‘weathering’ new album by Tom Eaton in Peaceful Radio Show 1550
18 July 2023 Artists
Scroll down and click on photo for Tom’s Bandcamp page.
Best New Age Album GRAMMY Nominee, and award
winning musician, composer, and producer Tom Eaton
releases ‘weathering’ a story of losing hope, losing
home, seeking clarity, and eventually finding your way
back to life and light.
Track Listing
01. prelude to the lost years (0:55)
02. the lost years (8:02)
03. above the mad river (7:17)
04. instead i said goodbye (6:30)
05. the empty page (7:09)
06. weathering (7:13)
07. the beach, the rain, and hope (8:54)
08. the world with her in it (8:49)
09. when clouds give way to stars (6:00)
Total run time: 61 minutes
Credits
Written, performed, produced, recorded, mixed, and
mastered by Tom Eaton at Universal Noise Storage in
Newburyport, MA, and Sounds & Substance in East
Kingston, NH, between 2018 and 2022
Strummed electric guitar on “The Lost Years” by Huck Eaton
Piano, basses, guitars,synthesizers, accordion, and
percussion by Tom Eaton
Artist photos by Liz Linder
Tom Eaton is a GRAMMY® award-nominated American musician, producer, and mastering engineer. Using vintage
and modern synthesizers, guitars, fretted and fretless basses, myriad sonic sculpting devices, field recordings, and his
signature piano, Tom composes what Ambient Music Guide calls “lush, shadowed, emotional music that’s rich in
harmonies and oceanic layers and so deliciously slow.” The spatial and dynamic aesthetic of the classic Hearts of Space,
Windham Hill, and Private Music albums resonate through Tom’s work, described by Hypnagogue as “breathtaking…
rich, complex and beautifully structured.” Tom’s music has been featured on Echoes, Hearts of Space, Star’s End,
SiriusXM, and NPR.
Since 1993 Tom has been producing, engineering, mastering, and playing on albums for other artists, and since 2009 he
has been collaborating with Will Ackerman (GRAMMY® winning guitarist, producer, and founder of Windham Hill
Records) making albums for some of the best musicians working in the modern instrumental and New Age genres. Tom
and Will produced and toured with the award-winning ensemble FLOW (featuring Will, Lawrence Blatt, Fiona Joy
Hawkins, and Jeff Oster), playing Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall multiple times, The Grammy Museum in LA, and The Jazz
Museum in New Orleans, among many other venues. Brothers, a trio album written and performed by Tom, Will, and
Jeff, was nominated for a GRAMMY® Award in 2021. Will’s current album, Positano Songs, which Tom and Will
produced and Tom recorded, mixed, mastered, and contributed piano and bass to, was nominated for a 2022
GRAMMY® award.
Tom lives in rural New Hampshire with his wife, two cats, and a rotating cast of nearly grown children. His studio,
Sounds & Substance, is a two-story converted barn containing a mastering studio on the first floor and Tom’s
composing space on the second floor, filled with instruments and natural light. He draws inspiration from the woods
and pastures just outside his door and the nearby Atlantic coast.
AWARDS
“Best New Artist” Award, ZMR (Zone Music Reporter) 2016
“Best Instrumental”for “The Confluence”from Brothers with Will Ackerman and Jeff Oster, IAMA (International
Acoustic Music Awards) 2021
“Best Producer / Instrumental” with Will Ackerman, for FLOW: Promise, IMA (Independent Music Awards) 2020
“Best New Age Album” Grammy Nomination for Brothers with Will Ackerman and Jeff Oster, 2021
Will Ackerman’s Positano Songs nomination for the “Best New Age, Ambient, or Chant Album” Grammy in 2022
Track Descriptions
weathering is the story of losing hope, losing home, seeking clarity, and eventually finding a way back to life and light.
“the lost years”
In 2015 Tom was sleeping on the floor of his studio, essentially homeless, making records for people during the day and spending his nights making the music that became
his first two albums. His dreams had fallen apart. “I lacked the ability to understand how I ended up where I was, and music seemed to be the only truth I had access to,” he
said. “I had no capacity for thinking or words, all I could find was raw emotion. I spent years broken in that moment, stuck right there, until I could get quiet enough to hear
nature calling me back to my childhood.” Over time, the ocean, the wind, and the trees slowly changed him. And eventually a single sunrise in 2019 brought him clarity.
