Tom is an artist who has written award-winning music for a variety of media. All through the 80s and early 90s he was hooked on the fiendish habit of writing memorable jingles; tunes like “It’s As Real As It Gets” and “Welcome to Millertime” for the Miller Brewing company, “I’ve Got that M&M’s Feeling” for Mars, and “Sometimes You Need a Little” for Finesse shampoo.
And even though he won a couple of Clios and a Cannes Silver Lion and got to write and produce jingles for artists like Mi...
Tom is an artist who has written award-winning music for a variety of media. All through the 80s and early 90s he was hooked on the fiendish habit of writing memorable jingles; tunes like “It’s As Real As It Gets” and “Welcome to Millertime” for the Miller Brewing company, “I’ve Got that M&M’s Feeling” for Mars, and “Sometimes You Need a Little” for Finesse shampoo.
And even though he won a couple of Clios and a Cannes Silver Lion and got to write and produce jingles for artists like Michael Bolton, Marc Cohn, Ry Cooder, Fats Domino, Dave Edmunds, Allen Toussaint, Jimmy Buffett, .38 Special, Kenny Rogers, and George Benson, Tom decided to kick the jingle habit and return to his first love, songwriting.
So he turned his attention to film, writing music for the movies Beer, Night of the Creeps, Excessive Force, Caught in the Crossfire, Girlfriends, The Key, and the Martha Coolidge film Not a Pretty Picture. The Key, which he scored with Jonathan Helfand, won the 1996 National Education Fiction Video Award.
Tom’s songs “You Got Something on the Side,” “100 Real Good Reasons to Sing the Blues” and “That’s My Version of a Good Idea,” which he co-wrote with Martha Trachtenberg and International Blues Challenge Award winner Toby Walker, appear on Toby’s internationally acclaimed CDs, Toby Walker Plays Well with Others and Just Rolled In, both of which Tom produced. His production credits also include It's About Time by Martha Trachtenberg, which was featured in The New York Times and Newsday, and is played on acoustic-music oriented radio stations throughout the country.
His first solo album, Hodge Podge, was released in 1997 and was chosen as an Album of the Year by the Long Island Voice. His 2004 release, The Web of Life, is a collection of educational songs for upper elementary students. The album came about, he says, “Because I couldn’t find any academically-oriented music that I thought would interest my 11-year-old son. There are plenty of ‘Wheels on the Bus’ type songs out there, which are great for little kids, but not much for that age group.” The CD has since become a favorite learning tool in Montessori classrooms across the country.
“With 40 Years Later,” Tom explains, “I wanted to write about issues that were important to us baby boomers back in the sixties, but looked at from today’s perspective. In a funny way, it took me forty years to be able to write these songs, but for me it was worth the wait.”
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