The Talk of the Town IS the new 10-song CD by Tommy Gunn titled “Talk of the Town”...TG has put a lot of heart and soul (while having some fun at the same time!) into this musical extravanganza of self-styled songs with the help of several other exceptional musicians at Ice Station Zebra Studio in Boston. And what a Sound!...this is a musician’s banquet of superb playing and production with masterful mixing and engineering work by Ducky Carlisle.
Channeling TG’s musical influences, one can hear echoes of the Beatles, especially McCartney, as well as Supertramp, Billy Joel, Pink Floyd, The Cars, Green Day, and The Police. But these new songs are no knock-offs; they are refreshingly original stuff as TGunn tunefully and lyrically ear-worms into your mind.
The Talk of the Town also concerns the issue of substance abuse, through the death spiral of fellow musician Norm Mattice. “I have lived my whole life in a daze, in a daze…Walking ‘round disheartened in a maze, in a maze”… After several years of alcoholism & addiction, he was found dead off the Liverpool Parkway in Syracuse New York. TG has dedicated the CD to Norm…
Adding pizazz and smooth intensity on many of the tracks is Grammy Award winning tenor sax man Amadee Castenell. Known for his work in New Orleans over the last forty years, with bands Chocolate Milk, the Neville Brothers, and the Allen Toussaint Orchestra, he’s also a sought-after studio player and world-class master who is equally adept as a flautist…
Besides his expert mixing & sound design, Ducky Carlisle also keeps the beat throughout, making you want to air-drum to the variety and inventiveness he brings to the percussion side of the offering…
On three cuts Guitarist Dav Knapp adds his acoustic colorations to the flow and old musical buddy Paul Armstrong (The Most) adds some ‘lectric punch to the song “Get Lost”…
The rest is all T.Gunn as he delivers on bass, keyboards, vocals, backing vocals, and additional guitar, while composing all the numbers. He looks at relationships past and present in almost biographic detail through several songs (“Turtle Hill, Past My Prime, Golden Rule, My First Reaction, & Leaves Begin to Fall”) while others pursue subjects like religion in “Heaven” (Do you know the way to get to Heaven? Can you tell me something I should know…I’d like to make it by eleven, just in time to catch the evening show…) and a self-exam of our place in the world and society with the introspective “Lost Without a Prayer” (I can hear the sound, of people running ‘round, it really brings me down, they don’t really care, they’re lost without a prayer…)
This is Tommy Gunn’s Finest Hour and a tasty culmination of his Music to this point…Rock Out!…