Latest / Arroe Collins Like It's Live / Prog Rock Emotion Storytelling And More Antartica From Singer Songwriter Tom Ciurczak
Transcript
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- 0:26Speaker 1: enjoy your exploration hi it's tom here hey tom it's
- 0:30Speaker 1: arrow how are you doing today.
- 0:31Speaker 2: Ah we're doing great how you doing.
- 0:34Speaker 1: Absolutely fantastic you ready to talk about this incredible collection
- 0:37Speaker 1: of music that you have just set free to the world.
- 0:41Speaker 2: Sure.
- 0:41Speaker 1: My God, you've really got something here, dude. This is
- 0:44Speaker 1: the kind of stuff where albums were like that, that
- 0:47Speaker 1: one thing that we really did cherish back in the
- 0:49Speaker 1: 70s and 80s, because you've got a concept here that
- 0:53Speaker 1: really is beginning to end, start it all over, do
- 0:55Speaker 1: it all over again.
- 0:56Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, of course.
- 1:00Speaker 1: What did you feel in the moment of bringing these
- 1:02Speaker 1: songs together? Because so many times listeners don't understand the
- 1:05Speaker 1: journey that you, the creator, had to take and was
- 1:08Speaker 1: required to put together.
- 1:12Speaker 2: Uh, you know, I started writing songs really young, man.
- 1:17Speaker 3: Um, the, the whole thing is when I, when I
- 1:20Speaker 3: grew up, the guitar players were off the charts and
- 1:23Speaker 3: so were the singers. So you're somewhere around 12, 13,
- 1:28Speaker 3: don't ask me why, but I came to the conclusion
- 1:30Speaker 3: I should be the songwriter because I wasn't going to
- 1:32Speaker 3: be the guitar player or the singer that these other
- 1:35Speaker 3: people were at 13 years old. So I started writing
- 1:38Speaker 3: songs and, um, And I've done it ever since. I mean,
- 1:43Speaker 3: some people get into painting, some people get into poetry.
- 1:45Speaker 3: I've been writing songs for for a real early start. And,
- 1:50Speaker 3: you know, a lot of people think they can just
- 1:52Speaker 3: do it.
- 1:52Speaker 2: But I think you've got to it's it's a craft
- 1:56Speaker 2: like anything else. It's an art form. You know, you
- 1:59Speaker 2: got to make a lot of bad ones before you
- 2:01Speaker 2: can make some good ones. Oh, my God.
- 2:04Speaker 1: And look where you have been able to play when
- 2:05Speaker 1: it comes to putting this music together. Because, I mean,
- 2:08Speaker 1: you went to Muscle Shoals.
- 2:09Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
- 2:09Speaker 1: One of my good friends is there, Charles Holliman. And
- 2:12Speaker 1: it just blows me away what comes out of that
- 2:15Speaker 1: section of the planet.
- 2:17Speaker 3: Isn't that cool? Some people go to these baseball parks.
- 2:22Speaker 3: We've been going to different recording studios. I'm actually at
- 2:26Speaker 3: Sunset Sound right.
- 2:27Speaker 2: Now in L.A. Are you kidding? Recording.
- 2:31Speaker 3: But we did muscle shows, and we're going to be
- 2:33Speaker 3: going down to Memphis in the spring. So I've got
- 2:38Speaker 3: a side project that I work with with six other
- 2:41Speaker 3: singer-songwriters in addition to my own stuff. And that's where
- 2:46Speaker 3: we did the Muscle Shoals thing, and we're going to
- 2:48Speaker 3: do something down in Memphis. I'm not quite sure which
- 2:50Speaker 3: studio yet, but that looks like where we're heading down to.
- 2:55Speaker 1: Well, see, I love that you're doing that, because I've
- 2:57Speaker 1: always believed, and maybe it's just the Montanan coming out
- 2:59Speaker 1: in me, but I've always believed in the regions of
- 3:02Speaker 1: this nation. And with you stepping into these studios, you're
- 3:05Speaker 1: experiencing those regions of this music generation.
- 3:09Speaker 2: Yeah, how cool is that, right? You know, it's... Like
- 3:12Speaker 2: I said, I'm having a lot of fun going around.
- 3:15Speaker 2: These are like, you.
- 3:17Speaker 3: Know, holy rock and roll type of places that, you know,
- 3:22Speaker 3: they all should be museums. I'm really surprised that, you know, they.
