Tommy Womack - Live a Little
On his new album Live a Little, acclaimed Nashville indie-rock singer-songwriter Tommy Womack reminds us that every moment is precious.
“I could have called it Life Goes On, but that would have been a little maudlin and a little too obvious,” Womack says. “The flip side of the death that runs though the record is life is fleeting, and don’t let it pass you by. Life goes on, yes, and you should live a little as long as you are here.”
Womack explores both dying and living on the album. He’s a deep thinker. The son of a preacher, he is comfortable writing about uncomfortable subjects — from the embarrassing to the fatal. Life isn’t fair, as he notes several times, and while “God answers every prayer, sometimes the answer’s no.”
Womack first made his mark as a member of Government Cheese, the punk-influenced band out of Bowling Green, Kentucky, that achieved regional fame in the Southeast in the late ’80s and early ’90s and who still make records and occasionally perform live. Several of the songs on the new record revisit Government Cheese’s early days, including “Speed, W**d and Alcohol,” “Hoboken” and “Underneath the Water Tower Again.” On the latter, he updates with new lyrics the song “Underneath the Water Tower,” which appeared on the Cheese’s 1987 EP, C'mon Back To Bowling Green ... And Marry Me.
“I never did like the lyrics on it,” Womack explains. “I wrote them all, but they were whiny lyrics about lost love and unrequited love, and being a square peg in school. But I always liked the tune itself.
“It’s the same song by the same guy 40 years later,” he continues. “I went back to the water tower, and I’m looking down the hillside at all the things we used to do 40 years ago when the band started, and it’s all from the perspective of a much older guy.”
The entire album is written from the perspective of an older, wiser guy; someone who has lived and learned and grown as a person and as an artist. Producer Eric Ambel calls it a “reflective record,” and while Womack may be in a reflective mood, it doesn’t blunt his artistic edge, which is honed with irony and humor.
One of the best examples of Womack’s use of irony is the album’s most powerful song, “Just Another Shooting,” which he wrote in the aftermath of the 2023 Covenant School shooting in Nashville.
“It’s one thing to see it on the television week after week, then it happens at home, and for some stupid reason, it means more when it happens at home,” he says.
The song is written from the perspective of a hard-core gun owner, who says, “You can pry my cold dead fingers off my gun / It’s my right to lock and load and have my fun.” The gun owner justifies lenient gun laws by proclaiming, “If the teacher had been packing / She could have blown that dude away.” Then he tops that bit of illogic at the song’s end, insisting, “If everybody was packing / Nobody would ever die.”
“‘Just Another Shooting’ — I wish we didn’t have to say that, but Tommy said what everybody’s thinking in that song,” says Ambel.
Finishing the song was a high point during the sessions for Womack. “The most memorable moment for me was hearing ‘Just Another Shooting’ come through the speakers with the vocals done and everything,” he recalls. “I can’t picture people listening to that without being affected somehow.”
Live a Little is Womack’s ninth solo album, and it is arguably his best. As usual, he offsets the heavier songs with humorous ones. His twisted sense of humor shines brightest on the punkish rocker “Horny Mormon.” The song, which was considered for the last Government Cheese album Love, is a hilarious take on the worldly desires of Mormon missionaries: “White shirt, black tie / What I got’ll make you cry / Sister you’ve got the look / I’ll give you more than just a book.”
“The Cheese were almost going to do it, but the guys thought, ‘Oh, we have enough funny songs in our catalog. We don't need another one,’” Womack explains. “I knew it was special. Eric loved it.
“Every time I play it live now, it just stops people in their tracks. People are already telling me they want me to play ‘Horny Mormon,’ even though they haven’t heard the record yet; they just heard me play it the last time I was in their town.”
Womack recorded the album at Ambel’s Brooklyn studio Cowboy Technical Services. They began discussing recording together after a tribute concert in New York in February 2024 for Ambel’s late Del-Lords’ bandmate Scott Kempner. Kempner had recorded Womack’s song “I’ll Give You Needles” on his 2008 album Saving Grace.
“We started talking about making a record together, and him coming up and doing it with me and my guys,” Ambel recalls. “He sent me what I like, just solo acoustic demos, and I got those to the guys so they could learn the songs without hearing somebody else’s parts.”
Ambel’s guys are bassist Jeremy Chatzky and drummer Kenny Soule, who anchored the rhythm section. Womack played acoustic and electric guitars, harmonica and mandolin, and Ambel contributed electric guitar, keyboards and backing vocals. Peter “Wet Dawg” Gordon also added piano to a couple of tracks. They recorded the 11 songs over a week’s time in August 2024 with some additional overdubs done later, including vocal overdubs by Lisa Oliver-Gray, Womack’s longtime backing vocalist, which were recorded remotely in Nashville.
Womack and Ambel share a number of musical influences, something that can be heard on the record.
“It was a lot of fun for me,” Ambel says. “Tommy carries a sneaky sophistication. There are some sophisticated chord changes, and being a Beatles, Cheap Trick, Kinks fan helps pull things a little bit away from the middle. And I’m coming from that same place.”
Live a Little concludes with one of the two songs featuring funerals, “Funeral Girl.” The song perfectly encapsulates the album’s twin themes of dying and living. It’s written from the perspective of a man who is attracted to a woman he meets at a funeral.
“Life is always beginning,” Womack says. “‘Funeral Girl’ is about the end of one person and the beginning of another two people. This guy and funeral girl might wind up getting married.”
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