In Tom's Life, He Loves You More!
Tom Yarbrough has (finally) released his first CD, "Far Cry From Gone", now available via Obligatory mini-review:
I am not an expert in genres, but to my ignorant ears it would seem Tom is shooting for something like "adult contemporary country". That isn't even close to my cup of tea, so it make reviewing this an exercise in "target demographics"; if you are NOT Tom's usual audience, then consider what I have to say since I am not an ass-kissing fanboy, and if you ARE Tom's usual audience then you probably clicked off this page when I said "ass-kissing fanboy". That's fine, I have nothing to offer you because our tastes are likely too dissimilar.
"Far Cry From Gone" is a VERY well-engineered and performed collection. With something like 8 years to work on some of these songs you would think Tom would be able to play them well (he does), and with various friends in Nashville who play instruments or have their own recording studios you would expect that the mix sounds professional (it does). A great example of how Digidesign made the world a better place for all of us.
As I said, I am the last person to tell you what is good in "adult contemporary country", so if there is any chance I will sit still and listen to something it is because it contains some sort of crossover appeal. Tragically, Tom does not seem to have a single hard rock/heavy metal song on the whole disc (WTF Tom!?!) so I have to limit myself to songs with a "pop" sensibility. THAT limits me to one song, the title track.
"Far Cry From Gone" is one of the oldest songs in this collection, and in my opinion quite capable of moderate crossover success. Not everyone will like the style, but as a dyed-in-the-wool headbanger and avid worshiper of my lord Lucifer I still find this track has a great feel and groove to it.
The song "Far Cry From Gone" was the official test song of the very first iTrip, back in 2003 or so. I had gotten a hold of a ZIP file being passed around Griffin labeled "rough mixes", which contained three of Tom's work-in-progress songs. Of the three ("Far Cry From Gone", "Cool Water" and "Tell Me") I thought the track that stood head and shoulders above the rest was "Far Cry From Gone". One day while testing handmade iTrip prototypes I needed an audio file that panned back and forth between the left and right channels, so I grabbed a microphone connected to my computer and threw together an audio file of me droning "left... right... left... right..." in a emotionless monotone for 30 seconds as the channels switch back and forth. While effective, around the thousandth time I played it my co-workers began to get annoyed and begged for something less intrusive and grating. I really don't know why I selected "Far Cry From Gone", but I loaded it into (the now defunct) Cool Edit and quickly started muting 5 second blocks of alternating left and right audio. The result was amazing... it just so happened to fit the tempo of the song for the first two verses, so that you'd hear "I'm a long way from leaving baby, I'm a far cry from gone" coming out of the left speaker and then "When you get home in the eve'nin, baby I'll be hangin' on your arm" coming out of the right speaker, and so on. VERY cool coincidence of my editing. This hard-panned version was named something like "Far Cry From Gone (Hard Pan)", which Tom thought sounded like a cool name for a band. This file was sent to Griffin's manufacturing partner, preloaded onto an iPod to be used for test purposes. A short time later a desktop PC-based test system was devised, also using Tom's edited song. Reports from the Chinese factory girls was that they liked the song, although they eventually did get savvy enough to start using their own Chinese songs as test files, but for at least a year (probably two) every iTrip in the world had played some of Tom's "Far Cry From Gone".
I often play guitar and sing at my friends parties and social functions. I have recently taken to playing "Far Cry From Gone" (in a slightly simplified version... hey, I'm no Tom Yarbrough!) and most everyone who hears it is extremely impressed. I am pretty sure if I was 20 years younger, had my frickin' hair and passed the song off as my own composition I could get laid by chicks who thought I was really tender and creative. Much as I would love to claim it for my own I instead steer people to Tom's website, particularly now that the album is finally out. So Tom, don't bother suing me for performance royalties; the gigs were unpaid, the set list was not advertised, and I think I may have gotten you a couple paying customers! ;)
I notice the final release mix of "Far Cry From Gone" is 4:20. Heh. Heh heh heh. Is Tom trying to send us all a secret message, ala The Beatles?!? Is Tom a closet head? IS Tom the walrus?!?
Speaking of The Beatles, and the role they play in Tom's life... well, let's just say "In Tom's Life (He Loves You More)". WTF am I talking about? Ladies and gentleman, devotees of Tom, his mission and his music... I HAVE A RARE, UNRELEASE STUDIO RECORDING OF TOM!!!! YES!!!! O.K., the reality isn't so dramatic, but I do have yet another Tom story...
The man who effectively ran Griffin for nearly a decade (sup, Van!) was keenly interested in expanding the Griffin product line beyond the video monitor adapters Griffin was known for at the time (this was in early 2002, years before the iTrip or Powermate). As a guitarist he was keen on integrating our latest product, the iMic USB sound card, with a cheap multichannel audio mixer, and bear in mind this was YEARS before Apple even thought of GarageBand (mad props to Van). Since the iMic was my project, and since I was also a guitarist who could appreciate Van's vision, I was given the task of building a proof-of-concept device. Basically I soldered the I/O's from an iMic to the I/O's of a $100 mixer and shoved the guts inside the mixer's case with only a USB cord to betray the fact that the mixer was modified. Van brought a decent quality mike (probably an SM-58) and an electric guitar, and we did a little testing. During the testing I was recording EVERYTHING, "one take" with no interruptions, with the intent of analyzing the audio later.
Tom wandered by my cubicle and saw the mini-rig I had going, so I passed off the guitar to him while I fiddled with the hardware and recording software. He started plinking out a melody, so (lacking a mike stand) I grabbed the live mike and held it in front of Tom's face. Without hesitation he broke into the first verse of The Beatles "In My Life", which he amusing screwed up partially by getting the lyrics out of order and then trying to backpedal and correct it (in the span of one second), at which point he gave up on the lyrics and just hummed the rest until he finished. Someone happened to walk up as we were doing this and Van began to explain to them what Tom and I were doing. Tom put down the guitar when he was done and went back to his desk.
I then saved the file I had been clandestinely been recording this whole time, and the real work began!! Operation: TOM'S FIRST SINGLE!!!!
I'll spare the details, but I took two mono tracks (Tom's vocals and his guitar playing) and ran them through several of the effects in Sound Forge, to ultimately build a pseudo-stereo final mix of a song I now call "In Tom's Life (He Loves You More)". I think it is a must-listen for all Tom Yarbrough fans,
Update: The free MP3 hosting service I was using seems to have gone away. Any Tomfans are welcome to E-mail me and I will send you a copy.
BTW, here is a picture of Van (left), Andrew House (middle) and Tom (right). Van and Tom were creating/celebrating "Look Like Andrew House Day", much to Andrew's considerable concern. Van's inclusion of plastic "rotting inbred country yokel teeth" certainly helped put his effort over the top! If you listen carefully to "In Tom's Life (He Loves You More)" you can hear a vocal murmuring, which is Van talking in the background. The murmur turned out kind of Beatles-like too!
So, I believe that "In Tom's Life (He Loves You More)", which I "released" around May 2002 via the internal Griffin file server to anyone who wanted it, constitutes the first public single and to date ONLY Beatles cover tune from Tom Yarbrough. Tom, if you include it on your next CD as a hidden bonus track, I want engineering credit!
I include this picture "just because". This was an Andrew House idea that I executed in about 15 minutes. Tom was not asked or consulted... or thrilled at the result. ;)
(C) 2008 Don Stratton
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