- 3:26Speaker 2: Don't have tours and stuff for all these places right now.
- 3:30Speaker 1: It's almost like our best kept secret, but we don't
- 3:32Speaker 1: want to let it out because then everybody else is
- 3:34Speaker 1: going to come to it. So we're going to keep
- 3:36Speaker 1: it a secret.
- 3:37Speaker 2: Well, you know, I was saying something the other day.
- 3:39Speaker 2: I was like, you know, there was.
- 3:41Speaker 3: A time when everybody read the liner notes on albums
- 3:43Speaker 3: because it was so big when you but now.
- 3:46Speaker 2: You got these CDs and it's real tiny, tiny print.
- 3:49Speaker 3: I don't know if everybody's reading the liner notes as
- 3:51Speaker 3: to who produced it, who engineered where it was recorded. But,
- 3:55Speaker 3: you know, back in the day, that's what I did
- 3:58Speaker 3: every time I got an album. And I would know
- 4:00Speaker 3: all the studios, all the engineers who produced it, who
- 4:05Speaker 3: the musicians on every album were.
- 4:07Speaker 2: I think some of.
- 4:08Speaker 3: That's gotten lost in the changeover to CDs and streaming.
- 4:14Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and that's one of those things where, I mean,
- 4:15Speaker 1: I'll sit there even when I'm talking with Alexa and
- 4:18Speaker 1: I'll start asking those questions because that's become my new
- 4:20Speaker 1: inside sleeve. And she better have all the answers. Otherwise,
- 4:24Speaker 1: I'm going to go to chat GPT and I'm sure
- 4:25Speaker 1: Amazon doesn't want me to do that.
- 4:31Speaker 2: You can have a couple of them if chat doesn't
- 4:36Speaker 2: you go to gemini.
- 4:37Speaker 1: That's it so how did you protect your voice on
- 4:41Speaker 1: we were immortal i mean because that song right there
- 4:44Speaker 1: kind of gives me that john lennon ask of twist
- 4:47Speaker 1: and shout where i'm going oh my god he's challenging
- 4:49Speaker 1: his vocals on this one.
- 4:52Speaker 2: Um you know that was a fun one um.
- 4:56Speaker 3: Vocally it wasn't a problem for me but you know
- 5:00Speaker 3: so i have the gravelly voice and the smooth voice
- 5:03Speaker 3: depending whether it's a rocker or whether it's more of
- 5:06Speaker 3: a a mid-tempo or a ballad i'll go to either
- 5:08Speaker 3: the the the more gravelly springsteen-esque voice bob siger voice
- 5:13Speaker 3: that's the rocker but you know the ballads i'll go
- 5:15Speaker 3: to the smoother voice and um.
- 5:18Speaker 2: That we we were immortal was.
- 5:20Speaker 3: Um That was an interesting song because I had this
- 5:24Speaker 3: whole big concept album that I wrote that I never released,
- 5:28Speaker 3: but I started pulling songs from it that I thought
- 5:32Speaker 3: would be really cool to stand alone, and that.
- 5:34Speaker 2: Was one of them. Wow.
- 5:36Speaker 3: It's a proggy type of song, right? It's got a
- 5:39Speaker 3: lot of early Genesis vibe to it.
- 5:41Speaker 1: Yeah, it does. Well, there you go. You answered that
- 5:45Speaker 1: question because it does have that. But when I was
- 5:48Speaker 1: thinking about it, though, I went Peter Gabriel more than
- 5:51Speaker 1: a Phil Collins.
- 5:53Speaker 2: Yeah well you know what you're i think you're on
- 5:56Speaker 2: to it because i was always a.
- 5:57Speaker 3: Bigger uh peter gabriel i i latched on to genesis
- 6:02Speaker 3: early yeah with um selling england by the pound and
- 6:08Speaker 3: i just became so immersed into genesis and the funny
- 6:12Speaker 3: story is i was really in into the prog scene
- 6:16Speaker 3: and um bruce springsteen released um born to run and
- 6:20Speaker 3: um I didn't know who he was. And he just
- 6:23Speaker 3: finished his concert at Hammersmith Odie in England. And he
- 6:28Speaker 3: came to my small college, his first stop in upstate
- 6:30Speaker 3: New York. And they had to drag me kicking.
- 6:33Speaker 2: And screaming to go see him.
- 6:34Speaker 3: He's not my he's not my style of music.
