form the band,pick us up from there and where where
are we in the year? Yeah? So I think the focus then was
(33:43):
uh uh. Since I got marriedand since I had the publishing deal,
the focus was writing and recording songs. And that's where my friend Jamie Peck
came into play. And Jamie,uh was probably the most influential person,
uh in my career of anybody I'veworked with. It was Jamie that when
(34:05):
I when I was writing all thosesongs, I was going down to his
studio, Fat Cat Studio and youknow, giving him twenty bucks or whatever
and laying down six seven of thesesongs at a time, and just with
my acoustic guitar. He would workme in in the middle of sessions with
bands, whatever. And it wasit was Jamie that told me, he
said, you know, there arethree or four of these songs that you
(34:29):
know we should we should produce these. He said, I would like to
do that. I think they cango somewhere. Those three songs led to
my writing my publishing deal, andso I continued to work with Jamie for
the next fifteen years or so,and that was the entire focus was making
records, writing songs and recording themwith him. Now, I continued to
(34:52):
playing bands, but for a whileit was just cover bands, the people
that I met up in this area, you know, coming from Wheeling.
I moved up here in Pittsburgh whenI was twenty four. And yeah,
so that was the focus, writingand making records. Your first record,
(35:13):
those songs, those three songs,Did that make up your the Did that
kind of determine your direction of whereyou wanted to be as a singer songwriter?
I think so, Yeah, Ithink so. Kind of telling the
story, having a song that's withgood imagery, a song that came to
a good conclusion, a song thatwas finished correctly. Yeah, all the
(35:35):
things that I was learning in Nashvilleabout good songwriting I wanted to incorporate into
my own songs. Every at Istrove to have every song sound like a
hit song, something you could hearon the radio. And you know,
it worked sometimes that sometimes it didn't. Sometimes I had songs that were kind
of offbeat, but they were specialto me for whatever reason. I just
really liked them and held onto thoseAnd yeah, so you know, did
(36:01):
that for a long time and tillthe year right around two thousand, you
know, I pretty much exhausted theblue collar thing, and I actually had
a trip to Snowshoe, West Virginia, and that was where, you know,
I don't know, I drove throughall of these poor mining towns and
(36:22):
saw all of these you know,native West Virginians who you know, came
from coal mining families, and woundup spending the weekend at this really ritzy,
expensive ski resort. And the contrastto me was, I don't know,
it just really hit me at thetime for whatever reason, and so
(36:43):
I decided to write about the youknow, stretch beyond my Ohio Valley routes
and really focus on the miners ofWest Virginia, the coal miners, and
write songs about them, and turnedto them for inspiration, and that led
to another whole chapter. You know, this the last the chapter that I'm
in now writing about, you know, the stories about the coal miners of
(37:06):
West Virginia. I know it's goingto sound cliche, but that's a mind
that can be mined over and overagain. Yeah. Well, you know,
I had taught for eighteen years atthe time, or close to it.
I wound up teaching for eighteen butI was working on songs for that
record. I was writing songs forwhat became the Unbroken Circle Songs of the
(37:29):
West Virginia Coalfields, and I remembertelling my wife, I said, you
know, I could make a careerfrom this, from these songs, from
this record. I was conscious ofthat when I realized what it actually was
that I was doing. And youknow, she said, well, you
need to do that then, Andthat's why I left teaching, you know,
(37:49):
because I'd made sacrifices. You know, I had the teaching career,
and I had the publishing deal,but you know, my focus at the
time was starting a family. Mywife and I have been together since we
were teenagers, and uh so shesaw some of the opportunities that went by
the wayside, you know, whilewe were young, and you know,
well that was happening. So soat forty years old, I decided to
(38:12):
play music full time. And uhyeah, it was a wonderful decision.
Tell me about her. She she'llkill me, she said, I don't
know, I don't know how toexplain somebody so wonderful. You know,
you have somebody in your life that'sjust you know, we're we're a good
team. We remind each other ofthat all the time. Team briding.
(38:35):
We're a good team. So yeah, and we're we're Yin and Yang know
Yang and yeah and we're yeah,total opposites, and it just it's always
worked, worked really well because ittakes quite a woman to support yes,
I know that, to support you, you know, yeah, you know,
to make a decision and leave asafe career like teaching is. Right.
(39:00):
Well, first of all, Iwasn't that safe. I was in
a Catholic school, so I wasn'tmaking a whole lot of money. Oh
okay, but I was though.I was. Yeah, and I was
a breadwinner in the early years ofour marriage. And then you know,
my wife was fortunate enough to geta very good job and so it kind
of allowed me some leeway that otherpeople don't necessarily have. So I was
blessed there too. Like I said, we're a good team. It's always
(39:22):
worked, all right. Let meask you a little bit about teaching,
because you know, teachers are ittakes a rare person to teach. I
have the utmost respect for teachers,and I don't miss it one bit for
that reason. I respect each oneof them. That's an incredibly difficult job.
(39:43):
So you were teaching, but thatreally wasn't your calling. Well part
of it was, but not theday in, day out classroom activity.
I don't know, it can be. You have to be a very very
strong person to teach because you're withthose children, You're so influential, and
you're in their lives day in andday out, and so it's it's just
(40:06):
the responsibility of That is what Ifelt relieved of when I left teaching.
That just being relieved of that responsibilityof somebody who just looks up to you
every single day and you you know, I don't know, it's a tremendous
responsibility. Well I could see youbrought the teaching into the music because I
remember the time you did a gigfor Music Smiles at Children's Hospital and you
(40:30):
brought a lot of the mining informationwith you coal miners and you actually turned
that hour or so into I mean, it was very entertaining, but it
was also very educational. Yeah,so that's what I do now. Also
I work at I'm actually the directornow of the Appalachian Institute at Wheeling University,
(40:51):
and it's a perfect combination because Idid I love teaching children, but
as I said that day in dayout for a year, you can develop.
It can be unhealthy with you know, teacher child relationships sometimes, but
I'm so blessed now I host thesestudents from all over the country. They
come from Massachusetts and California and youknow, places in between big schools Notre
(41:15):
Dame, Michigan, Creighton University,and they come for five day trips and
you know, we work in soupkitchens and urban gardening, you know,
you know, helping the needy inmy hometown of Wheeling. But you know,
they they my music's a big partof that. And so I'm able
(41:36):
to give them the programming, thehistory of the union. I get them
to meet one of my coal minerfriends and sit down and talk with them.
But but anyway, that satisfies everythingI need. That was positive about
my teaching experience, you know,helping somebody to understand something and to give
them a perspective that maybe they didn'thave before, especially these these students coming
(41:58):
from other parts of the country andyou know, not growing up here.
I'm anxious to share my background andthe history, the amazing history of this
place. And so teaching has notleft me. But the day to day,
teaching in the classroom with the samegroups of students every day. I
don't miss that at all. Andthat's why I have so much admiration for
those who do the ones who doit well. I really do well.
(42:21):
I think there's a lot of waysthat you can categorize art, and but
I think an artist ultimately has todo that art, you know, whether
it's a singer has to sing,a writer has to write. So you're
teaching and maybe that that there's thatthat music, that that is that is
yearning. At some point you haveto say, yeah, I have to
(42:46):
chase that dream. Yes, Andso you go to your wife you're ying
and yang, and you go toher and say, listen, this is
calling me. Is that am Iportraying that that moment, well, I
had to put it a little moretangible to her. I told her,
I said, I think I couldmake a career doing this it You've done
(43:10):
it, yes, Yes, I'vedone it. Yeah yeah, And she
she was the first one to encourageme. Just like the original conversation,
wait, hold on, recently likeI'm in a band, I need a
band. Hey, I can makethis a career. I need to make
this a career. There you are, there you are. I think you're
(43:30):
right. You gave yourself a certainbar and you had to. Yeah,
you know, it was really great. For a while. I was going
into all of the schools and doingmy program, and we had Gateway to
the Arts, which was an incredibleorganization then and it's still around. It's
(43:51):
not they don't do what they useis active? No, the same.