All of Tom’s pieces start with videos of piano improvisations. He doesn’t feel as though he writes the music. Rather, like Vangelis, he thinks of himself as a channel through
which music emerges. “It just seems to show up when my energy is right (or wrong in the right way),” he said. Tom caught the first improv for this piece on video on March
26, 2020. His son Huck played the strummed guitars in the choruses, an addition that still makes him smile. He added the prelude in 2022, when he had gained some
perspective on the time that had passed.
“above the mad river”
Tom was on a hike in the White Mountains of NH when he found the inspiration for this piece. He recalls a moment where the wind suddenly stopped and the world got
amazingly quiet just above the treeline. “The river was far below, inaudible, and something about that silence brought back memories of times I so needed peace but didn’t
know where to find it,” he said. “It was always there… I just didn’t know where to look yet.”
The improv that eventually became this piece was first captured on video on April 20, 2020. Shortly afterwards Tom recorded the final piano part and began adding layers
of texture with guitars, keyboards, and bass, and then wove in his accordion. He’s grateful to his friend Mary Bartlein for encouraging him to use the accordion more in his
music. It appears on every track on the album and has a little moment of its own on the bridge of this song.
“instead I said goodbye”
In her song “Goodbye,” Jane Siberry sings “I went to say ‘I love you,’ but instead I said ‘goodbye.” It’s a line that has haunted Tom for years. “So many times we ignore the
truth that we know, choosing the easy answer, or the one that keeps things steady and seemingly safe,” he said. Even after realizing he was neither safe nor steady where
he was, even when every cell of his body knew those truths, Tom remembers hanging on. This song is about the moment he realized the only thing left to do was to go.
The piano part for this piece appeared to Tom almost fully formed late one night at Will Ackerman’s studio in Vermont in June of 2018, and the song ended up setting the
mood and pace for the album. In hindsight he realized it was offering him some advice…but it took him some time to figure that out.
“the empty page”
Leaving the familiar was terrifying for Tom, but it allowed for a new beginning and gave him the opportunity to sit and think about what he wanted out of life. In time he
realized that starting from nothing is a good way to allow anything to be possible. Silence creates space for music, the empty page asks for notes, or words, or color. The
piano part for this piece first appears on video on Sept 12, 2020. It has always felt to Tom like a bookend to “wednesday: in stillness” from his first album, each piece with a
different awareness of what it means to be alone.
“weathering”
In this piece, Tom ponders getting older, accepting both the wear and tear and the wisdom that come with it.
He is grateful to Mike Rivard, bassist extraordinaire, for his guidance on this piece. Mike encouraged Tom to play the melody with the fretless bass in the choruses, and he
feels the song is better for it. April 23, 2020.
“the beach,the rain, and hope”
On April 18th, 2019, Tom met Sarah for the first time for a walk on the beach at the state park where they would eventually get married. They knew little about each other,
but something seemed promising that rainy evening. They walked and talked for a long time, slowly revealing themselves, and starting to learn how to move together
through the world.
The first video of this waltz is actually from January of 2019. “The piano frequently seems to know things before I learn about them,” Tom said.
“the world with her in it”
This piece is about walking next to the person who makes everything fall into place. Tom had started a practice of creating peaceful ambient spaces in music (which led to
his elements albums) and was learning how to be at peace in his piano music as well. “I think I was finding some calm in my life for the first time,” he said. April 2, 2020.
“when clouds give way to stars”
For Tom, the last few years have been about clarity, about learning to see himself, and learning to relax into a life that is full of exploration and gratitude. He remembers
sitting on the beach one night, watching the sky slowly shift with the faint light of the moon softly illuminating the clouds. “As the clouds slowly evaporated a whole new
world appeared,” he said. “It made me realize that what we can see at any given time is such a small part of what is really there.” November 7, 2020.
Benno Veugen Peaceful Radio, Peaceful Radio Show, Tom Eaton, weathering