FEATURE

TOMMY WOMACK IS READY TO ROCK AGAIN

BY JIM PATTERSON

In 1998, Tommy Womack released the song “A Little Bit of Sex” on his first solo album. Twenty-three years later, he offers “A Little Bit of Sex Part 2” on his latest project, I Thought I was Fine.

Things have changed.

The first song, written when Womack was 24, features anxiety about causing a pregnancy or catching a sexually transmitted disease. He was pushing 60 when he wrote “A Little Bit of Sex Part 2,” about declining libido as we get older and navigate health issues.

“Not tonight honey, I want to watch Law and Order,” Womack sings on the newer song.

The song opens up with the couplet, “Rock ‘n’ roll is a losing cause/All my old groupies got menopause.”

“That’s the beauty of his songwriting,” said Jonathan Bright, who co-produced and played on the album with Womack at Bright’s Nashville recording studio. “He can be hilarious, and he can be heartbreaking, and a lot of times it can be within a verse and a chorus of the same song.”

Womack has returned to his first love — “loud, sloppy rock ‘n’ roll” — after years styling himself as an Americana artist. For fans of his 1980s band Government Cheese, I Thought I was Fine will constitute a return to form. “I came to an epiphany that I don't listen to Lucinda (Williams)

or Steve Earle or Jason Isbell or anybody like that,” Womack said. “I listen to The Ramones and AC/DC.”

His lyrics, always insightful and witty, aren’t stuck in the past. He tackles mature topics like the older brother he would have liked to have known better, the indignity of “Job Hunting While Depressed,” trying to “Pay it Forward” despite being down on your luck and what happens when a narcissist falls in love.

“It’s almost like those Hank Williams Sr. songs that are so simple,” Bright said. “They're universal themes, but the way he presents them is definitely through his filter.”

Those who want to compare Womack’s old and newer songs might be interested in “30 Years Shot to Hell,” a compilation due soon that tracks Womack’s progress from Government Cheese through his later band the bis-quits; duo project with fellow bis-quits member Will Kimbrough, Daddy; and into his solo career.

In addition to playing clubs, Womack has hustled for a living as an author (one novel and two very funny memoirs), a deejay on WXNA and columnist for The East Nashvillian. He’s open to house concerts and will even write a song on a specific topic or theme for a fee. He is also a prodigious Facebook poster, on everything from his health to insightful serial posts

on rock bands including Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones.

He’s had exactly one non-creative job that he liked, working at Bookstar, the sinceclosed bookstore in the old Belle Meade Theatre building on Harding Pike.

“Every time I've had to go get a job in the past, it's been a depressing situation,” Womack said about his song “Job Hunting While Depressed.” “I worked at Vanderbilt (University) about 15 years at three different places, and I hated it. … I'm not a corporate guy at all.”

COVID-19 closed off his performing income for a year and a series of health setbacks have slowed him down. A crash with a tractor trailer in 2015 left him with several broken bones in his pelvis and he’s survived bladder cancer three times. Most recently he collapsed on his way to WXNA, and it turned out he had a Vitamin D deficiency.

Bright, who tours with the Raelyn Nelson Band (Raelyn is Willie Nelson’s granddaughter), has his own rock ‘n’ roll project coming out next year, a band called De Piratas in collaboration with members of Jason and the Scorchers.

“We're at the age where we know that it doesn't matter how good or what you do, there's still a huge element of luck,” Bright said. “All anyone has to offer is their selves, their individuality. … And certainly Tommy is a complete individual.”