They got rid of all the artists. And you know, then two thousand
and eight, the how the crisishit, the crash if you will or
whatever, and all the money forfunding for the arts started to dry up.
That was when things started to geta little difficult. And then that's
when I found a position at theAppleachian Institute, a Wheeling university, and
(44:15):
it was funny. I read thejob description and I thought, I just
laughed. I thought, well,here's my next career, all right.
So tell me. Once you madethat determination, what happened then? Which
determination? Johnny? Feel like,Hey, I'm going to make music my
career. This is what I'm goingto do. And so what how did
(44:37):
you pursue that? And what didyou Well, first of all, I
built a recording studio in my house, so I could do everything in house.
I started hosting other bands. Iproduced several great records in that studio
back in the day, and youknow that that paid decent money for a
while, and going into the schoolsthat maid money. And I was a
(45:01):
commonwealth speaker with the Pennsylvania Council ofno oh, the Pennsylvania Humanities anyway,
I was a commonwealth speaker with them, and they had work for me.
I would go, pardon me,perform in uh, senior buildings and in
(45:22):
hospitals places like that. Yeah,So I don't know. I just had
a lot of work going for awhile and then then started to dry up
a little bit, and that's whenI was able to That's when I found
the position at Wheeling University that Ifelt like I was so qualified for.
But you also played in a numberof rock bands as well through that all.
(45:45):
Yeah. Well, I've been withBill Toms now since right around the
turn of the century, so it'sgoing on twenty four years, twenty literal.
I'm thinking him back to nineteen nine. Yeah, yeah, that sounded
that little long in the tooth,but I don't think he was that all.
It goes by fast, so allright, So you're playing in bands
(46:10):
and Bill's Bill is a fantastic songwriter. It's it is the perfect outlet for
me when I I don't have tostand in front of people and speak.
I don't have to front the band. I only sing background vocals, so
I'm not killing my voice and Idon't have to be a real presence.
I'm just I'm just plugging in myguitar and playing these tremendous songs. Bill's
(46:32):
such a great songwriter. With thesegreat guys, you know, we're all
good friends and they're amazing musicians.It's that's all I ever need for that
outlet for the electric guitar. Ilove that, Okay, but but I
should tell you too. I alsoso I do have an electric band.
You know, a lot of originalsongs. But it's called Union Railroad and
(46:52):
that's with my son Jack and JimmySpears and another young fellow named Will Condridge.
Uh we're kind of a you know, we're kind of a seasonal band.
We get these little runs of shows, but we're gonna put together three
or four shows in October and uhyeah, about once a year we have
a month or two where you know, we get all get together and it's
(47:13):
a really cool band. I lovedoing that. So do you contribute to
Bill as far as lyrics or musicor anything like that. Bill and I
we collaborated a lot early on,and for whatever reason, No, we
just don't do it much anymore.And I think a lot of it's just
time. I mean, we're bothreally busy, and I think a lot
of it's just that. But uhyeah, but I you know, i'd
(47:37):
be remiss to tell you Bill contributedprobably the most important lyrics. I had
written all those songs for The UnbrokenCircle, where I documented all of these
events and spent a lot of timemaking sure everything was accurate and that everything
was appropriate. And and Bill thetitle track the Unbroken Circle. Those lyrics
(47:59):
were Bill's lyrics originally, and wegot together and I kind of just turned
it into a bluegrass song. Iremember calling him on the phone saying,
Hey, you wrote your first bluegrasssongs? Are you talking about us?
Well, you got to listen tothis so but uh yeah, all right,
So now get us up to speedwith your career. Now where do
(48:20):
you want to see this go?And and and tell us about your your
work with the United mind Workers.Yeah, so if there's any way path
forward for my own material, it'sprobably going to be. Well, I
shouldn't say that, because I'm notsure. I haven't written just for the
sake of writing in quite a whilenow. My last record was two years
(48:42):
ago. Uh well, no,or almost four years ago now, right,
because it was during COVID so therecord kind of got the short end
of the release party was canceled andeverything. But anyway, I'm not sure
how to answer, Johnny. I'mjust I'm sixty years old and I'm so
blessed that I'm still playing in arock and soul band with Bill and my
(49:07):
own music. I'm just not sureyet. I've really started to put together
a lot of ideas recently. I'vebeen getting in the writing mode, which
I have not been in in along time. I haven't written anything per
se, but it's hard to explain, but when you get in that mode,
it manifests itself. These ideas,these things I've been writing down,
(49:29):
they're going to come to life eventually. And then as far as with the
mine Workers Union, I tell themevery event I do, I'll do anything
for this union. They asked meto do anything, I'm going to do
it. For them. You know, I'm an honorary lifetime member. They're
my brothers and sisters, and it'sbeen the most gratifying thing of any aspect
of my career by far. Youknow, when you're doing something positive,
(49:52):
I mean instrumental in you know,retaining the healthcare of tens of thousands of
of people, of hard working Americans, you can't put uh, I don't
know, you can't put a priceon that. It's it's it's really special.
So I don't know how often they'llask me, but whenever they ask
(50:14):
me, I'll be doing that.Now. I've got the Woody Got Three
Folk Festival coming up again this year. This will be my eighth time in
Okema, Oklahoma. I can't waitto get back out there. It's it.
It's the greatest festival to play fora songwriter, for an artist,
it's like an artist retreat. Theyput us all in this old days in
holiday, like a day's in hotelthat's unoccupied pretty much a year round because
(50:37):
there's nothing in Okema, Woody's birthplace, and they have security, so it's
nothing but artists. And we're filledto the pact with all the artists,
and so you can imagine what livingat that hotel is like for four days.
It's a blast. It's so muchfun. And uh yeah, every
year something special happens to me there, performance wise, meeting people, seeing
(51:00):
other artists, or you know,my own performances. And I don't see
that changing again this year, soI'm really looking forward to July for that
again. Can I ask you toplay one more song? Yeah, of
course. So the Appalachian Institute whereI work, it was created on the
university campus because of the pastoral lettersThis Land is Home to Me. It's
(51:24):
called it was written by the Catholicbishops of Appalachia, and it just describes
the Appalachian plight, you know,the plight of the powerless at the hands
of the powerful, if you will. And I knew when I saw the
pastoral letters when I began that job, that I would write a song of
the same title, This Land isHome to Me. That title just resonated
(51:46):
with me immediately. So when Ifinally found the inspiration to write it,
it was the day after I tookpictures of them tearing down what was the
heart of downtown Wheeling for me,you know, where the National record mark
was and the Murphy and Ls Goods, And so I wanted to capture the
(52:06):
sentiment of the pastoral letters as itpertained particularly to my hometown. A great
history is winding down in this region, and in this town. The smoke
(52:27):
is cleared, and silence falls,and the buildings tumble down. And as
the rivers washed the banks of timeand said, our sons and daughters free.
As these children roam, may theynot forget this land is home to
(52:49):
me. May its lessons be ourfoundation in this new age of transformation.
