#tom terrell

ＡＲＣＴＩＣ　ＧＬＩＤＥＳ ＢＩＮＧのティームライダー”ＤＥＡＮ　ＰＥＴＴＹ”とファミリーメンバーのフィルムメーカー‷ＴＯＭ　ＴＥＲＲＥＬ”による映像動画です。 まだまだ寒そうな海でのグライダーに乗るフリーサーフィン動画が、非常に楽しそうです！ 最近暖かくなってきて、日本ではもう少しでシーズンインですね！ この動画を観て、より気持ちを上げていきましょう！

Just As I Am: Bill Withers

Songwriting is a catharsis, because you get to say things you've thought about a lot. You just kind of walk around inside of yourself, and, depending on your energy and your experiences, ideas cross your mind.

When I was young, vulnerability, concern, and consideration were thought of as strengths. You manufactured a smile to hide whatever made you bitter, in order to be functional and accepted. Today, the youth live in a time where harshness is treasured, so they suppress smiles and manufacture scowls. To do that, you have to manipulate your thought process. And if your thought process is hard, it could lead you to write about when you or some guy sold drugs down the street.

But hey, them suckers ain't as hard as they want you to think. When a sweet girl tells one of those guys she don't want him no more, he'll go home, sit in the bathroom, and just fill up the floor crying. It's just an illusion.

Album Review by Bradley Christensen Artist: Tom Terrell Album: Self-titled Record Label: Self-released Release Date: May 4 2015

…We come across a tavern in a remote village. Park up. Hope for food. The hours of motion, crystal views, pristine silence and sunlight up in the mountains have left us fresh and hungry.

Tom has become the sole driver, I have no more to give on that front. I come wrapped in layers of scarf and blanket; shut eye whenever I need. Thank you Tom.

Enter into a dingy front room bar. Wait for someone to answer our call. And there she is. Alesia. A lady of unknowable age. Brown, wavy hair. Kind eyes. She tells us what she will feed us. No menus. From what Tom and Carla can gather, we will dine on pasta with tomato and meat. Sounds fine, think we.

Enter a large dining room. Huge open fire, burning. Sit as close to it as we can.

In a cupboard is a solitary man playing a slot machine that makes incessant little noises. It is irritating but, at some sweet point, the noise eventually abates.

First comes the rustic bread, olive oil. Marinated Olives and peppers. Cured meat and soft cheese.

Then a large bowl of al dente spaghetti covered in a light, spicy, red sauce of fresh tomatoes and chilli.

No sign of meat. We shrug and eat.

Alesia tries to tempt some Wine into us. We explain, with hand gestures, that we’re driving. So she brings out ‘young’ wine (homemade of course) that has little or no alcohol in it. The red liquid brims forth from long plastic water bottles, and there is the debris of nature swimming in there to prove it is of the purest and freshest we might ever taste.

While stuffing our faces with pasta, Tom observes: ‘I hope that’s not the sound of meat frying…’ Our ears tune to a sizzling, echoing down the corridor.

What’s going on? Is there more?

Yes. There is.

When the mammoth bowl of pasta is at it’s dregs, Alesia walks out with three plain plates. Upon each sits a slab of pork, still hissing, with a little lip of lemon sat beside. Carla and I blush with the surfacing of a deep misunderstanding and Alesia thinks it has to do with the spice consumed. When she is out of earshot we guffaw. A third meal. Amazingly, it goes down easily. Afterwards - don’t know how- we feel no pang of pain in the belly. It sits comfortably. All of it, inside us.

Espresso is ordered, of course.

Turns out. This decadent meal is equivalent to our Sunday Roast. But this version doesn’t give indigestion.

16th January 2016

Glasgow. It’s snowing.

Rose Cousins arrived a few days ago. I am her right hand man until she leaves for Canada, tomorrow.

Back to story time…

In Palermo are two Scottish sisters, blonde locks and bravado, here to cheer us on. They teach English, have lived in Sicily for a long time. The Glasgow accent only adds to the passion in their Italian.

Carla brought a Learn Italian CD. Our teacher is a man who spent his life building a philosophy of lingual learning. Childhood and grown up experience of two world wars and life as a spy for various secret organisations was how he attained such a philosophy. There’s no pressure to remember anything, or write it down. You relax and build structures slowly and repetitively. I’d listen for hours but my enthusiasm is lofty. The intermittent lessons twixt the country music compilations, Bob Marley and Sinatra CD packs - purchased at road side garages - allows us a handle on the basics.

First eight gigs are in succession; I don’t mind working hard but the late nights and extensive travelling is waring. In comes gig number 5, Ombligo de La Luna (The Belly Button of The Moon). Travelling to the little town in the south of Italy’s toe, I battle with the thought of cancelling. It isn’t so much that I’ve lost my voice but my energy, like Reggio Callabria, is at the feet. And isn’t compelled to rise.

