All the material featured on this page is taken from the original "The Outsider" web site and is re-published by permission of Jane & Wayne! Featured on this page are: - The Story So Far Tom Pacheco Interview The Story So Far * Tom Pacheco was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts on 4 November 1946. His father, Tony,was a jazz guitarist, who had played in the clubs of Belgium and France, and returned to the States after the war to bring up a family of nine children and run a music shop. He taught Tom to play the guitar and lively jamming sessions were a way of life at home. Tom recorded his first album, Turn Away from the Storm, a collection of self-penned folk-songs at the age of 19. He left Massachusetts in 1965 to study at Hofstra University in New York, and he began performing at venues such as Café Wha?, the Night Owl, Au Go Go and The Bitter End. In 1965 he formed the Ragamuffins, who supported Jimi Hendrix on a number of occasions and released two singles on the Seville label. He then formed Euphoria with three other folk singers, including Sharon Alexander whom he had met at university. Euphoria made one album (Euphoria, 1969) before Pacheco and Alexander left to make an eponymous duet record which was released on CBS in 1971. Produced by John Hall and with backing from the Full Tilt Boogie Band, it has a late-sixties, early-seventies pop feel musically, but some characteristic Pacheco themes -- the environment, the Native American nation, and science fiction -- are already evident in the lyrics... * In 1975, Tom began work with the producer George 'Shadow' Morton: a collaboration which began with a three-day bonding session travelling across America by train, playing cards. The result was two albums, Swallowed Up in the Great American Heartland and The Outsider, which both appeared on the RCA label in 1976. Pacheco's trademark gravelly voice and frenetic guitar style were now in place, and his lyrics explored American life as seen from the road. However, disco and punk were in the ascendant, and the albums met with a luke-warm reception from audiences; Tom became disillusioned with the music business and moved to the East Coast in 1978, settling in Woodstock where he wrote songs and painted... * In Woodstock, he set up a rock band, The Hellhounds (named after a line from a Robert Johnson song: Hellhounds on my Trail), who played many gigs at small venues. He moved to Austin, Texas in 1981, where he set up another band called The Hellhounds, again playing at small venues to enthusiastic crowds. He returned briefly to New York and then Woodstock in 1983, where he reformed The Hellhounds; they recorded one album, 85 Tides, which was never released. Tom moved to Nashville in 1986, where he recorded over 100 song demos. He stayed there for a year, but quickly became disillusioned with the city's keenness for uncritical, unthinking good-time music... * Then a friend invited him to visit Ireland for a short tour, but he ended up staying for ten years. There, the second and incredibly prolific phase of his recording career began... * Eagle in the Rain, Tom's 1989 album, was the first record released on the independent Irish label, Round Tower. It was produced by Irish folk legend Arty McGlynn, and Tom's American-based lyrics enter into a cross-cultural encounter with a Gaelic sound, including the backing of Ulliean pipes! Tom toured England and made his debut at the Cambridge Folk Festival in July 1990, and recorded Sunflowers and Scarecrows (Round Tower, 1991), in London. The album has more of a rock flavour than his other work -- though it also features the Cajun star Flaco Jimenez on accordian. The following year, Tom made a return visit to Nashville to record Tales from the Red Lake (Round Tower, 1992) at Jay ('Vern') Vernalli's Board Room. Tales was the first of Tom's albums which he produced himself (with Paul Speer), and he relished the chance to have control over his own music... * Meanwhile, Tom had begun to do gigs in Norway, where his songs were greeted with great enthusiasm. On one of these trips, he happened to meet a young musician at an airport, who asked him to send him some songs to record. That musician turned out to be Steinar Albrigtsen, Norway's premier country artist, and a rising star on the popular music front, too. This was the beginning of an explosive musical partnership and of Tom's astoundingly successful career in Norway. Albrigtsen appears as a backing musician on Tales (singing harmony vocals and playing harmonica and the Norwegian mouth harp); the following year, the pair recorded a duet album, Big Storm Comin' (Round Tower, 1993) in Oslo. The album's twelve songs are all written by Tom Pacheco, with arrangements by Albrigtsen, and the duo share lead vocals. Pacheco then signed to the Sonet label (the Scandinavian branch of Polygram) which released his 1994 album, Luck of Angels. The album was recorded in Nashville, produced by Pacheco with Jay Vern, although it also features a new recording of 'Robert and Ramona' (from Eagle in the Rain), made in Oslo with backing by Norwegian artists. Tom's last Scandinavian album, Bluefields (Fjording/Sonet, 1995), was recorded in Oslo and features a number of Norwegian musicians, including Steinar Albrigtsen and rising star Rene Andersen... * In the winter of 1996, Tom took a nostalgic trip to Woodstock, where he recorded Woodstock Winter (Mercury, US/Polygram, Norway, 1997), with backing music from Bob Dylan's former colleagues, The Band. On the album, Tom reminisces about his former home (The