For our fathers and mothers, theysettled here to build and feed a nation
in this country of lasting freedom.Nothing less their legacy taught me to pray,
(53:19):
lest I forget this land is hometo me, and to some our
(53:44):
natural treasures, To fill their liveswith earthly pleasures. For the riches and
wealth of others, to my own. I care not to measure. But
may they leave a water clean fromthese mountaintops, serene and in their careless
(54:07):
steps. May they not forget thisland is home to me. Thank you
(54:29):
when because you know, we talkeda little bit about you know, your
words, paint pictures, and people'sminds. What are some some of the
feedback you get from people that thatyou kind of wrote about, what are
there? What are their reactions?Well, it's interesting you asked that because
(54:50):
my friend regb he used to writefor the Tribune Review. He still writes,
I think freelance for different outlets.Uh. But anyway, he when
he heard the record down Broken Circle, he was fascinated by it, and
he arranged to take a photographer andmyself down to Logan County, West Virginia,
(55:13):
where I had spent time researching towrite songs for the record. But
his idea was for me to actuallygo into people's offices and into their under
porches and play them these songs.And I think he was I realized later
what he was doing was looking forlike verification of like how authentic are these
(55:34):
songs and the stories behind them?And Yeah, the response was an eye
opener for me. It was overwhelming. First of all, the people of
West Virginia and those mining towns arethey're so they're so friendly and I don't
know sometimes I guess not always,but if you connect with them on a
certain level and you know they're they'rethey're they're just very welcoming and accepting,
(56:00):
and yeah, I was surprised bythe response at just how happy people were
that I was telling their story.I guess. And the miners they tell
me. Every time I'm at anevent, I'll have thirty of them walk
up and say, we appreciate you, Tom, we appreciate the work,
We appreciate you telling our story.So yeah, I don't know, response
(56:25):
is good. We talked about teachersbeing a rare breed. Can you imagine
being a miner? Well, that'sjust yeah, I cannot. I cannot.
I was scheduled to go underground intwenty twenty and COVID put a stop
to that. And I'm not sure. I'm disappointed about that. I've had
opportunities since, and I'm not sureI want to even go under the ground
(56:50):
just for a day, let alonework under the ground every day, a
mile and a half, two milesunder ground. And you know, these
guys, they've made sad sacrifices,them and their families for generations, you
know, providing for America, fuelingAmerica and feeding America and building America.
And you know, in some regards, I hold our coal miners with the
(57:13):
same respect I hold our American servicemen. I really it's men and women.
I do in certain aspects, tremendoussacrifices those people have made. They're literally
sacrificing their lives, risking their livesevery day. That's for sure. Yep.
What is your legacy? Oh,I don't know. Good husband,
(57:40):
good father first of all, andthen yeah, music wise, I think
you know, I said, there'snothing more rewarding than my work with the
United Mine Workers, and I thinkthat's why. I think that's what will
last. You know. The presidentof the union told me one day,
said, you know, Tom,one hundred years from now, they're gonna
be this people in this union willbe singing your songs. And uh,
(58:05):
I don't know if that's true ornot, but just that thought is it's
pretty rewarding. It means a lotso and that's that's legacy for sure.
God knows it. This isn't avideot and you are I'll bless your heart.
This is the code of podcast Pittsburgh'smusic scene and welcome in. I'm
your host Johnny Hartwell along with AndyPugar. Today we talked to the man
(00:23):
who has the heartbeat of coal Mineand steel Town, Tom Briding. Is
it in West Virginia. It's inOkeema, Oklahoma, Oklahoma? The guth
three. Oh that's oh the Guthrie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did
you meet Arlogu three? Yep.Arlow bought me coffee and donuts one day.
(00:43):
Really, yeah, the first dayI met him. Alice, Yeah,
yeah, it is Actually John Fulbright'ssister had the place that I told
him. After I met him,I said, I stopped by to give
him a copy of my discs andm I said, I'm going up for
(01:04):
uh to get some coffee. Doyou want me to bring anything back for
you? He said, no,I'll walk up with you. Oh nice,
right on. I can't tell youhow many times I listened to Alice's
restaurant back in the day. Idon't remember a lot of it, but
well then you you listened to Ruthfor the Right Way. Oh yeah,
how are you all? Set?Yeah, I'm good, Tom Brady,
how are How the heck are you? Bud? I'm good, Johnny?
(01:26):
How are you? How's good?I's good? Danny? You doing all
right? I'm just great? Thankyou? All right? So, Uh,
usually I like to kind of goand get the history of where you
started, you know, where youwhere the love of music started. But
let's start with, uh, whatyou're currently working on. Let's let's talk
about where you are today. Let'sgo first. Let's go that. Let's
(01:48):
do so if there's anything that youknow that you're you know, you have,
you know, tons of albums andyou work with you know, Bill
thoms and things like that. Sowhat what, what's what? What are
you doing today? What are youdoing this year? Yes? I just
laughed because I'm kind of all overthe map. As you've said. I
play in Bill Thomson Hard Rain withthe Soulville Horns, so that's a nine
(02:10):
piece rock and soul outfit. Butmy solo career, most of my time
is dedicated to writing songs of laborand labor history, you know, growing
up in this region just big partof my upbringing, I guess and who
(02:31):
I became as an adult and writingabout my home state, people of West
Virginia, which of course would bethe coal miners. I've developed a relationship
with the United mind Workers of America, their union, and so just two
weeks ago, on Sunday, Iperformed for a ceremony to honor one hundred
(02:54):
and nineteen miners who died in Benwood, West Virginia. You know when mind
is asters were pretty common throughout thetwentieth century and earlier, and so yeah,
I spent a lot of time.I write songs for their rallies,
for their commemorations, for their events, inaugurations and so forth. And that
(03:15):
keeps me pretty busy. So you'rekind of a you know, two weeks
ago we interviewed Bill Tomms and thenand then we had folk music right last
week, Hey, and this iskind of a marriage of the boat.
That's right. Well, it's funny, Johnny. I that weekend, you
know, we played too. Iwas with Bill and the Boys in Columbus,
(03:36):
Ohio. We played to a soldout audience in Columbus, Ohio at
Natalie's Grand View, and you know, kind of living in the life of
the rock star. In the nextafternoon, I was in West Virginia with
the Mineworkers Union honoring one hundred andnineteen miners who had perished in the mind.
So it's come kind of blessed.I get to do a little bit
of everything, all right. Sotake me to the beginning. When did
(03:58):
you discover music? Well, themusic thing, you know, it was
never a choice. It was justmy earliest memories are associated with music,
so it was always in me.My mother loved music, always playing,
she danced, you know, allthe time she was carrying me. So
I've always attributed my you know,natural inclination of music to that. But
(04:24):
yeah, so it was it wasnever a conscious choice, and I just
I was the kind of kid thatI always spend my time looking like when
we'd go to my grandmother's house andI would sit at the piano for you
know, a couple hours and justplunk away at a piano and anything I
could get my hands on. Andthen of course I got my first guitar
when I was fifteen, and thatwas pretty much it. Did you have
(04:44):
other did you have other family memberswho were interested in music? My brother
Paul still plays guitar to this day, not professionally or anything. It's up
more of a hobby for him.But I guess because the two of us
were the closest in age, sowe grew up list to a lot of
the same music. And who's older. I'm older, you're older? So
he did you discover music before him? Oh? I don't know, all
(05:10):
right. So when you were dancingon your mother's hip, yeah you were
young. What kind of music didshe what? What kind of music did
she listen to? And what kindof music did you listen to as a
kid. Well, I was bornin sixty three, so whenever she was
listening to then, it was youknow, the the dance music of the
of the day or whatever, ifyou will. So, and you know,
(05:31):
I remember her name's Mary, Sowe always joked. You've always loved
the Creden's clear Water song Proud Mary. You grew up in Wheeling, I
did, Yeah, close and Wheeling. Yeah all right, So what kind
of what kind of radio did youlisten to as a kid. Well,
there was wn e U sixteen hundred, There was wk w K fourteen hundred.
(05:55):
Uh, there was w w VA, which was the big country music
radio station, and you know,I was all across the dial. I
listened to just anything anything on theradio. And then you know, I
inherited an older cousin's record collection andit had a lot of heavy stuff like
Steppenwolf and Grand Funk Railroad and albumslike that, and there was just nothing
(06:17):
that wasn't on my playlist, anythingthat I just enjoyed music and listening to
anything that was you know, thatjust sounded good to me. And that
was just about everything. So nota lot has changed. You're still you
have a very across the board.Yeah, that's awesome. Uh so at
fifteen, you picked up the guitarfor the first time. Yeah, where'd
(06:39):
you get the guitar? Well,actually it's I was thirteen when I picked
up the first electric guitar. Okay, it was my friend Mark Kzlowski.
