TOM LANGFORD



By Jim Nelson, A Taste Of Triple A

The Album
Here Comes Memory

The Track
Skin For Skin

The Label
Bella Vista

Liner Notes
“The new record is a chronicle of one sad and long and rainy winter,” confesses singer/songwriter Tom Langford. Indeed, it was dark and dreary in Los Angeles throughout the wettest season in decades in these parts, but the ugly weather paled in comparison to the cloud that hovered over Langford. His third CD, Here Comes Memory, was conceived during the disintegration of his marriage, and with his heart already weighed down from this reality the affable Southern California native completed the album after burying his longtime friend and bass player, Wes Wehmiller. Wehmiller, who also played in Duran Duran, lost his battle to cancer earlier this year. Capping the darkness that engulfed Langford in eerie irony, it was Wes’s minister mother who had performed Langford’s marriage ceremony nearly six years ago.

While Here Comes Memory is rooted in the events of the past six months, Langford has been building up to this album since he discovered his love of songwriting while living in Europe in 1990. When he returned to the States, he played every LA hole-in-the-wall that would have him, and eventually commandeered the attention of Grammy-winning producer/songwriter Bill Bottrell (Sheryl Crow, Five For Fighting, Shelby Lynne), who inspired Tom to believe in his music, even going so far as to offer up his studio and engineer to help Tom record his music. Those sessions turned out to be the early stages of his debut CD, 2003’s Mercy To Be Found, which gained Langford some initial attention at Triple A radio.

When they reviewed Langford’s second CD, 2004's Places You Know, Paste magazine pegged his music as “somewhere between Nick Drake's fragile beauty and Leonard Cohen's wry, literary folk.” Certainly there is a gentle ache to Tom’s songs, and his lyrics have always been bathed in genuine sophistication—“Well the fog rolled in like prayers from Abraham and fell upon my floor” was the poetic opening line on Places You Know—but not at the expense of honest-to-goodness hit songs. On new tunes like “Skin For Skin” (which goes for adds this week), “Get To The Point” and “Hold Me Harmless,” for instance, Langford shows why he’ll also appeal to fans of The Wallflowers, Wilco, Glen Phillips or Counting Crows. And while Here Comes Memory isn’t quite as long on loops and beats as his two previous offerings, he still manages to infuse his organic guitar-based numbers with a taste of technology here and there, allowing him to comfortably straddle the line between the contemporary and the classic. Keeping things between friends, Langford was joined in the studio this time by two members of his longtime buddies Ozomatli, drummer Mario Calire and percussionist Jiro Yamaguchi.

There’s a good reason why XM’s The Loft channel added four tunes from Here Comes Memory considerably before the box, why KCRW has given it a spin and why Paste and WXPN’s Bruce Warren gave last year's outing such strong reviews (Warren called Places You Know “very strong.” Tom Langford finds himself in 2005 with an album worthy of the critical praise and the Triple A radio support he's already received.

Site
www.tomlangford.com

Spins
KCRW Santa Monica-Los Angeles
XM-50 (The Loft)
WFPK Louisville
KRCL Salt Lake City
WNCW Spindale-Asheville/Charlotte NC/Greenville/Spartanburg SC
KXCI Tucson
WGCS (The Globe) Goshen/Elkhart/South Bend IN

Quote
"Paired with melodies that teeter between brightness and gloom, Tom's voice delivers a gentle tugging throughout Here Comes Memory; the sort where you find yourself thinking 'Can sadness be sexy?' Yes, please."
-Kate Bradley, XM Radio/The Loft

Retail
Here Comes Memory is now available.

Contact
Jesse Barnett, Vector Promotions