Sojourn Records is proud to be releasing NYC-based singer/songwriter Tom Laverack's new record, Cave Drawings. Over the years, Laverack has played numerous venues in New York City, from CBGB’s to LaMama, and from the Mercury Lounge to the Living Room. He has had the privilege of playing on bills with Freedie Johnston, The Tom-Tom Club, The Mekons and Philip Glass as well as many other gifted performers.
Four years in the making, Cave Drawings showcases the best of Laverack's songwriting, bolstered by Mark Ambrosino’s refined production and including great performances from a stellar band, including Marc Shulman (Suzanne Vega), Jeff Langston (Antony and the Johnsons) and Mark Ambrosino (Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder). The record offers an emotionally and musically diverse range for the listener. While tapping into the classic 50's and 60's style of production, the music is folk-rock with a soulful delivery.
Having drawn comparisons to an array of distinguished singer-songwriters, Laverack shows his preoccupation with the darker sides of life, while retaining a quiet belief in the sacredness of our connections. As David Greenberger proclaimed on NoDepression.net, “With twenty years gone by since his debut album, Tom Laverack has honed his writing and performing into a perfectly matched set. His voice and songs meet one another on varied turf and go gallivanting about the hillsides. World-weariness runs through the entire set in a way that a man two decades younger couldn't have fully comprehended.â€
Laverack began writing and performing music when he was sixteen, living a majority of his adult life in New York City. He and his long time musical collaborator, Larry Fessenden, started the band Just Desserts in the mid-eighties and released their first album Sentimental War (Earhorn Disks) in 1987. Recorded with Wharton Tiers (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr), Sentimental War was a concept album and acoustic-driven folk-rock tour-de-force, which received rave reviews and extensive college radio airplay. Just Desserts also released the paired down EP, Cold Hearts and Whiskey from which Bar/None Records issued a limited-release '45' featuring the song “Almost Shook You Up.â€
In 1997, Just Desserts released their second full-length album, Give Up The Ghost (Earhorn Disks), garnering high praise and extensive college and AAA radio airplay and David Avery of CMJ wrote, “For fans of Mark Eitzel, Bruce Springsteen, Replacements.â€
In addition to their collaboration as Just Desserts, Fessenden has written and directed feature films and has featured Laverack's solo recordings in all of his movies beginning in 1991 with No Telling, a film Laverack also scored. Laverack contributed two songs to his second feature film, Habit, a release that went on to earn him an “Independent Spirit Someone To Watch Awardâ€, and composed the song “Hold Out†(from the CD Gift Horse) for Fessenden's film Wendigo, which earned the director further accolades and awards, including winning the 2001 Woodstock Film Festival.
Fessenden’s most recent film, The Last Winter, which was produced by Jeffery Levy-Hinte (“Thirteenâ€, “Laurel Canyonâ€), featured three songs from Cave Drawings and the track “Running Out of Roadâ€, was written for the film and was highlighted during the ending credits. As An Honest Tune’s Bill Whiting raved, “It is a rare occurrence when an artist’s compositions frame a film project. But, that is just what has happened to former Just Desserts frontman Tom Laverack and his introspective marvel, Cave Drawings. Three of Cave Drawings' songs, ‘Precious Little,’ ‘No Shame,’ and ‘Running Out of Road’…stretches the vast, colorful musical landscape of Laverack's mind with sharp, insightful, poetic lyricism. A deeply satisfying listen, Tom Laverack's Cave Drawings rewards with each sublimely successive playing.â€
Prior to Cave Drawings, Laverack released two additional full-length solo CDs: Out of the Blue (Megalith Records), produced by Daniel Egger, was released in 1999 and featured a variety of home recordings (excerpts from earlier recordings that had never been released) and Gift Horse (MayYing Music), produced by Gideon Egger, was released in November 2005 and featured an eclectic collection of songs highlighting Laverack's unique brand of songwriting.
Laverack, along with Mark Ambrosino, are founding partners of the independent label, Sojourn Records, an innovative label highlighting the importance of partnering with artists, leveraging technology,and assisting great artists to connect with great audiences.
Laverack's newest reportedly took over four years to complete and includes three tracks that appeared in the apocalyptic Winter. None too surprisingly, these three cuts ("Precious Little," "Running Out of Road," "No Shame") all share a fatalistic tone -- as do many of the other tracks, which tend toward rootsy mid-tempo rock or more mournful balladry with an occasional country soul lick tossed in for good measure. Listening to the mid-tempo opener, "Coney Island Heart," I found myself flashing on both Springsteen and Lou Reed, though Laverack's country-folkish delivery may get you thinking more of Steve Earle.
To these ears, the more energetic tracks are the album's high points, though the insertion of soul sax by movie maker Larry Fessenden on a track like "Running Out of Road" is a particularly neat touch. Most striking of the slow 'uns turns out to be "Dead Dog," wherein the singer comes upon a boy mourning over a dead pet hit by a truck. "I'd give it all up if I ever made it," Laverack sings, "just to save this dead dog," even if he knows he just singing into the wind.
Laverack's lyrics can be merciless when considering the state of nation ("Blinded by our entitlement, our dollar signs read 'In God We Trust,'" he notes on the lopingly soulful "Precious Little"), but he can also be sharp on a self-castigating track like "Foolish Enough to Think," where he laments his inability to change his own self-destructive habits. This willingness to shift from the blisteringly social (check out his nursing home rant, "No Shame") to the equally self-critical proves one of Laverack's strengths as a lyricist.
Laverack's back-up is provided by group of steady sidemen: Marc Shulman, who has worked with Suzanne Vega, and Joel Hoekstra on guitars; bassist Jeff Langston and label co-president Mark Ambrosino, who provides a suitably strong Max Weinberg-y beat to it all. Hoekstra's stinging work on "Foolish Enough to Think" is a particular stand-out, though his thoughtfully hooky licks on "Coney Island Heart" are also worth noting.
"You don't know if you'll leave behind anything after you're gone," Laverack sings on the disc's title song, adding that he's content to leave little memories of "how this world did feel" for those who are willing to listen. After regular plays of this evocatively grown-up set of rootsy vignettes, count me among the willing.
-Bill Sherman
Blogcritics
Cave Drawings helped bring about the creation of Sojourn Records by bringing Laverack and Ambrosino together as they worked on the project. In the end, the decision to start the label postponed the release of the record but is a move Laverack does not regret. "I feel fortunate to have this record coming out at a time when we have several releases becoming available." Laverack states. " In many ways it allows me to see this record in perspective. The one thing I'm sure of is that it deserves to be heard. And it's a record we can be proud to release".
Sojourn Records released Danny Kalb's "I'm Gonna Live The Life I Sing About" in January 2009 and is releasing New York subway musician, Theo Eastwind's new release "King of the Underground" in July.