It gets tearful. I cry in the car. Phoebe sits, parked on a beach that has been completely ripped apart right up to the streets by a recent storm that sent a swell of record size pummelling into the coast. The Parents say that, if tired, just let go and get home. Concerned with the amount of driving. So many miles, so many hours, crazy drivers all around and baby sister sat in the back seat.

And I am tired. And it could be dangerous.

But I have never cancelled a tour. Perhaps my scorpio nature has me feeling, resolutely, the show must and will go on. Call Paolo Mei. He understands. We decide to cancel the upcoming gig in Manduria and this gives three whole days off.

Ombligo De la Luna is a quiet gig. Sing soft and sad most evening. Our little audience ask for an encore, a cheerful song to boot. I have a swift sob behind the curtain, pull it back together and get out there. 

Our host and venue owner kindly lets us stay in his flat. His only instruction: Do Not Open the windows. Their cat has fallen from the 10th floor apartment 3 times already (no clue how the creature still lives). The cat has a strange scat eye thing going on and a stunted tail.

When the three free days arrive, Paris is attacked by terrorists and life is given new perspective. TV’s show harrowing images, urgent letters swipe across the screen. Reporters look stern. I am glad they do not speak a language I understand.

I have written an article for Irish friends, Ambiguous Fiddle, and their music Zine. It speaks of the effect of this event on my being and the collective psyche of the travelling musician. Perhaps you should order it (out soon).

Resolutely we proceed.

12th January 2016

2 months since the journey across Italy. I am treating the tour journals with unprecedented distance.

You need discipline to write on the move. I admit - when singing until after midnight - a quick-fire, shameful social media barrage then Bed is more appealing than dragging out the typewriter and brain.

Tour Journal writing probably saved me during a time I like to call ‘The Great Depression’ (grant me some drama, please). Travelling Europe, playing solo, tour managed by the lovely Johnny Ray, heavy in head and heart. I’d stay up late, every night, pouring anecdote into the screen. Grateful to the gentle warmth and colour of post-observation. I distanced myself from the world in real life but, in solitude, in writing, I could come closer to the experience. Meditate on hardships. Gain perspectives…

This time round, if honest but respective of my privacy, there was much hardship, much stress. A complex tangent to The Great Depression. Writing did not come easy. There were the late nights, there was the extra human company in Carla and Tom (if we weren’t sharing a tent or a headlamp, we were often sharing a hotel bed), and there was my tired, muddled, impenetrable mind and more external unspeakables.

Now I can close in on this one.

There is too much to recount. I won’t be fair in the attention I give. Many a recount-deserving spectacle will go unwritten.

I’ll start with honouring our veHICKle. Phoebe The Lemon. Since purchasing her in August she has now travelled close to or more than 15,000 miles. Barely a complaint could be made about her. She is a hero.

Phoebe comes with no gimmicks. Though she is a 2009 model, she has no aux cable or electric window winders. She lacks insulation. 

Her hips are wide and her forehead high. The weight at her behind (two guitars, the precious drum kit, merchandise, spare tyre, suitcases, electronics etc) and the little friction in the wheels sometimes meant predicament.

On one occasion, trying to reach the town of Enna which sits literally on the crown of a cliff, we find ourselves in danger of a topple. 

The main road is closed for unknown reasons. The satnav redirects. Without question, follow fluffy pink line up a steep and narrow track. The verge is of grass, higher than 8ft, it crowds in on the tiny road, restricting vision of turns up ahead and, at some inevitable moment, Tom misjudges and nearly drives off into a pile of old, resting, rusting litter. 

The corner we’ve missed is sharp and the incline sheer. Try to reverse and resume but Phoebe only screams frantically in her rubbers and smokes profusely in her anxiety. 

Carla and I, ordered to stand out and away as Tom perseveres, can’t help but notice the lean of the Lemon, the precarious nearness of her left side to the drop of the hill we’ve just climbed.

 Tom is a brave man not to cry and, eventually, with a tense shuffling and see-sawing the car is in a position to actually grip the road and push on. 

...continued...

It takes seven days to get to Catania in this adventurous fashion. In this seven days the car breaks down just once, Tom excels in the cooking, Carla proves to be a most beautiful, hilarious and attentive travelling companion and I become a 24 year old child.

Catania is a Sicilian city. The emblem of the city is a little Elephant. Elephants used to be native to Sicily. Little elephants. The island is only a small, wet and salty passage north of Africa. Shame the exotic miniatures live here no longer.

Paolo Mei has organised the gigs in the south;

Catania, Messina, Enna, Palermo, Caulonia, Rende, Vitulazio… All the gigs are free entry. I have never played these places before. It will be rare to find people who have ever heard my songs. The Italians are a passionate bunch and make for a good audience.

We are only just transitioning to accept the breakfast diet - which is quite dire in the eyes of an avid porridge enthusiast - when a new edge is added to our routine under fire.

Gigs I play, across the rest of the world, normally start no later than 9pm. Far too early for the Italians. Each gig begins no earlier than 11.30pm. Take to napping beforehand and making noises like old dogs when we’re required to stir for the night’s show.