- 6:37Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't even know anything about this guy.
- 6:40Speaker 3: And so I go to see him and he blew
- 6:42Speaker 3: the roof off of my house. little gymnasium there at
- 6:47Speaker 3: the school and ever since then I became this huge
- 6:50Speaker 3: Bruce Springsteen fan and you know you'll you'll hear in
- 6:54Speaker 3: my music you'll hear pieces of Springsteen and you'll hear
- 6:58Speaker 3: pieces of prog music because those are two paths that
- 7:02Speaker 3: I went down real strong.
- 7:04Speaker 1: I was going to ask you about that prog music
- 7:06Speaker 1: because I've been with the members of yes and boy
- 7:08Speaker 1: they are still promoting prog even today and I was
- 7:11Speaker 1: wondering if you were going to set up some sort
- 7:12Speaker 1: of you know, show or something like that and attend
- 7:14Speaker 1: a Prague festival?
- 7:17Speaker 3: I would love to, you know, and the stuff we're
- 7:21Speaker 3: recording right now, I probably have five really strong Prague songs.
- 7:28Speaker 3: You know, I'm trying to write music that.
- 7:34Speaker 2: Fall into different.
- 7:35Speaker 3: Styles so it's not 100 you know rock or 100
- 7:40Speaker 3: uh uh alt country or 100 americana i'm trying to
- 7:46Speaker 3: use a different um uh texture underneath everything so it's
- 7:51Speaker 3: always my voice so it's going to sound like me
- 7:53Speaker 3: but um But, you know, all of these influences growing up,
- 7:58Speaker 3: you know, I love Santana. So I've got a Santana
- 8:01Speaker 3: type sounding song. I love the blues. So I'm putting
- 8:05Speaker 3: blues music in there. And, of course, as we just
- 8:08Speaker 3: talked about, you know, I like the Springsteen, Seeger, Mellencamp,
- 8:14Speaker 3: Tom Petty type of singer songwriter. That's in there. And,
- 8:17Speaker 3: of course, Black Sabbath. You know, Gentle Giant was always
- 8:24Speaker 3: my favorite along with Genesis. I don't know if a
- 8:26Speaker 3: lot of people know who they are, but they're the
- 8:28Speaker 3: proggiest of the prog from that era. Yeah.
- 8:31Speaker 1: When you do a song like Looking for a Place,
- 8:33Speaker 1: I mean, this one right here, I mean, you talk
- 8:34Speaker 1: about that emotion that you were just discussing about. I mean,
- 8:37Speaker 1: this is definitely one of those where it's like, I
- 8:39Speaker 1: think people are going to be touched by this one
- 8:41Speaker 1: and they might even break out in some serious dancing
- 8:44Speaker 1: into it.
- 8:45Speaker 3: Oh, that was, you know what, that was, I wanted
- 8:47Speaker 3: to write a couple of songs for the album that
- 8:49Speaker 3: would be really good for live shows because, you know,
- 8:57Speaker 3: I go to a lot of clubs and everybody's playing
- 8:59Speaker 3: Allman Brothers. It's funny, they're playing songs from 50 years
- 9:04Speaker 3: ago still in most of the clubs. And I was like, okay,
- 9:08Speaker 3: I'm going to do something that's got kind of an
- 9:10Speaker 3: Allman Brothers-esque type of riff. When I came up with that,
- 9:15Speaker 3: whether it be Allman Brothers or, you know, you could
- 9:19Speaker 3: hear some Eric Clapton in that same riff. But then
- 9:23Speaker 3: I kind of meshed it together with a real Americana.
- 9:27Speaker 3: I slowed it down for the chorus for a really
- 9:30Speaker 3: interesting Americana chorus. So it's kind of an interesting mash
- 9:34Speaker 3: together of two different sounds in that one song.
- 9:38Speaker 1: Yeah, because I love the way that you explore. And
- 9:40Speaker 1: that to me is that somebody who's, are you getting
- 9:42Speaker 1: up at two, three o'clock in the morning because you
- 9:44Speaker 1: felt something and you've got to get it down now
- 9:46Speaker 1: or you're going to forget it?
- 9:47Speaker 2: No, I don't go to sleep until two, three in
- 9:49Speaker 2: the morning. You'll hear a song, you.
- 9:55Speaker 3: Know, I ain't ever grown up from, I did two
- 9:58Speaker 3: albums by that name, but... the one line I open
- 10:01Speaker 3: up with is, get up every day at the crack
- 10:03Speaker 3: of noon.