It was his older brothers and Ihave that guitar today. I still have
it. But uh yeah, justone little brush across those strings, and
I decided that's what I wanted toplay, was the electric guitar that was
(07:00):
plugged in through an amplifier. Andyeah, it's just yeah, that pivotal
moments, that first stroke of theguitar strings of the electric guitar, and
then I saved up money and hadto buy my first guitar, get my
first job, and saved up myyou know, first several paychecks and bought
an electric guitar for myself. Howquickly did you pick it up? Well,
you know, I was. I'mthe kind of person that if you
(07:24):
hand me an instrument, any instrument, I can probably make some music with
it after a few minutes. Butyou know that, so it comes naturally
in one regard. But you know, even to this day, I struggled
to play as well as I'd liketo. It took a lot of work,
and I was lucky that my timejust passed playing the guitar. I
(07:47):
just loved to do it. Youknow. There were nights in high school
I want to go home early justso I could pick up my guitar and
play. My friends thought I wascrazy, you know, and it comes
back. You know. You meetpeople they say, oh, I've always
wanted to play guitar, and youknow, in my head, my first
reaction is, no, you reallydidn't. I wanted to play the guitar,
(08:07):
and I made it my business toplay every day, and to this
day I can. I seldom walkpast the guitar without picking it up.
For fifteen twenty seconds. I can'twalk past one without picking it up.
So all right, so you're you'rea teenager. You you're figuring out the
guitar. So what happened then?Did you join? Did a bunch of
(08:30):
your fellows, you know, buddies, Yeah, form a band? What?
Yeah? So actually, yes,I'm in ninth tenth grade, I
guess, and playing with my friendsand we're playing things like Cheap Trick in
ac DC and you know, Aerosmith, things of that that age, which
really caught my ear at that time. And then when I was a junior
(08:52):
in high school, a friend namedChris Cambletti, and Chris was an absolute
brilliant piano player, and uh,for whatever reason, you know, we
didn't become friends until, you know, maybe like our junior year, late
junior year, and he invited meto his house and I came over and
his older brothers were listening to theAlmond Brothers live at the Fillmore East,
(09:15):
and I would sit and I wouldlisten to Chris play. He had a
grand piano in his living room becausehis father was a concert pianist. And
that's when I discovered, you know, the blues if you will and that
set the tone for the rest ofmy life. It changed changed my whole
attitude about what I was listening toat the time and uh what I where
(09:37):
my focus would be on what Iwanted to learn and how I wanted to
play all those things. So thatwas pivotal. It was this kind of
a seminal moment. You're going fromcheap trick to you know, ye Roy
Buchanan and the Almond Brothers and uh, you know B. B. King
and Johnny Winter and all the bluespeople came a little bit before me.
(09:58):
So kind of grew up in thatmoment. Huh, yeah, I sure
did. So did you form aband? Yeah, so the first band
that I formed, I was well, I was lucky. I played in
a band. It was the hokiestthing. It was called Hot Ice and
it was There were three women thatthis young fella grew up in a household
with his two his aunt, hisgrandmother, and his mother, and he
(10:22):
was a drummer. He lived twoblocks This is in mcmeeck in West Virginia.
He lived two blocks from an allnight hours club called the Brandywine and
he played drums. And the threewomen were so proud of him and wanted
to showcase his talents, so theykept a band around him to play every
Friday and Saturday night at the AllHours club, the Brandywine, and I
(10:43):
was included in that. So Imay have even been fifteen years old,
but certainly by the time I wassixteen years old, I was playing on
a stage every Friday and Saturday nightfor four hours. And that's where I
really honed my craft. And thatband we played, you know, everything
from popular music to the time,the sixties, classics to what what we
(11:07):
wanted to play. You know,we had liberties because you know, Patty
made sure that her son was surroundedby good musicians. So I got to
meet a lot of great musicians andthen we would work songs and we wanted
to play, and that was anincredible experience. Do you remember your first
paycheck, your first time you gotpaid to play? I don't, Uh,
I don't specifically remember that, butyou you know, you have to
(11:31):
remember I was, you know,I dove in like. I did this
for three years till I was eighteenor nineteen years old. Uh, playing
every single Friday and Saturday night.I was making more money on the weekends
playing in the bar in this barthan I was on the loading dock at
my part time job after school everyday. Wow, and yeah, it
(11:52):
was just just you know, keepingbusy. What happened to Patty's son,
did? He continued Brian Yost.I'm still Facebook friends with him. If
he catches wind to this somehow,say hello. And Patty passed on just
about two years ago. And Pattyand I had some We had some tough
times too. We were both verystubborn people. And I made amends with
(12:18):
her about six months before she died, and I'm so glad to this day.
I just stopped by one day andour conversation ended. I told her
I loved her, and she saidI love you too, Tom. And
yeah, So you're fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old playing after hours club
till two am. Did they lookat you with as like, you know,
(12:41):
here's this sixteen year old kid afterhours or you just it didn't matter?
I don't know. It was McKmeckin, which is a very small
community. And of course, sowe were able to do that at my
age because of the three chaperones Pattyand her sister and her mother who were
there as chaperones that's how we wereable to play in an after hours club.
(13:03):
But it's a very small community.So you have to remember everybody that
was in that bar knew those threeand it was a block from their house,
and that was It was just thatkind of thing. And you know,
the band always sounded good. Wealways had good people playing. We
rehearsed once a week and it waslate. I was going to say,
did you rehearse quite a bit?Oh yeah, once a week with Patty.
Yeah. She was like she wasthe manager show. Okay, she
(13:24):
made us toe the line and shewas a drill master that yeah. Yeah,
it's funny, but it was.It was great, I mean,
and then the local people loved us. So all right, So after that
period of time, you're sixteen,seventeen, eighteen years, you know,
where where did the music go fromthe after that? So that's an interesting
(13:46):
story. I met my wife whenshe was eighteen. I was nineteen,
and so I met her on aNew Year's Eve nineteen eighty two at the
Stanley Theater and I'm nineteen years oldand I start telling her. I started
telling her, I said, oh, yeah, I play in a band
right now. And I was notin a band at the moment and told
her, yeah, I played guitarand you know, stretching the truth or
(14:09):
whatever. And after our first date, after that, I decided, well
I really need to follow three withthis. So I started calling my buddies
and put you know, we gotto get a band together. I want
to put a band together, right, So put a four piece band together
called Substitute. And that was afun band. It was, you know,
some of my best friends at thetime and one of them still one
(14:31):
of my best my closest friends.And it was a fun era. You
know. It was nineteen eighty threeand we were playing Joe Jackson and the
Who and uh, you know,all the all the loud, obnoxious stuff
and having a blast doing it.So and you and you became a truth
teller. Yeah that's right. Yeah, well I was. I've always had
(14:54):
integrity. I've always been honest here. I think you get a little leeway
when you're nineteen and you need apretty girl. And you know, I
wasn't lying lying, but I didn'twant to tell her. I didn't want
to tell her. I'm an inactivemusician at the moment. Any any musician
is always looking for the next gig, so not technically wrong, right,
(15:16):
that's right, all right, Sowhen we're gonna book, I want to
get back to that, but Iwant to I want to ask you about
songwriting. When did you start writingmusic and songs? Well, I became
a school teacher, and I movedto Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, and uh started
teaching in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, and kept the band I was in
(15:37):
at the time, which was areally great band. I was the youngest
person in that band by ten years. It was called Studebaker Hawk. It
was based out of Ohio, whichof course is much closer to Wheeling,
and uh when I started to teach, you know, I held on to
the you know, my role inthat band as long as I could,
but uh, you know, itwas hard to give it the attention.
