Tom Wanderer - Private Revolution
Tom Wanderer epitomizes freeform radio. The WMSE DJ spins an eclectic collection of recordings—Thursdays from 3-6 p.m.—taking listeners on a journey to many times and places. “The Tom Wanderer Radio Experience” echoes a love for music at once broad and deep. Some of that love found its way onto his new album of original songs, Private Revolution.
While much of Private Revolution is acid rock at low burn or the sound of psychedelia simmering on the back burner, sonic reference points materialize from many points of origin. “Under the Viaduct,” a love-lust song whose GPS suggests Milwaukee, recalls the airy reverb of Jesus and Mary Chain. If “Juliana Says” is indebted to the Velvet Underground in a reflective mood, “Paperback Grotto” suggests T-Rex boogie slowed to a crawl. Raga rock, a genre seldom heard since 1968, is evident on “You Belong/Good Morning, Om Reprise” and the instrumental “Three on a Match.”
Lyrically, Wanderer is sometimes waggish (“Eyeliner of Horus”), often touchingly enigmatic and usually acutely aware of small, telling details. The album’s title song sounds a little like the dark musings of late-life Leonard Cohen. Most tracks on Private Revolution are less than four minutes long and many run less than three.
Private Revolution is available digitally and as a vinyl LP. I asked him why not a CD as well.
“I grew up listening to music on records and tapes. When I started making my own music as a teenager, I always dreamed of having my music on a record,” he says. “It seemed so official and permanent. I could make a tape. I couldn’t make a record. I remember when CDs first came out and they were so expensive and you had to treat them with kid gloves. Over the course of the next 20 years, they became something almost disposable. Kicked around on the floors of your friend’s messy car, cases always broken, ultimately ditched en masse after the rise of MP3 players.
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“I still think CDs sound good, and are a fine way to listen to music, but when it comes time for me to put the money down on a physical medium, records are definitely the way to go. If I’m going to release something, I want to be able to hold it in my hand. I can’t afford to press multiple formats, so, for me, it’s an easy choice. I love making records. Big cover. Large format. Lots to look at. You don’t realize how hard it is to get someone to listen to free music until you put out an album. It’s tough. If you give someone a record, there is a much better chance that they will actually listen to it.
“By and large, people take better care of records. They see them as something of value, whereas CDs just came free in every magazine with three free hours of America Online or whatever. What seemed like a quaint vinyl fad 15 years ago has become a true resurgence.”
Private Revolution is a true solo album. Wanderer played every instrument, built many of them and programmed the drum machine. “I recorded the whole thing at home on a Tascam 8 track cassette recorder,” he says. “Everything was recorded on tape without computers. That’s the equipment I learned on and feel most comfortable using. I’ll keep recording that way until it’s irretrievably busted, although I have gotten pretty good at repairing it.”
According to Wanderer, most of the album’s songs began as experiment in his home studio. “I have a lot of instruments, amps and devices that I hadn’t used in a long time and I wanted to kind of get the dust off of them and put them to work on something new with no real direction, but the ideas started coming fast and things just started falling into place.
“Things were taking shape so quickly that I thought it was best to just keep working and not question what I was doing too much. Making a song is a process of making one decision after another after another and so on. It’s easy to get overwhelmed if you question what you’re doing too much in the moment. The songs, as they were in progress, basically told me what they needed next based on what was already there. Direction presented itself more than I imposed it.”
Wanderer recorded most of the album in a six week stretch working an hour or so most days after work and a few hours a day on the weekends. “Most of the songs were started and finished over a couple days working this way,” he continues. “They were all spontaneous, in that I wrote them as they were coming together, except for ‘Under the Viaduct,’ ‘In My Head’ and ‘Three on a Match.’ Those songs had been kicking around for many years. When I took a breath and saw how many songs I had, I started going back and mixing them and really listening to them for the first time. During this process I decided to release a solo album. That wasn't the goal or even a thought as I was writing and recording. There were a few more songs I had to drop to get it down to fit on an LP, but that editing process was good for me and I kept what I felt to be the strongest material.”
Asked about his songs, he replies, “I’m not as much of a songwriter as I am a note taker. But my note taking is constant. I’ve written lots of songs over the years, and I write for the band that I've been in for the past 14 years or so [Red Stuff], but it’s more likely that a little idea, a couple of words, will become a song rather than having something come into my head fully formed.
“I like to think that a song can come from anything. Lyrically, most of these songs are a mix of dreams, memories, literature, personal experiences, and just little phrases or fleeting ideas that I seized on in the moment. ‘Juliana Says’ is made up of things Juliana Hatfield said to me in an interview. ‘Her Voice Is Like a Séance’ began as something I misheard. I always thought the best line in the Stones’ song ‘She’s a Rainbow’ was ‘her voice is like a seance.’ I only recently learned the actual line was ‘her face is like a sail’ and I was like, wow—what a missed opportunity. So I wrote my own song to make use of the line.”
Wanderer has no plans to perform the material from Private Revolution live. “To be honest, I don’t even know how to play most of the songs,” he says. “I had fully intended to make notes of chords and structure and what microphone and guitar and amp was used for what portion of what song, but by the time I tried to make those notes I was playing catch up and it was all a blur. I think that’s kind of cool, though, that most of these songs just passed through me before I could even get a handle on what I was doing.
“The way I captured it on the record is the way it was—a still-fresh document of a particularly creative period. I don’t expect periods of productivity like that will come very often. I had so much fun making this album, I hope others can find enjoyment in it as well.”
