My musical tastes evolved through jazz fusion and then around again to folk, and by then, Tom was distant memory. On Bleecker Street, I walked into Kenny's Castaways, and there was Tom, burning up the stage with a syncopated guitar strum and a buzz-saw of a voice. I was looking for some entertainment in Greenwich Village. I'd moved down from there, having spent a year, doing carpentry and odd jobs. When I first came to New York City, I was criss-crossing paths with Tom, as he was just beginning his first stretch up in Woodstock. While I tend to champion newcomers, when it comes to some of our more venerable folk artists, as here, once again (and not for the last time), I am "late to the dance." The extraordinary depth of Tom's material has shown me the error of my ways. He says he's slowed down and these days it's around 30 annually. A 2003 profile in Dirty Linen states that Tom's yearly song output is around 40-50 (or 2,500 total, back in 2003!). Tom is a voracious reader and an enormously prolific songwriter. Like a mini-novel, "The Journal of Graeme Livingstone," begins with the demise of Jack the Ripper and travels across the Atlantic and spans several decades. Every moment of every day supplies material for a man who is consumed by the desire to chronicle life in all of its glories and defeats. Things you might not have known about Woody Guthrie come to light in the song "Woody and Jack," an elegy seen partly through the eyes of Ramblin' Jack Elliot. His song about Barack Obama, "The Man from Illinois," from his latest CD, Railroad Rainbows & Talkin Blues, captures Obama's journey perfectly and is so uplifting in its hope that, once I heard it, I knew I'd have to write this feature. One example: possibly the greatest song about a man and woman passing like "ships in the night," can be heard in "Blue Montana Sky." The song meshes so well with the Dobro it seems like the Dobro was inventedįor it. Tom's repertoire, while a treasure trove left-of-center principles, extends far beyond political polemics. It's all therein "Teddy Roosevelt." It gets even better in "Che," where the story continues. There are things about Teddy Roosevelt and the co-opting of Cuba, that led up to the Castro revolution that I was unaware of. If anyone in this country recognizes that they need re-education, Tom's songs are waiting, on his "Best of" album, ready to supply food for thought. Every viewpoint I've ever taken regarding the exploitation of the working class by the corporate elite is there in his songs. It seems as if Tom's been reading my mail, more to the point, reading my mind. Tom said, "This is happening all over America now." The title, "When the Bank Foreclosed," and the chorus states exactly what happened to the man's house and job.
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He'd met a family in a Wal-Mart parking lot in nearby Kingston, who were living in their car. Tom had begun singing his very latest song about the world at large and some of the people caught in the mercilous jaws of history. It was at the tail end of a phone interview with Tom Pacheco, me in New York City, he in Woodstock, NY, where he lives. When the bank foreclosed and the mill shut down." We lost our home when the bank foreclosed… The cops were there with a piece of paper Watching the human race implode will do that to a man. It was followed by the voice, feathered and a little ragged, worn and weathered with time. The steady thrum of the guitar pulsed through the phone's earpiece. Through the fog and darkness, there are the watchers, bringing us news from the fringes of our world.