- 10:04Speaker 2: That's it. That's me.
- 10:08Speaker 1: Am I wrong to say that I hear some Beatles
- 10:11Speaker 1: inspirations in Going Down in Flames? Are we going to
- 10:13Speaker 1: go all out Springsteen on this one?
- 10:15Speaker 3: You know....
- 10:19Speaker 2: I don't think that there's a lot of Beatles influence
- 10:22Speaker 2: in me. Definitely. No, no doubt about it.
- 10:25Speaker 3: I don't think that's Springsteen and I don't think that's
- 10:28Speaker 3: a Beatles.
- 10:29Speaker 2: And that's great.
- 10:31Speaker 3: That's a great question. You know, again, it's the same
- 10:34Speaker 3: idea for looking for a place. I wanted a song
- 10:37Speaker 3: that would really translate to a crowd live.
- 10:41Speaker 2: And and, you know, there's this thing about. You know,
- 10:46Speaker 2: where you you leave a lot.
- 10:48Speaker 3: Of empty space and you just have a vocal with
- 10:51Speaker 3: the drum in the background and then you hit it
- 10:53Speaker 3: with the guitar again. That really catches an audience's attention.
- 10:57Speaker 3: And they don't always hear the words, but they they
- 11:01Speaker 3: catch on to the vibe of it when when they're
- 11:03Speaker 3: hearing something for the first time live. And so I
- 11:06Speaker 3: was very conscious of that when I put that song together.
- 11:10Speaker 3: Of course, if you go back and you listen to
- 11:12Speaker 3: the words, there's an interesting story there. It's my follow-up, though.
- 11:18Speaker 3: I'm not ever growing up. It's like, well, not only
- 11:22Speaker 3: am I never growing up, but I finally.
- 11:26Speaker 2: Leave this planet. I'm going down in flames.
- 11:28Speaker 3: I'm not going easy.
- 11:33Speaker 1: So one of the things that I really truly think
- 11:36Speaker 1: is just so special with your music is the structure
- 11:39Speaker 1: of sound. And I'm very excited to find out, while
- 11:41Speaker 1: studying the structure of music, how are you able to
- 11:44Speaker 1: still stay focused in sharing a story? So many rules
- 11:48Speaker 1: around you, but you're still so in touch with giving.
- 11:51Speaker 1: Let them have that storyline.
- 11:54Speaker 2: Okay, there's two things going on there, right?
- 11:58Speaker 3: One thing is the musical structure. A lot of people
- 12:02Speaker 3: get stuck in this, what we'll call, Abba Cab is
- 12:04Speaker 3: what Genesis called it, where they go, you know, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, right?
- 12:11Speaker 2: And I didn't want to do that.
- 12:13Speaker 3: So, you know, what I picked up from a lot
- 12:15Speaker 3: of prog music is you want to keep the music
- 12:19Speaker 3: moving so that you're always... capturing the listener's interest. If
- 12:24Speaker 3: you're constantly repeating, you're going to lose their interest.
- 12:28Speaker 2: So you've got to, you've.
- 12:29Speaker 3: Got to get a song and you've got to get
- 12:31Speaker 3: it to move. And you may have, you know, six,
- 12:34Speaker 3: seven different parts in a song, but you, you don't
- 12:38Speaker 3: want to lose.
- 12:39Speaker 2: Their interest throughout. So musically, I try to do that musically.
- 12:42Speaker 3: I try to come up with some musical hooks, some
- 12:45Speaker 3: ear candy so that they'll latch onto that. And at
- 12:48Speaker 3: the same time you do that lyrically, you're like, okay,
- 12:52Speaker 3: what can I do lyrically to make this interesting?
- 12:55Speaker 2: And I get into storytelling more than anything else.
- 12:59Speaker 3: I like these like little mini three act plays, but
- 13:02Speaker 3: maybe I got, maybe I got from Springsteen, but I like,
- 13:05Speaker 3: you know, act one, act two, then act three has
- 13:08Speaker 3: a completely different.
- 13:09Speaker 2: Twist to it.
- 13:11Speaker 3: I'll have a, I'll have a song that it's like,
- 13:14Speaker 3: look left, look, look left, watch out for the right
- 13:17Speaker 3: type of thing. And I get a kick out of
- 13:20Speaker 3: writing songs like that because, you know, it's like.