(15:58):
I was focused on beginning a newcareer and uh, you know, of
course, you know, you don'tjust quit playing music. And uh so
I turned to writing songs and andactually in that band too, those there
were two songwriters in the band.Actually all three of them wrote, but
two wrote most of the stuff.And uh so they they kind of,
(16:19):
uh you know, they pushed meto write songs and I'd written one or
two songs that they they really liked. I mean the first two songs I
had ever written, even first attemptedto write my own songs. They just
they loved them, and they becamestaples in our shows. Uh So when
I had to focus on teaching andless, you know, going out on
(16:40):
the weekends, I uh, that'swhere I turned was to write. And
I wrote every day. I wroteand wrote and wrote, and you know,
I thought, well, you know, I'm a songwriter. I'm a
songwriter. And it wasn't until laterthat I realized, like the first hundred
songs I wrote, I don't thinkany pieces of those even exist anymore.
And uh, you know, oneday I wrote a song and h I
(17:03):
finished, and I listened to thetape back, and I thought, you
know, this is a real song, Like I think I've written a real
song here. And from there itbecame a lot easier. And yeah,
what'd you teach? What was Itaught English? I figure, dad,
if you writer? Yeah, okay, that song that song that you talked
(17:25):
about? Yea, what was thatsong? What was it called? Railroad
Town? Okay, So that's becauseI want to talk about the evolution of
your music. But that's that's kindof you know, your railroad town.
That was definitive moment that song forsure. And where did that come from?
Growing up in Wheeling and playing onthe railroad tracks, you know,
(17:48):
that was my playground, was therailroad tracks and the river, you know,
And because I actually grew up inWarwood up until third or fourth grade,
well I went to school there soto eighth grade, and just played
on the railroad tracks. I mean, when you grew up along the river,
you know, in a milltown likethat, those images they're just ingrained
in you. You know, sittingat a red light in your parents' car
(18:11):
and you know, for fifteen minuteswatching a train go by on right down
the street, you know, therailroad tracks right down sixteenth Street, wheel
East, Wheeling, and those imagesjust burned into my brain. And then
having moved away, actually I rememberexactly what sparked that song was my dad.
I had a phone conversation with himand he was telling me about how
(18:33):
they were putting up the bike trails, the rails to trails thing, and
you know just how wonderful it was, and you know, I was agreeing
with him and everything, and Iremember getting off the phone and thinking,
yeah, it's kind of sad though, you know. And it's kind of
sad because those you know, thetracks are gone now. So I have
I have if I could play someof that song for you, if you'd
(18:55):
like to love it. I hopeif I can remember this, I haven't
played it in probably years. Let'ssee if we can move this up there.
We got area. This one wasa little bit behind the mountain,
(19:21):
far from the shining glass, freefrom the shadows of the over pass.
Rails of rusty steel, though theywere built to last, have been forgotten.
(19:42):
This twenty years went past. ButI remember the sound the whistle of
my father's railroad town. I couldhear the sun going down inside the box
(20:22):
car. The little children play,you should have seen it. That's what
their father say. They tell themstories of the break away. Their day
(20:42):
of labor is twenty years away.They don't remember the sound the whistle of
their fathers rid road town, orhere the sun going down over the mountains.
(21:27):
Far from this broken glass, underthe shadows of the overpass, girders
of shining steel are being built tolast by men who've seen the pass of
(21:51):
their father's silver wheel. Thank you. It's kind of like Russ Belt Jimmy
Buffett. I don't know that song. No, I mean you you were
(22:12):
like Jimmy Buffet. It just itjust you know, because it gets nostalgic
and you get a visual of ofyou know, the overpass and you know
the steel wheels and things like thatwith the overpass and then here the sun
going down. That's an interesting way. Yeah, that was one of the
(22:33):
lines I was the most proud of. And uh, you know I got
signed by Collins Music. That wasone of the one of three songs three
song demo that got me signed asa staff writer on Music Row. And
uh yeah, somehow that line foundits way into a hit song. And
I don't I don't, I don'trecall who really somebody borrowed it. I
(22:55):
think so familiar, that's that's acompliment, right, It was that good
it is. It's sort of kindof it's a shame the rest of the
song did in the company. Sohow familiar with the with the railroad life?
Did you have anybody in your familythat that worked on the railroad or
if you just threw vicariously, youknow, just by being in the in
(23:18):
that town and with railroads being soyou know, prevalent in your yeah,
in your being out in the town. And yeah, you know, I
grew up right next to the armatureworks and then Wheeling stamping Works was a
half block down the street, andthe trains would pull in and out of
there, and when you're a kid, I mean, those hulking, massive
trains, you just you know,there's just so impressed. You're so impressive
(23:41):
to a small child. Like Isaid, those are just images that are
ingrained to me. But it's funnyyou asked, because you know, these
are things I didn't think about ordwell on as as I was growing up.
It's that's what I think writing does, is you know, when I
when I first started writing, Iturned all the images. I started to
realize I'm using the same images.The rivers and the hills and the railroads
(24:03):
and the mills and the and theand the characters and the songs. They
were all the blue collar you know, beer drinking, shot in the beer
kind of working class people. Andyou know, I think, you know,
you start to ask yourself, like, well, these things are occurring
again and again in my music,so there must be a reason. You
realize how important your upbringing really is, and how impressionable on a young child
(24:26):
growing up in a city like Wheelingwas for me, I guess so.
And the same with the coal industry. Might you know. I didn't have
anybody in the coal industry on myside of the family. I had friends
whose fathers went into the coal mines. And then you know, you're driving
down the street listening to WWVA inthe middle of the afternoon. They have
the mind report telling you goes onfor twenty minutes, telling you which minds
(24:48):
are open, which minds are closed, which workers have to report, which
ones can stay home that day,Little things like that, and yeah,
those are things you just don't reallyforget, I guess. So it's kind
of funny, you know. Youtalk about, you know, listening to
kind of pop rock, you know, the Cheap Trick, and then you
get exposed to the Almond Brothers,and then when did you kind of figure
(25:15):
out this this folkish kind of rock. Well that actually so, you know,
that's I try to go chronologically.But before that, when I was
a child, you know Don McLean'sAmerican Pie, you know, I'd call
radio station and request the song.When I was nine years ten, years
old. You know, the storysongs I've always loved and I even the
(25:36):
even the soul music at that time, they had stories to them, and
uh yeah, I was always abig fan of the story. I wanted
to listen to the song and andand and what happened? You know?
This the story behind the song?I guess, uh people, that's why
I was drawn to people like JimCrochey and uh just I don't know,
you know, I think that's somethingthat's missing from today's music, is the
(26:00):
story. And uh so, Iguess that was always I guess that's where
that that really came from, thatfocused kind of side of things, and
not so much the genre of thesong, but the stories behind the songs.
I was always drawn to that.So where so did you have?
(26:21):
Where did that song come from?Then? Where did did it? When
you you remember? How? Whatwhat inspired that song? Well? Do
you have to remember, as Isaid, I wrote about one hundred songs.
I was writing every single day.Was it a variety of music?
