DIY Top 12 Picks - By Mare Wakefield

There’s a distinct classic-rock vibe to Pennsylvania resident Kate Gaffney’s latest record. Her vocals are husky and reminiscent of lady rockers like Grace Slick and Chrissie Hynde, and she’s got the music to back up the comparison. There’s a Hammond organ, there’s a rippin’ guitar lead, there’s a powerful voice telling us about the bitter cold and rough roads—everything you need for a perfect rock album.

Highlights include “Lone Wolf,” in which Gaffney admits, “I wasn’t looking for love, I had convinced myself I’d had enough.” Some Creedence Clearwater–style swamp guitar propels the tune along. “Tired Wired” has a driving drum beat that guides listeners through Gaffney’s story of laying “my head in a gypsy tent after all my money’s spent.” Mandolin joins the mix but still makes way for wailing electric guitar.

Have you been wondering where all the cool rocker chicks have gone? Gaffney knows—and she’s not afraid to reveal it.

Tuesday, May 2, 2006

By TARA MURTHA

For the Courier-Post


Gibbsboro-based musician Tom Gillam is known as a big-hearted, megavolt personality with a quick wit who has been delivering swashbuckling, honky-tonk stage performances for more than 20 years.

The man's all spirit, everyone says: talks a mile a minute and gets things done. He even is rumored to be able to corral musicians to gigs on time.

It makes sense that slowing to the pace of his new, decelerated heartbeat is a bit of a challenge. He's on medication that slows his system to help his body absorb the new splint in his heart.

"I'm feeling better than I was a month ago, considering I think yesterday was the one-month anniversary of when I died," Gillam explained before rupturing into his trademark volcanic laughter. "I don't mean to make a joke of it, but I actually did die."

Review By Bryan Chambala - Press & Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, NY

On the back cover of her 2005 release, The New Then, Philadelphia-area singer/songwriter Kate Gaffney is holding a guitar and sliding out of the driver's seat of a blood-red vintage Cadillac parked under the sun in an expanse of grass and trees.

Images of artists pouting or slinking their way across CD booklets are usually dictated by strict conventions pulled from the record industry's myriad marketing strategy handbooks. But independent artists such as Gaffney claim the power to shape their own portrayal. In this case, the confluence of classic American style and the breezy, folksy feeling found escaping the confines of the city offer a fitting visual introduction to Gaffney's blend of classic rock, country and plugged-in folk.

The New Then opens with perhaps its strongest track, She Knows, a travelogue with a lyrical style in some ways reminiscent of Gram Parsons' solo work. It is a driving song, replete with a churning organ and bass line delivering Gaffney from the desert heat, the bitter snow of the mountains and the cold rain of Santa Fe.

Her latest CD is The New Then (TiredWired), a collection of 11 songs that sometimes sound like Bonnie Raitt's blues-rock, at other times Beatle-esque in harmonies and instrumentation. Some of the songs even have a Grateful Dead/jam-band sensibility.

Ms. Gaffney has a low voice, a delicious contrast to many of the more ethereal sounding sopranos in the singer-songwriter world. Although she admires Ms. Raitt and Janis Joplin, and some in the business have said she sounds like a young Joan Baez, Ms. Gaffney says men in music have been a much bigger influence. If she doesn't ape the leather lungs of Robert Plant, she's absorbed his "body of work" with Led Zeppelin. Along with the Beatles, Crosby, Stills and Nash and Jim Croce, it's what got her through high school.

“Kate Gaffney’s exuberance buoys her debut full-length album. From the opening ‘She Knows’ to the mournful closer ‘Unleashed,’ she commands the spotlight at stage center with a tough, tight band featuring Jesse Lundy’s guitar leads. Kate’s songs show a woman discovering herself more caught up in the journey than the goal. Kate’s contralto voice is captivating. Strong presence marks this impressive effort.” --Michael Tearson, Sing Out! Magazine, Spring 2006