Hills of Woodstock), celebrates the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia (Jerry's Gone), and re-records one of his 1970s songs, Jimmy the Fiddler (from Swallowed Up), as Christmas on Times Square... * Shortly after making the album, he moved back to Woodstock. However, before leaving Ireland for the States, he hired Dublin's Sun Studios for a night in the summer of August 1997. Between 11pm and dawn he recorded 30 songs -- 'just one voice and guitar, no frills, no second takes, no overdubs and no fancy effects' -- with just one man, Pete Holidai, to work the controls. The result was the fabulous live double CD, Bare Bones and Barbed Wire (Road Goes On Forever, 1997). This album was followed up by another collection of 34 songs: The Lost American Songwriter (Road Goes On Forever, 1999). This album followed a similar to Bare Bones, except that it was recorded over three nights rather than one, with additional instruments played by The Band_s Jim Weider, who produced the album. The cover of The Lost American Songwriter features a painting by Tom's father, Tony Pacheco, called 'Cannon Street' -- the inspiration for one of the songs on the collection... * Eight years after Big Storm Comin', Tom Pacheco joined forces with Steinar Albrigtsen again in 1999 to record Nobodies (Norske Gram, 2000). Musically, the album has a mellow sound with a definite trend towards the blues at the end. It includes what may well be one of Tom Pacheco's greatest history songs, the blisteringly critical Teddy Roosevelt. The album was recorded at Woodstock, with contributions from members of The Band, including Rick Danko, making his last visit to a recording studio before his untimely death in December 1999. Poignantly, Danko's contribution included backing vocals to the track They Can't Touch You Now... * Tom Pacheco's songs have been recorded by other artists. Early covers include Jefferson Starship's recording of All Fly Away on their Dragonfly album (RCA, 1974; reissued on CD, 1997); and Indian Prayer (co-written by Tom and Roland Varg Mousaa) which features on Ritchie Havens's album Mixed Bag II (1974). Steinar Albrigtsen has provided beautiful interpretations of many of Tom's songs (check out, for example, Bound to Wander (Norsk, 1992) and, especially, The Troubadour (Norsk, 1994)). Tom has also written songs for Rene Andersen (who sings on Bluefields). He has also co- written songs with Josie Kuhn (for her albums Paradise (Round Tower, 1992) and Walks with Lions (Round Tower, 1995)), and Tom Russell (Purgatory Road on Box of Visions (Round Tower, 1993)). Most recently, he has written songs for members of The Band, including High Cotton and If I Should Fail, recorded on The Band's 1998 album, Jubilation and You Can Go Home Now and People of Conscience on Rick Danko's posthumous solo album, Times Like These (Breeze Hill, 2000)... * Watch this space for news of more projects. The joy of being a Tom Pacheco fan is his unfailing ability to keep producing fantastic music ... every album bringing surprises, pauses for thought, and real gems to treasure... An Exclusive Interview With Tom Pacheco TO: You've recently moved back to the States after several years away. What was it like to go back? TP: At first I found it very unsettling after ten years in Dublin. It's such a fast-paced country. I'm lucky that I live in Woodstock which is quiet and out in the country. There is so much media, we are bombarded with it all the time. More people stay in and watch TV in America than over here. So much of America is over the top. Apart from making Woodstock Winter, when I went there for five weeks, I used to go back only for a week or so to see my father and my brothers and sisters. I didn't see what the States had become... There is a huge influence of TV. It started with the OJ Simpson trial and now we have the Monica Lewinski mini series! There are so many problems that should be faced, things that need fixing, but people are too distracted to do anything about them. People have short attention spans: it's hard to have conversations any more... TO: What's it like living in Woodstock? TP: It's nice. It's a very small town -- it has 8000 people, and they are pretty much spread out in the hills and mountains. Town is just one street, it's very, very beautiful... TO: Were you at the Woodstock festival? TP: No. I was very young at the time. I think I was playing in a terrible band in Cleveland, Illinois or Ohio... TO: Do you regret not going? TP: No. I don't like big crowds. I wouldn't have liked being in all that rain and mud. It's much better to watch it in the movies! TO: Who were your early influences? TP: My first hero was Chuck Berry. I was a little young for Elvis Presley. When I was probably ten years old i liked Ricky Nelson and Jerry Lee Lewis, and the early rock 'n' rollers. Then someone gave me a Folkways recording of Woody Guthrie and it turned me around. I went heavily into folk artists, Bob Dylan and Buffy St Marie. Then I began backtracking, buying all the old Folkways recordings, by Leadbelly, Cisco Houston, Pete Seeger... TO: Did they impact upon your own music? TP: Absolutely! They would have to. These were people who were writing songs about the time... TO: How do you feel about the plans to reissue your early albums The Outsider and Swallowed Up in the Great American Heartland on CD? TP: I'm happy to get them out, but they're old, old records. Stuff I was writing in '74 or '75 (they came out in '76). I re-recorded one song on Woodstock Winter, and a lot of people liked that song and