Well as as much of a varietyas you can get with just an acoustic
guitar sitting in a room by yoursin my apartment, by myself, you
(26:42):
know, if that makes sense,but I guess it was. Yes,
some were quieter or somewhere. Theytend to be quieter, I think just
because of the instrument itself, theacoustic guitar, and uh, excuse me,
but I was writing every day anduh and and thinking I was doing
a good job at it until Iwrote Railroad Town, and then I realized,
(27:04):
like, Okay, this is whereI need to be. I need
to be able to sit down andwrite songs like this for that song,
which came first the words of themusic, well pretty much, okay,
So I'd say eighty percent of thesongs I write begin with just a little
you know chord or you know chordprogression that I like, and then I'll
(27:26):
hum along and then I'll find aline or two that fits that tune that
I like, and hopefully it's youknow, it's a good enough hook or
whatever to develop into a lyric,and then I'll sit down with a pen
and paper and put it all together. But I've written songs about every way
(27:47):
you can possibly write a song,and including the proverbia waking up in the
middle of the night with a songin my head and running to the recorder
before I forgot it. So doyou visualize what you're writing about as you
write? Is there a real visualbecause you're that one song had so many
visual imageries. Yeah, so theimagery is a big part of what you
(28:11):
know. And even you know Collins, the you know, the publisher I
wrote for in Nashville, He's Iremember him stopping at his desk one time
and turning off a song I wasplaying, and he said, you know,
you're painting pictures. And nobody hadquite explained it to me that way
before, so I guess I becamemore conscious of it. But yeah,
(28:32):
so I don't know, Annie,I don't know if I if I actually
am, I don't know how consciousI am. Well, they were really
strong images. I mean again,Johnny at one line about the overpass,
I saw that. Yes, youknow, so very strong imagery. Beautiful,
beautiful, thank you. If youlook at my phone, I probably
have over four thousand photographs, youknow. So I love to take pictures,
(28:59):
you know. I used to drawwhen I was a kid. But
yeah, images are a lot Idon't know. Images. Well, it's
part of storytelling anyway. It's abig part of storytelling for me. If
you can make somebody else see whatyou're seeing, right, then they're going
to understand the story. That's right. So not only you musician, you
musician, you were also a teacher. And then tell me a little bit
(29:19):
about writing in Nashville and you knowwhat was that like and how did you
get that job? And well whatwas that like? Yeah? For me,
it was mostly commuting. And youknow, I was at a small
Catholic school, Saint Thomas Moore,and I had a principal, John Lennok,
who when I got my deal,I had this big life storm.
You know, I just I justgot engaged to be married. I was
(29:40):
beginning my teaching career, and thenI got signed by the largest independent publisher
on music Row and all of thesethings, you know, within months,
and so I just tried. Itwas the juggling act, you know,
but they were so helpful to me. I would go into the principal's office
and sit at his desk. Hewould give me his desk to hash out
(30:00):
a line or two that I had, you know, on a song that
I was working on with another writerwho would call me or something, and
you know, it was quite theexperience. So a lot of it was
commuting so I just still did mostof my writing at home. But the
most invaluable thing was sitting down withhis hit writers, you know, for
the month or so of time overyou know, a year's period that I
was actually there going to work everyday and sit with these writers and learning,
(30:25):
you know, the craft, ifyou will. So I've never met
anybody that did that line of work. What is it like? What do
you do on a daily basis?Well, you show up at the office.
Now, this is now, youhadn't remember. This is in the
nineteen nineties. So I don't knowhow much things have changed now, especially
with the big corporations. Everything's buildings. But in those days, music row
it was all they were publishing houses. They were homes. So you'd go
(30:48):
up to the kitchen and you know, have some coffee and sit and talk
to everybody. And then you'd sitin a room with designated writer or writers
and you'd work for a couple hours. Did you bring a passion? Oh
yeah, you always had your guitarwith you had, yeah, and and
right for you know, an houror two, and then go to lunch
(31:08):
and sit somewhere and talk more aboutmusic. And they come back and for
another hour or two and play thelegend. I was hoping you kind of
pride myself on being a good storyteller. I was trying to get there.
But uh huh, yeah, it'sliving the dream, so to speak,
for sure. But it's hard workthough I can't, you know, So
(31:29):
it is really hard work putting asong together for a publisher in Nashville.
The criteria that you have to meetlyric wise, and uh, it's just
it's really every single line and it'sit's hard work, but it isn't you
know. You know, I'm sureyou've heard the legendary you know, Briille
(31:49):
Building in New York and then HarryNielsen, you know, did it out
out in LA And so when yousit down and you work with somebody,
the collaboration, is that something thatyou that is still part of you?
Is the collaboration or is it?No? Pretty much, I've always been
uncomfortable with it. I'm very introvertedand I've always I've never preferred to sit
(32:13):
in a room and write with somebodyelse, unless it's somebody like my friend
Steve Dean, who is just sucha genius just draws out the best in
you. And you know, Ifeel like I'm just kind of on the
sidelines observing and the next thing,you know, I have four lines in
this tremendous song that you know,that quote we wrote together, the kind
of thing, you know, butthe best four lines. Yeah, but
(32:38):
yeah, I'm the kind of personand just this to shear. So when
I write, I get up,I walk from room to room, I
carry things with me. I can'tsit still, and it's hard for me
to sit still and just and thinkand write. I need to move and
be active, and I need topick up my guitar every three or four
minutes and you know, sing itdifferent ways to come up with another line,
(33:01):
and it's it's very active process forme. It's not just sitting there.
And when you're with somebody else ina room, you know, the
the silence is painful to me.Sometimes you know, you're you're, you're,
you're on the spot to come upwith a line and nobody speaks for
a minute, and it's just likeI wish lunch would come pretty soon.
So so pick us up where youknow, we kind of left off as
(33:23):
far as chronological order of your yourcareer. You know, you're playing in
a you know, after hours club, You, you met your wife,
you you you form the band,pick us up from there and where where
are we in the year? Yeah? So I think the focus then was
(33:43):
uh uh. Since I got marriedand since I had the publishing deal,
the focus was writing and recording songs. And that's where my friend Jamie Peck
came into play. And Jamie,uh was probably the most influential person,
uh in my career of anybody I'veworked with. It was Jamie that when
(34:05):
I when I was writing all thosesongs, I was going down to his
studio, Fat Cat Studio and youknow, giving him twenty bucks or whatever
and laying down six seven of thesesongs at a time, and just with
my acoustic guitar. He would workme in in the middle of sessions with
bands, whatever. And it wasit was Jamie that told me, he
said, you know, there arethree or four of these songs that you
(34:29):
know we should we should produce these. He said, I would like to
do that. I think they cango somewhere. Those three songs led to
my writing my publishing deal, andso I continued to work with Jamie for
the next fifteen years or so,and that was the entire focus was making
records, writing songs and recording themwith him. Now, I continued to
(34:52):
playing bands, but for a whileit was just cover bands, the people
that I met up in this area, you know, coming from Wheeling.
I moved up here in Pittsburgh whenI was twenty four. And yeah,
so that was the focus, writingand making records. Your first record,
(35:13):
those songs, those three songs,Did that make up your the Did that
kind of determine your direction of whereyou wanted to be as a singer songwriter?
I think so, Yeah, Ithink so. Kind of telling the
story, having a song that's withgood imagery, a song that came to
a good conclusion, a song thatwas finished correctly. Yeah, all the
(35:35):
things that I was learning in Nashvilleabout good songwriting I wanted to incorporate into
my own songs. Every at Istrove to have every song sound like a
hit song, something you could hearon the radio. And you know,
it worked sometimes that sometimes it didn't. Sometimes I had songs that were kind
of offbeat, but they were specialto me for whatever reason. I just
really liked them and held onto thoseAnd yeah, so you know, did
(36:01):
that for a long time and tillthe year right around two thousand, you
know, I pretty much exhausted theblue collar thing, and I actually had
a trip to Snowshoe, West Virginia, and that was where, you know,
I don't know, I drove throughall of these poor mining towns and
(36:22):
saw all of these you know,native West Virginians who you know, came
from coal mining families, and woundup spending the weekend at this really ritzy,
expensive ski resort. And the contrastto me was, I don't know,
it just really hit me at thetime for whatever reason, and so
(36:43):
I decided to write about the youknow, stretch beyond my Ohio Valley routes
and really focus on the miners ofWest Virginia, the coal miners, and
write songs about them, and turnedto them for inspiration, and that led
to another whole chapter. You know, this the last the chapter that I'm
in now writing about, you know, the stories about the coal miners of
(37:06):
West Virginia. I know it's goingto sound cliche, but that's a mind
that can be mined over and overagain. Yeah. Well, you know,
I had taught for eighteen years atthe time, or close to it.