- 13:23Speaker 2: I'll sit back and I'm like, the ending's not right.
- 13:26Speaker 2: I've got to change this ending because it's it's too commonplace.
- 13:29Speaker 3: I've got to surprise them with the ending. And I've
- 13:33Speaker 3: been able to pull that off a number of times,
- 13:35Speaker 3: which I think is fantastic.
- 13:36Speaker 2: Really good.
- 13:37Speaker 1: All right, you got to be reading my notes because
- 13:39Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you right now what you just
- 13:41Speaker 1: said in my notes. It says, will you turn Antarctica
- 13:44Speaker 1: into a stage show complete with vocal dialogue? So we're
- 13:48Speaker 1: on the same damn page here, dude.
- 13:51Speaker 2: What a cool story. You know, the story in Antarctica... Um,
- 13:57Speaker 2: so I was looking for ghost stories.
- 13:59Speaker 3: I was, I was, I started Googling, I started Googling, uh.
- 14:04Speaker 2: Ghost stories and I'm like Amityville horror. Nah, I've heard
- 14:07Speaker 2: that one before. And they were going in like, I
- 14:09Speaker 2: heard that, heard it. And they get to this one thing,
- 14:12Speaker 2: you know, about this island.
- 14:17Speaker 3: Outside Antarctica in the South Shetlands called Deception Island.
- 14:21Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh, I've never heard of this before.
- 14:24Speaker 3: And supposedly, this is where they used to take the
- 14:29Speaker 3: whales back before they killed them on the ship. And
- 14:32Speaker 3: they would render them for their oil and then ship
- 14:34Speaker 3: the oil out to New York for machinery and for
- 14:37Speaker 3: lights and everything.
- 14:39Speaker 2: And so what happens is.
- 14:42Speaker 3: this island still has all of the skeletons and all
- 14:46Speaker 3: the old.
- 14:47Speaker 2: You know, vats and everything on there.
- 14:50Speaker 3: But the story is that at nighttime you hear all
- 14:54Speaker 3: these howlings of these whales, the ghosts of these whales,
- 14:59Speaker 3: and they like grab you and they take you down
- 15:01Speaker 3: to the bottom of the ocean. Right. And I'm like, okay,
- 15:04Speaker 3: this is a story I can, I can build the
- 15:06Speaker 3: rest of this around this story. And so I started
- 15:10Speaker 3: to build the whole thing around that story. And, of course,
- 15:13Speaker 3: it evolved from a ghost story to, you know, a
- 15:17Speaker 3: save the whale story. And it also evolved to a
- 15:20Speaker 3: bit of an immigration story because, you know, I was
- 15:23Speaker 3: I said it in 1921, which is a little bit late.
- 15:27Speaker 3: But there's there was this company called the Hector Company, true,
- 15:31Speaker 3: that set up their station down there at Whaler's Bay. True.
- 15:35Speaker 2: In Antarctica.
- 15:38Speaker 3: But at that time in 1921, they ended World War
- 15:40Speaker 3: I and they stopped letting the immigrants into Ellis Island.
- 15:45Speaker 3: So I built this whole story around, well, a guy
- 15:48Speaker 3: couldn't get into Ellis Island.
- 15:49Speaker 2: What am I going to do? I wanted to go
- 15:50Speaker 2: for the gold rush. And so I'm going to go
- 15:53Speaker 2: out and work on these whaling boats.
- 15:56Speaker 3: I used oil, but it was really whale oil, not
- 16:00Speaker 3: oil on the ground. But I built that whole story
- 16:03Speaker 3: up there. And, you know, so you've got a couple
- 16:06Speaker 3: of different layers in there. And I came up with
- 16:09Speaker 3: the the ending with the, you know.
- 16:14Speaker 2: The way she rises. Whoa, there she blows kind of
- 16:18Speaker 2: a whaler's type of chancy. She chancy. And I wanted
- 16:21Speaker 2: to add that into it. And then just before I
- 16:24Speaker 2: finished it, I'm like, you know what?