asked 'Have you still got those old songs and can you sing them as you sing now? TO: Yes, you're voice has changed a lot over the years. Was that a conscious decision? TP: I sang in a lower voice then, probably for lots of reasons: at the time, I wasn't comfortable singing in a higher range. I had had lots of problems with my voice and throat, so I ended up singing a lot lower than normally. But my voice has improved over the years -- I've got a wider range now. The more you sing and experiment and the more you add this and that, you find you can do more than you thought you could do... TO: Why did you go for more than ten years without recording, after those 1976 albums? TP: It was almost thirteen years -- it was a long time. During that time singer-songwriters weren't in fashion at all. It was probably in 1977 that disco became very popular in America, and then punk. I put a band together and went on the road, playing and playing, writing and writing, and travelling all over the States. I lived in Woodstock, then Austin, Texas, then I went back to New York and Woodstock and from '86 to '87 I lived in Nashville. Then I went to Ireland. I've now bought a house for the first time, in Woodstock. I have loads of responsibilities now: I can't call the landlord to come and fix things, I have to do them myself, but I like that... TO: Why did you move to Ireland? TP: I was living in Nashville which I didn't like. It's the only place I have lived which I didn't like. I hear it's better now, but in 1987 they wanted formula music. I had an Irish friend who had a club in New York where I used to play. He had moved to Ireland and called me and said, 'What the hell are you doing in Nashville?' I said, 'I don't know'. He asked me over to do a tour, so I went there and where the tour was over, I couldn't imagine going back to Nashville and ending my life as a tunesmith (not a songwriter -- they only have tunesmiths in Nashville). So I stayed, and I did Eagle in the Rain in Ireland in 1989... TO: When you started recording again, did you concentrate on new songs, or did you try to catch up on your backlog? TP; There were two songs on Eagle in the Rain which were written previous to Ireland ('Midnight at the Hot Club' and 'The Last Blue Whale'). The others were written in Ireland. A couple of them were written only a few weeks before recording the album: 'Just a Little Bullet' was the last... TO: Even when You lived in Ireland, and worked with Irish musicians, your songs were about America, and your stories were set in America. Why was that? TP: I've always believed that you should write about what you know best, and I hadn't been in Ireland long enough to know enough about it. You gravitate towards what you know best... TO: How did you get into the Norwegian music scene? TP: Eagle in the Rain came out in Norway at the end of 1990. I didn't know anything about it until I got a call from a Norwegian journalist who had given it a very good review and said, 'Do you want to come and play Norway?'. At the time it was the last country I thought would be interested. I had to do a European tour, and we tacked on three shows in Norway. The three shows went really well, and they invited me back. That was when I met Steiner Albrigtsen, who I didn't know at the time was a big star. He has just had a Greatest Hits album released, and half the songs are by me! TO: Did you enjoy recording Bare Bones and Barbed Wire, in one night, as a live album? Do you prefer it to the studio sound? TP: It gave me more freedom and it's more like the stage-shows, but I like doing both. The new album is called The Lost American Songwriter, and there's only 10 songs that have been recorded before and 20 that are new. It is recorded in a sort of similar way to Bare Bones, but instead of one night, I did it over three nights. I'm also playing rock harmonica: I was supposed to play it on Bare Bones, but I forgot my harmonica and we only had one night! Jim Weider of The Band plays on most tracks, but it's done in the same way. I played him each song once and then we cut it. There is only one over-dub on the entire album... TO: What is your favourite album? TP: I can't say, it's really hard. Each album means something different, brings back memories of a different time in my life, different things I was doing. My least favourite was Sunflowers and Scarecrows, because I was never happy with the production -- it was more rock 'n' roll than I wanted it to be... On the new album, two of the 10 previously-recorded songs are from Sunflowers: 'Midnight Waters of the Rio Grande' and 'I Was Meant to Pass Through Your Life'. I'm kind of happy with this album. The front cover is a painting my father did in 1943 in Cannon Town, near where I was born (the nearest town is New Bedford, where Mody Dick starts). He painted this in a part of town where he used to hang round when he was young -- it's sort of a bad area. It's sunrise, and light is coming through the streets but there's nobody on the street. I wrote a song based on that picture but set in the present. It's a strange juxtaposition but I think it works. It's a good cover for an album about the lost songwriter, because there's nobody on the street.... TO: What are your plans for the future? TP: I'll probably be doing more writing for The Band (their new album, with two of my songs, is out now). It was great hanging around with those guys, they're amazing guys, amazing musicians, and we're good friends now. So I want to write a whole lot more songs, do more music, more shows... and keep living!