I wound up teaching for eighteen butI was working on songs for that
record. I was writing songs forwhat became the Unbroken Circle Songs of the
(37:29):
West Virginia Coalfields, and I remembertelling my wife, I said, you
know, I could make a careerfrom this, from these songs, from
this record. I was conscious ofthat when I realized what it actually was
that I was doing. And youknow, she said, well, you
need to do that then, Andthat's why I left teaching, you know,
(37:49):
because I'd made sacrifices. You know, I had the teaching career,
and I had the publishing deal,but you know, my focus at the
time was starting a family. Mywife and I have been together since we
were teenagers, and uh so shesaw some of the opportunities that went by
the wayside, you know, whilewe were young, and you know,
well that was happening. So soat forty years old, I decided to
(38:12):
play music full time. And uhyeah, it was a wonderful decision.
Tell me about her. She she'llkill me, she said, I don't
know, I don't know how toexplain somebody so wonderful. You know,
you have somebody in your life that'sjust you know, we're we're a good
team. We remind each other ofthat all the time. Team briding.
(38:35):
We're a good team. So yeah, and we're we're Yin and Yang know
Yang and yeah and we're yeah,total opposites, and it just it's always
worked, worked really well because ittakes quite a woman to support yes,
I know that, to support you, you know, yeah, you know,
to make a decision and leave asafe career like teaching is. Right.
(39:00):
Well, first of all, Iwasn't that safe. I was in
a Catholic school, so I wasn'tmaking a whole lot of money. Oh
okay, but I was though.I was. Yeah, and I was
a breadwinner in the early years ofour marriage. And then you know,
my wife was fortunate enough to geta very good job and so it kind
of allowed me some leeway that otherpeople don't necessarily have. So I was
blessed there too. Like I said, we're a good team. It's always
(39:22):
worked, all right. Let meask you a little bit about teaching,
because you know, teachers are ittakes a rare person to teach. I
have the utmost respect for teachers,and I don't miss it one bit for
that reason. I respect each oneof them. That's an incredibly difficult job.
(39:43):
So you were teaching, but thatreally wasn't your calling. Well part
of it was, but not theday in, day out classroom activity.
I don't know, it can be. You have to be a very very
strong person to teach because you're withthose children, You're so influential, and
you're in their lives day in andday out, and so it's it's just
(40:06):
the responsibility of That is what Ifelt relieved of when I left teaching.
That just being relieved of that responsibilityof somebody who just looks up to you
every single day and you you know, I don't know, it's a tremendous
responsibility. Well I could see youbrought the teaching into the music because I
remember the time you did a gigfor Music Smiles at Children's Hospital and you
(40:30):
brought a lot of the mining informationwith you coal miners and you actually turned
that hour or so into I mean, it was very entertaining, but it
was also very educational. Yeah,so that's what I do now. Also
I work at I'm actually the directornow of the Appalachian Institute at Wheeling University,
(40:51):
and it's a perfect combination because Idid I love teaching children, but
as I said that day in dayout for a year, you can develop.
It can be unhealthy with you know, teacher child relationships sometimes, but
I'm so blessed now I host thesestudents from all over the country. They
come from Massachusetts and California and youknow, places in between big schools Notre
(41:15):
Dame, Michigan, Creighton University,and they come for five day trips and
you know, we work in soupkitchens and urban gardening, you know,
you know, helping the needy inmy hometown of Wheeling. But you know,
they they my music's a big partof that. And so I'm able
(41:36):
to give them the programming, thehistory of the union. I get them
to meet one of my coal minerfriends and sit down and talk with them.
But but anyway, that satisfies everythingI need. That was positive about
my teaching experience, you know,helping somebody to understand something and to give
them a perspective that maybe they didn'thave before, especially these these students coming
(41:58):
from other parts of the country andyou know, not growing up here.
I'm anxious to share my background andthe history, the amazing history of this
place. And so teaching has notleft me. But the day to day,
teaching in the classroom with the samegroups of students every day. I
don't miss that at all. Andthat's why I have so much admiration for
those who do the ones who doit well. I really do well.
(42:21):
I think there's a lot of waysthat you can categorize art, and but
I think an artist ultimately has todo that art, you know, whether
it's a singer has to sing,a writer has to write. So you're
teaching and maybe that that there's thatthat music, that that is that is
yearning. At some point you haveto say, yeah, I have to
(42:46):
chase that dream. Yes, Andso you go to your wife you're ying
and yang, and you go toher and say, listen, this is
calling me. Is that am Iportraying that that moment, well, I
had to put it a little moretangible to her. I told her,
I said, I think I couldmake a career doing this it You've done
(43:10):
it, yes, Yes, I'vedone it. Yeah yeah, And she
she was the first one to encourageme. Just like the original conversation,
wait, hold on, recently likeI'm in a band, I need a
band. Hey, I can makethis a career. I need to make
this a career. There you are, there you are. I think you're
(43:30):
right. You gave yourself a certainbar and you had to. Yeah,
you know, it was really great. For a while. I was going
into all of the schools and doingmy program, and we had Gateway to
the Arts, which was an incredibleorganization then and it's still around. It's
(43:51):
not they don't do what they useis active? No, the same.
They got rid of all the artists. And you know, then two thousand
and eight, the how the crisishit, the crash if you will or
whatever, and all the money forfunding for the arts started to dry up.
That was when things started to geta little difficult. And then that's
when I found a position at theAppleachian Institute, a Wheeling university, and
(44:15):
it was funny. I read thejob description and I thought, I just
laughed. I thought, well,here's my next career, all right.
So tell me. Once you madethat determination, what happened then? Which
determination? Johnny? Feel like,Hey, I'm going to make music my
career. This is what I'm goingto do. And so what how did
(44:37):
you pursue that? And what didyou Well, first of all, I
built a recording studio in my house, so I could do everything in house.
I started hosting other bands. Iproduced several great records in that studio
back in the day, and youknow that that paid decent money for a
while, and going into the schoolsthat maid money. And I was a
(45:01):
commonwealth speaker with the Pennsylvania Council ofno oh, the Pennsylvania Humanities anyway,
I was a commonwealth speaker with them, and they had work for me.
I would go, pardon me,perform in uh, senior buildings and in
(45:22):
hospitals places like that. Yeah,So I don't know. I just had
a lot of work going for awhile and then then started to dry up
a little bit, and that's whenI was able to That's when I found
the position at Wheeling University that Ifelt like I was so qualified for.
But you also played in a numberof rock bands as well through that all.
(45:45):
Yeah. Well, I've been withBill Toms now since right around the
turn of the century, so it'sgoing on twenty four years, twenty literal.
I'm thinking him back to nineteen nine. Yeah, yeah, that sounded
that little long in the tooth,but I don't think he was that all.
It goes by fast, so allright, So you're playing in bands
(46:10):
and Bill's Bill is a fantastic songwriter. It's it is the perfect outlet for
me when I I don't have tostand in front of people and speak.
I don't have to front the band. I only sing background vocals, so
I'm not killing my voice and Idon't have to be a real presence.
I'm just I'm just plugging in myguitar and playing these tremendous songs. Bill's
(46:32):
such a great songwriter. With thesegreat guys, you know, we're all
good friends and they're amazing musicians.It's that's all I ever need for that
outlet for the electric guitar. Ilove that, Okay, but but I
should tell you too. I alsoso I do have an electric band.