- 16:27Speaker 3: I need an intro and an outro to make this
- 16:30Speaker 3: very eerie and ghost-like. And I came up with this
- 16:35Speaker 3: really cool idea. I sat down on my piano and
- 16:40Speaker 3: came up with this intro. And the outro was a
- 16:43Speaker 3: little different, but it's all done with minor chords. And
- 16:46Speaker 3: I kind of looked up, how do you write... eerie
- 16:51Speaker 3: music for horror movies and, you know, scary movies. And
- 16:56Speaker 3: they explained, well, they do a lot with these minor
- 16:59Speaker 3: chords at these different intervals. And that's how they get
- 17:01Speaker 3: that creepy type of, you know, feeling and effect.
- 17:04Speaker 2: And I'm like, OK, I can I can do that.
- 17:08Speaker 3: So I started playing around with different minor changes and stuff. And, um,
- 17:14Speaker 3: I came up with the whole thing. I had to
- 17:16Speaker 3: sit down and, and, and, and teach the organ player.
- 17:19Speaker 3: This is exactly how I want you.
- 17:20Speaker 2: To do it.
- 17:22Speaker 3: Uh, which, which was really, it was a lot of
- 17:24Speaker 3: fun when we recorded that song. And then, then what
- 17:28Speaker 3: we did is we, we went and put a lot of,
- 17:30Speaker 3: you know, the like ghost ship effects. So you'll hear
- 17:34Speaker 3: all these ghost ships like rattling and creeping as, as
- 17:38Speaker 3: you're hearing this, um, Captain Nemo.
- 17:41Speaker 2: Or Phantom of the Opera type of organ in the intro.
- 17:45Speaker 3: And I think that intro and outro, because I kind
- 17:50Speaker 3: of used them, really sets the song up real well.
- 17:53Speaker 3: And then the guitar comes in, and again, it's a
- 17:56Speaker 3: little different. It's like a Led Zeppelin slash Cates type
- 17:59Speaker 3: of guitar that's a little different from anything else I did.
- 18:03Speaker 3: I'm telling you, I thought that was the crown jewel
- 18:06Speaker 3: of all the recordings I did.
- 18:07Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I did 20 songs.
- 18:10Speaker 3: Okay, we recorded 20 songs at Sunset Sound. And 10
- 18:16Speaker 3: of them became Yorick, the album before this, and 10
- 18:20Speaker 3: of them became Antarctica.
- 18:21Speaker 2: Really?
- 18:23Speaker 3: Sitting on that Antarctica in my back pocket for a
- 18:27Speaker 3: couple of years was really tough because I knew that
- 18:31Speaker 3: was a Crown Jewel song and I didn't want to
- 18:33Speaker 3: let it out until it was ready. And so I
- 18:37Speaker 3: had to wait for Yorick to get, and Yorick did
- 18:40Speaker 3: real well. I mean, it got some really great reviews. So,
- 18:44Speaker 3: you know, the 20 songs we did, all were super
- 18:49Speaker 3: received by the critics and by my audience.
- 18:54Speaker 1: Please don't move. There's a lot more of Tom right
- 18:56Speaker 1: around the corner. The name of the album is Antarctica.
- 18:59Speaker 1: We're going to start breaking down the songs. We'll be
- 19:01Speaker 1: right back. Hey, thanks for coming back to my conversation
- 19:06Speaker 1: with Tom Zurzak. The name of the album, Antarctica. Plus,
- 19:10Speaker 1: I want you to check out Call Me Ismael. There's
- 19:13Speaker 1: so much music here for you to explore. Now, being
- 19:16Speaker 1: a radio guy, only because I know how listeners are,
- 19:19Speaker 1: you've got what I call the Jason Mraz. How are
- 19:22Speaker 1: people going to find Sir Zach, and what is the
- 19:26Speaker 1: best way for them when they go searching for you
- 19:27Speaker 1: on Spotify or go to Amazon Music and things? What
- 19:30Speaker 1: is your secret to get them to find you? Because
- 19:33Speaker 1: you know how we are. We're quitters. We'll go, I
- 19:36Speaker 1: can't find it. I can't find it. Where can we
- 19:38Speaker 1: find it?
- 19:39Speaker 3: That is such a problem. I didn't realize that. you know,
- 19:42Speaker 3: since I've been a little kid, I could spell my name.
- 19:50Speaker 3: I didn't realize right away that, uh, uh, nobody else could,
- 19:55Speaker 3: could spell my name, but, um, it is Tom surzac.com
- 20:00Speaker 3: is my website. Um, but, uh, I do have a, uh,
- 20:05Speaker 3: a secondary, um, uh, website called tokyotami58. com and that'll get
- 20:12Speaker 3: you to my website too because um so i used
- 20:15Speaker 3: to run a company um in japan for the longest
- 20:19Speaker 3: time so that's where the the tokyo tommy but apparently
- 20:23Speaker 3: somebody had that name so i just uh you know
- 20:27Speaker 3: used the first number that came to mind was 58
- 20:28Speaker 3: but um.
