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Originally from rural Michigan, Tom Caufield is a musician living and working in Los Angeles. He was a member of mid-western bands The Raisins and The Best, and has performed as an invited guest at the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival. His debut album 'Long Distance Calling' was released internationally by Passport/Polygram in 1987. Since then he's self-released a number of song collections, among them 'New Fan of the Daylight,' Falling Short of Utopia,' 'The Times Are Never So Bad,' and 'Tom Caufield & The Calling.' Songs from these and other releases have been used in numerous television shows, among them 'Friday Night Lights,' 'One Life to Live,' & 'Felicity.' Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone called Tom "a talent to watch," and writer David Wild, also of Rolling Stone said "Tom Caufield is a great American singer-songwriter, period, end of story. Lend him your ears."
His latest release, 2011's 'The Slow Dance of Time,' is a collection of nine original compositions performed solely on Spanish guitar. The album represents a sea change in Tom's music. "I felt, with 'Summer Solstice' that for the moment, I'd said all I had to say within the vocal, verse-chorus-bridge pop format. Also, I'd been doing that for quite a while, and wanted to clear the decks and start anew. So I took stock of my feelings toward life and music. I think every artist tries to respond to the time he or she is living in. And when I looked around, I heard so much talk, so much noise, and so much chatter that I felt what the world might need, or what I might need would be a gesture of something peaceful, tranquil, reflective. I've always been a fan of ambient music, so I reached back to my early days as a guitar student, learning from Andres Segovia records, and tried to fashion a musical experience somewhere between these two influences. I wanted to offer an antidote to the hectic pace of modern life by bringing the equivalent of a peaceful meadow, replete with pond, weeping willow,and a warm breeze into the living room of the listener."
To embark on this new beginning, Tom's first step was to purchase a new guitar. The pieces came quickly. "What I immediately noticed and found fascinating was that the music seemed to be not coming just from me, but was a collaboration between the guitar and myself. I'm convinced that had I picked a different guitar, nine different pieces of music would have been created. It sounds mystical, but I think it also has a rational basis, like Jung's theory of synchronicity. The small differences in another instrument, the slight change in feel, the variation in tone, would have caused me to respond in a hundred subtly different ways. And what I realized was that we're all collaborating on everything. In a time when egotism and individuality is valued and emphasized, the fact that everything is in truth inter-connected and collaborative is getting lost. The music on 'The Slow Dance of Time' is a collaboration between myself, the music that influenced me, the craftsmen who hand-assembled the guitar, and the very wood, steel and gut that the guitar was made from. So it's very organic, and interconnected. It's a collaboration through space and time, between many people, and with elements of the natural world, and that's what I wanted to say."
About the evocative titles of the compositions, Tom says "I thought about writing something about each piece for the album's liner notes, but decided to leave them to the listener's imagination. This music is more about where the listener lets it take their mind than where I want to direct it. I think most of the titles are accessible and direct enough to convey what my inspiration or intent was, while some are a bit more personal, or obscure. 'Francesca on the Rooftop' is for photographer Francesca Woodman, whom I think is the greatest near-unknown American artist of the 70s. She had an incredible vision of the undetermined nature of identity, but got no recognition, and eventually took her own life. But that's the only specific story that a piece was based on. The rest grew out of my emotions, and I hope that listeners recognize their own, similar emotions in the music. My hope is that the pieces give voice to the secret life of emotions and encourage the mind to travel to deep and profound places."
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