You know, a lot of originalsongs. But it's called Union Railroad and
(46:52):
that's with my son Jack and JimmySpears and another young fellow named Will Condridge.
Uh we're kind of a you know, we're kind of a seasonal band.
We get these little runs of shows, but we're gonna put together three
or four shows in October and uhyeah, about once a year we have
a month or two where you know, we get all get together and it's
(47:13):
a really cool band. I lovedoing that. So do you contribute to
Bill as far as lyrics or musicor anything like that. Bill and I
we collaborated a lot early on,and for whatever reason, No, we
just don't do it much anymore.And I think a lot of it's just
time. I mean, we're bothreally busy, and I think a lot
of it's just that. But uhyeah, but I you know, i'd
(47:37):
be remiss to tell you Bill contributedprobably the most important lyrics. I had
written all those songs for The UnbrokenCircle, where I documented all of these
events and spent a lot of timemaking sure everything was accurate and that everything
was appropriate. And and Bill thetitle track the Unbroken Circle. Those lyrics
(47:59):
were Bill's lyrics originally, and wegot together and I kind of just turned
it into a bluegrass song. Iremember calling him on the phone saying,
Hey, you wrote your first bluegrasssongs? Are you talking about us?
Well, you got to listen tothis so but uh yeah, all right,
So now get us up to speedwith your career. Now where do
(48:20):
you want to see this go?And and and tell us about your your
work with the United mind Workers.Yeah, so if there's any way path
forward for my own material, it'sprobably going to be. Well, I
shouldn't say that, because I'm notsure. I haven't written just for the
sake of writing in quite a whilenow. My last record was two years
(48:42):
ago. Uh well, no,or almost four years ago now, right,
because it was during COVID so therecord kind of got the short end
of the release party was canceled andeverything. But anyway, I'm not sure
how to answer, Johnny. I'mjust I'm sixty years old and I'm so
blessed that I'm still playing in arock and soul band with Bill and my
(49:07):
own music. I'm just not sureyet. I've really started to put together
a lot of ideas recently. I'vebeen getting in the writing mode, which
I have not been in in along time. I haven't written anything per
se, but it's hard to explain, but when you get in that mode,
it manifests itself. These ideas,these things I've been writing down,
(49:29):
they're going to come to life eventually. And then as far as with the
mine Workers Union, I tell themevery event I do, I'll do anything
for this union. They asked meto do anything, I'm going to do
it. For them. You know, I'm an honorary lifetime member. They're
my brothers and sisters, and it'sbeen the most gratifying thing of any aspect
of my career by far. Youknow, when you're doing something positive,
(49:52):
I mean instrumental in you know,retaining the healthcare of tens of thousands of
of people, of hard working Americans, you can't put uh, I don't
know, you can't put a priceon that. It's it's it's really special.
So I don't know how often they'llask me, but whenever they ask
(50:14):
me, I'll be doing that.Now. I've got the Woody Got Three
Folk Festival coming up again this year. This will be my eighth time in
Okema, Oklahoma. I can't waitto get back out there. It's it.
It's the greatest festival to play fora songwriter, for an artist,
it's like an artist retreat. Theyput us all in this old days in
holiday, like a day's in hotelthat's unoccupied pretty much a year round because
(50:37):
there's nothing in Okema, Woody's birthplace, and they have security, so it's
nothing but artists. And we're filledto the pact with all the artists,
and so you can imagine what livingat that hotel is like for four days.
It's a blast. It's so muchfun. And uh yeah, every
year something special happens to me there, performance wise, meeting people, seeing
(51:00):
other artists, or you know,my own performances. And I don't see
that changing again this year, soI'm really looking forward to July for that
again. Can I ask you toplay one more song? Yeah, of
course. So the Appalachian Institute whereI work, it was created on the
university campus because of the pastoral lettersThis Land is Home to Me. It's
(51:24):
called it was written by the Catholicbishops of Appalachia, and it just describes
the Appalachian plight, you know,the plight of the powerless at the hands
of the powerful, if you will. And I knew when I saw the
pastoral letters when I began that job, that I would write a song of
the same title, This Land isHome to Me. That title just resonated
(51:46):
with me immediately. So when Ifinally found the inspiration to write it,
it was the day after I tookpictures of them tearing down what was the
heart of downtown Wheeling for me,you know, where the National record mark
was and the Murphy and Ls Goods, And so I wanted to capture the
(52:06):
sentiment of the pastoral letters as itpertained particularly to my hometown. A great
history is winding down in this region, and in this town. The smoke
(52:27):
is cleared, and silence falls,and the buildings tumble down. And as
the rivers washed the banks of timeand said, our sons and daughters free.
As these children roam, may theynot forget this land is home to
(52:49):
me. May its lessons be ourfoundation in this new age of transformation.
For our fathers and mothers, theysettled here to build and feed a nation
in this country of lasting freedom.Nothing less their legacy taught me to pray,
(53:19):
lest I forget this land is hometo me, and to some our
(53:44):
natural treasures, To fill their liveswith earthly pleasures. For the riches and
wealth of others, to my own. I care not to measure. But
may they leave a water clean fromthese mountaintops, serene and in their careless
(54:07):
steps. May they not forget thisland is home to me. Thank you
(54:29):
when because you know, we talkeda little bit about you know, your
words, paint pictures, and people'sminds. What are some some of the
feedback you get from people that thatyou kind of wrote about, what are
there? What are their reactions?Well, it's interesting you asked that because
(54:50):
my friend regb he used to writefor the Tribune Review. He still writes,
I think freelance for different outlets.Uh. But anyway, he when
he heard the record down Broken Circle, he was fascinated by it, and
he arranged to take a photographer andmyself down to Logan County, West Virginia,
(55:13):
where I had spent time researching towrite songs for the record. But
his idea was for me to actuallygo into people's offices and into their under
porches and play them these songs.And I think he was I realized later
what he was doing was looking forlike verification of like how authentic are these
(55:34):
songs and the stories behind them?And Yeah, the response was an eye
opener for me. It was overwhelming. First of all, the people of
West Virginia and those mining towns arethey're so they're so friendly and I don't
know sometimes I guess not always,but if you connect with them on a
certain level and you know they're they'rethey're they're just very welcoming and accepting,
(56:00):
and yeah, I was surprised bythe response at just how happy people were
that I was telling their story.I guess. And the miners they tell
me. Every time I'm at anevent, I'll have thirty of them walk
up and say, we appreciate you, Tom, we appreciate the work,
We appreciate you telling our story.So yeah, I don't know, response
(56:25):
is good. We talked about teachersbeing a rare breed. Can you imagine
being a miner? Well, that'sjust yeah, I cannot. I cannot.
I was scheduled to go underground intwenty twenty and COVID put a stop
to that. And I'm not sure. I'm disappointed about that. I've had
opportunities since, and I'm not sureI want to even go under the ground
(56:50):
just for a day, let alonework under the ground every day, a
mile and a half, two milesunder ground. And you know, these
guys, they've made sad sacrifices,them and their families for generations, you
know, providing for America, fuelingAmerica and feeding America and building America.
And you know, in some regards, I hold our coal miners with the
(57:13):
same respect I hold our American servicemen. I really it's men and women.
I do in certain aspects, tremendoussacrifices those people have made. They're literally
sacrificing their lives, risking their livesevery day. That's for sure. Yep.
What is your legacy? Oh,I don't know. Good husband,
(57:40):
good father first of all, andthen yeah, music wise, I think
you know, I said, there'snothing more rewarding than my work with the
United Mine Workers, and I thinkthat's why. I think that's what will
last. You know. The presidentof the union told me one day,
said, you know, Tom,one hundred years from now, they're gonna
be this people in this union willbe singing your songs. And uh,
(58:05):
I don't know if that's true ornot, but just that thought is it's
pretty rewarding. It means a lotso and that's that's legacy for sure.
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