- 20:32Speaker 2: But tokyotommy58.
- 20:32Speaker 3: Com will also get you to my my website and
- 20:36Speaker 3: from there it's got links to everything.
- 20:39Speaker 1: Yeah yeah so were you reading the headlines when you
- 20:42Speaker 1: came up with adam glow what were you doing because
- 20:44Speaker 1: i mean i feel like that you were sitting in
- 20:46Speaker 1: the same room i was we we read the same
- 20:49Speaker 1: exact article but we came up with different interpretations what
- 20:52Speaker 1: what's the story behind that one.
- 20:53Speaker 2: Okay, well, first of all, that one was written in
- 20:57Speaker 2: the 1980s. Shut up. You're kidding. Oh, my God.
- 21:01Speaker 3: I wrote that in the 1980s, so it was written
- 21:04Speaker 3: quite a long time ago. And I wrote it before
- 21:07Speaker 3: The Walking Dead came out, so when I'm talking about
- 21:10Speaker 3: lobotomized zombies and stuff.
- 21:12Speaker 2: I was ahead of those guys.
- 21:15Speaker 3: But the song that inspired me, believe it or not,
- 21:18Speaker 3: was Billy Joel's Miami 2017. So he or he already
- 21:23Speaker 3: had written a song about, you know, I saw the
- 21:26Speaker 3: lights go out on Broadway and, you know, the Empire
- 21:29Speaker 3: State lay low. And I was like, well, I'm just
- 21:31Speaker 3: going to follow up on this theme and, you know,
- 21:35Speaker 3: have like this, you know, nuclear bomb go off in
- 21:39Speaker 3: New York City. And then, of course, I played there's
- 21:42Speaker 3: so much tongue in cheek humor in that song. I mean,
- 21:46Speaker 3: you'll hear like, you know, this half-life is better than
- 21:49Speaker 3: the one we left. And just all kinds, just little
- 21:54Speaker 3: types of silly humor in there.
- 21:57Speaker 2: But the cool thing about that song is what we
- 22:02Speaker 2: talked about earlier.
- 22:04Speaker 3: It moves through a lot of, it's not a verse, chorus, verse,
- 22:09Speaker 3: chorus song. It has a lot of different musical elements
- 22:14Speaker 3: in it. And I think that's one of the things
- 22:16Speaker 3: that really makes that song very cool is that it
- 22:20Speaker 3: isn't a verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge type of song. And, yeah,
- 22:27Speaker 3: I've been doing that kind of thinking on how to
- 22:29Speaker 3: write songs for a long time.
- 22:31Speaker 2: I love.
- 22:35Speaker 3: It.
- 22:35Speaker 2: But I had a lot of fun.
- 22:37Speaker 3: You know, one of the things that's very important, I
- 22:40Speaker 3: guess I grabbed onto it again before it happened, is
- 22:43Speaker 3: in today's world, there's like a six second attention span.
- 22:47Speaker 3: So when people are on Spotify, they'll put a song
- 22:51Speaker 3: on and they'll listen for maybe six seconds, then skip
- 22:54Speaker 3: to the next one. So you got to grab their
- 22:57Speaker 3: attention in the first six seconds. So that's either musically
- 23:01Speaker 3: or lyrically, you got to say something that sparks them
- 23:04Speaker 3: that they want to keep listening to it. That seems
- 23:07Speaker 3: to be the trick. So that has an opening line.
- 23:10Speaker 3: The sun never comes up anymore. It hides behind all
- 23:13Speaker 3: that's left of New York City. All that's left is
- 23:15Speaker 3: the Adam glow that hovers all around like a halo.
- 23:18Speaker 2: Ain't it pretty? And I was like, Oh, it's kind
- 23:20Speaker 2: of a nice line. I like that. Pretty, pretty.
- 23:26Speaker 1: What kind of swag you got going on? Cause you
- 23:28Speaker 1: here in the Carolinas, we love our swag. So I
- 23:30Speaker 1: want people to go to your website and get that swag.
