Search - James F. Curley :: Tom's Cafe

About The CD Songwriter James F. Curley... migrating from Philadelphia to Houston to Austin to Chicago... pieces together the CD titled Tom's Cafe - a sonic quilt of ballads, roots rockers and whimsical ditties for fans of well-crafted lyrics and accessible, memorable melodies. Performing original, stylistically broad Americana songs - from the folk-tinged "Tom's Cafe" to the tongue-in-cheek New Orleans stomp of "Flies" - from the roots-rockin' "Moonlight Cold, Wind" to the country blues of "I Jumped Bail" - James swings effortlessly between original songs influenced by a broad range of songwriters from Steve Goodman and Ralph McTell to Lyle Lovett and Carl Martin (of Martin, Bogan and Armstrong). His guitar style is a rhythmic, percussive, no-picks, fingerstyle hodgepodge of styles from classic folk to "Doc Watson Country Blues" to contemporary "folk-pop". Once in a while he strums but prefers extracting more interesting sonic treats from the acoustic guitar with all 10 fingers. Fans of country, rock, pop, folk, blues, ragtime and general American styled songwriting will find much to like in James' broad range of original songs. Purposely avoiding the ultra-compressed sonic style of modern pop music, these songs feature spare but rich arrangements of vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, piano and keyboards, percussion, harmonica, accordion, acoustic and electric bass, Dobro and pedal steel guitar. Information on appearances, etc.