Tom McCormackTom McCormack is a piano-playing singer-songwriter whose music has been compared to that of Elton John, Tori Amos and U2. He has recorded three albums and has performed at venues, including the Garden State Arts Center, Javits Convention Center, and the Macintosh Music Festival. He has shared stages with Nell Carter, Harvey Fierstein, Jill Sobule, and Catie Curtis, and recently headlined with Marga Gomez and disappear fear. His music will be featured in several upcoming films, including David Searching (starring Anthony Rapp of Broadway's Rent), The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me starring Dan Butler of NBC's Frasier), and Tag Purvis's Red Dirt. Writer Benedict Maulbeck spoke with the busy musician at a Billboard Conference in connection with McCormack's role as executive producer of GLAMA (Gay/Lesbian American Music Awards.)
My music is a compass for me, because it often guides me to what I need to to be looking for in my life. I wouldn't say it's therapy, but it's definitely an outlet. I think my psyche uses my music to get the rest of me clued in about what's going on.
I've often written things that didn't become fully clear to me until years later. When I write something as a metaphor, I try to let the structure of the metaphor take over, and let the words speak for themsevles. Often, it's only years later that I really understand it on a deeper level.
Performance can also bring new meanings to the music. I think it has something to do with the audience. Paritcularly in a concert setting, the attention of the audience provides some kind of connection with the artist, especially a solo artist. You get the sense that someone in the audience is understanding, or relating it to their own experience. And that broadens your own definition of the music.
I remember once I was talking to a friend after singing "Don't Tell" at a show. I wrote "Don't Tell about the silence that is imposed on gay people. But my friend said that she had felt that someone in the audience that night was relating to the song as a survivor of abuse. And the knowledge of that really does affect the performance.
I remember the first time I was performing a song that I felt was really personal. I felt totally naked. But then a woman afterward came up to me and said, "You've been following me." I had no idea what she was talking about, and said, "No."
And she said, "That song is my song. It desribes me to a T." That taught me a lot, about how rewarding it is to be honest.
When I produced the album Rose Colored Glasses, there was a certain level of trying to create a sound people wanted, as opposed to creating something I liked. And I really felt the album didn't have much impact, that it didn't touch people.
With my more recent album, Missing, I didn't think about the commercial end. I just wrote what I was feeling. And I think it found its niche really quickly. Again, the honesty was worth it.
When Missing first came out, I was worried that a lot of straight fans would think it was just "Gay, gay, gay" and be alienated by it. But when the album was released, quite a few straight fans told me that they could really relate to it, that everybody has something to come out about, whether it's sexual orientation or something else.
-- Benedict Maulbeck
September1997
©1997 Inside Arts/APAP