- 23:34Speaker 3: Well, Right now, I've got all the CDs. I've got
- 23:37Speaker 3: the two vinyl albums that just came out. I did
- 23:42Speaker 3: the Antarctica in vinyl.
- 23:44Speaker 2: You know what?
- 23:45Speaker 3: I don't know if you guys have all looked at
- 23:47Speaker 3: what's happening in vinyl. They're like bowling balls.
- 23:50Speaker 2: They come in all different colors. They're clear. They're solid,
- 23:57Speaker 2: but you can get them splattered.
- 23:59Speaker 3: They're collector's items, and they're 180.
- 24:03Speaker 2: Gram vinyl now. So they're real heavy. Yeah.
- 24:07Speaker 3: It's the, the, the, the, the world of vinyl is
- 24:10Speaker 3: really rejuvenated itself. And, and I, um, I talked to
- 24:14Speaker 3: the guys that print my vinyl up here in LA.
- 24:17Speaker 3: He says that they're manufacturing and sales of vinyl skyrocketing.
- 24:22Speaker 2: It's just, it's just going through the, through the roof
- 24:26Speaker 2: right now.
- 24:27Speaker 3: So anyways, I made, um, Antarctica with a, uh, translucent turquoise, um, vinyl, uh,
- 24:35Speaker 3: very cool looking. And I made, um, the Antarctica one
- 24:39Speaker 3: is in a marble red translucent, you know, and I
- 24:44Speaker 3: haven't seen anything like that since Jay Giles did their
- 24:47Speaker 3: bloodshot album. And they did that in red way back
- 24:50Speaker 3: in the day, which I was like, wow, look at this.
- 24:53Speaker 2: It's not in black. So today's world is, is changed
- 24:57Speaker 2: a lot.
- 24:57Speaker 3: And, um, But I think if you're going to buy
- 25:01Speaker 3: an album, you want it to be a collector's looking
- 25:04Speaker 3: type of thing. You don't want the Henry Ford, it's
- 25:07Speaker 3: always in black type of thing.
- 25:08Speaker 2: You want variations, right?
- 25:13Speaker 1: Dude, you got to come back to this show anytime
- 25:15Speaker 1: in the future. I love your attitude with music and
- 25:18Speaker 1: I love the way that you break things down. That's
- 25:20Speaker 1: so important because that to me is where the listener,
- 25:23Speaker 1: you know, gets their appreciation for the song a lot
- 25:26Speaker 1: more when they understand the vibe of those that create it.
- 25:31Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. You know, I think this is a passion
- 25:36Speaker 2: for me, right?
- 25:37Speaker 3: But I find that I believe dove into this Orange County,
- 25:43Speaker 3: LA world, and I've met all the musicians here in
- 25:47Speaker 3: Southern California.
- 25:48Speaker 2: And the musical community is all like that. And I think,
- 25:54Speaker 2: and of.
- 25:54Speaker 3: Course, I learned that going back east too, but my goodness,
- 25:59Speaker 3: it's so much different than the business world, which seems
- 26:02Speaker 3: to be very cutthroat. When you're getting to the musician
- 26:04Speaker 3: side of this world, These guys will give you.
- 26:08Speaker 2: The shirt off their back. They're just wonderful human beings.
- 26:12Speaker 2: You're right. You're right.
- 26:13Speaker 1: Dude, once again, please come back to this show. I mean,
- 26:16Speaker 1: the door is always going to be open for you.
- 26:20Speaker 2: Well, we're recording again, Arrow.
- 26:22Speaker 3: So, you know, I will have a 2027 album.
- 26:25Speaker 2: I'm trying to do this thing like... I can't do
- 26:27Speaker 2: it like the Beatles. They were doing one every six months.
- 26:30Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, that's a little too fast for me.
- 26:32Speaker 3: But I have this goal to do one a year.
- 26:35Speaker 3: And I'm like.
- 26:36Speaker 2: I've got enough material, I can do it.
- 26:38Speaker 3: And I really think the stuff I'm recording right now
- 26:45Speaker 3: is so cool and such a different turn from the
- 26:50Speaker 3: last two albums.
- 26:51Speaker 2: I think everybody's going to really be surprised. Wow, wow.
- 26:55Speaker 1: Well, man, dude, I can't wait to talk to you again.
- 26:58Speaker 1: You be brilliant today, okay, sir?
- 26:59Speaker 2: Hey, you too. Thanks a lot, Arrow. Enjoyed talking to you, man.