Finely-crafted and lyrical contemporary folk songs coming out of many years journeying into music, drawing on a broad range of pop, roots, and rock influences - powerful vocals woven through a rich canvas of acoustic and electric instrumentation.

12 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Modern Folk, FOLK: Folk Pop

Show all album songs: When I Cross The River Songs


Details:
Tom Bolton started writing songs when he was sixteen, pretty much as soon as he got his first guitar... when he wasnât surfing or skateboarding or drawing.

The next thirty years were a strange chaotic journey into music, with plenty of detours, distractions, frustrations, confusions and the odd moment of bliss and inspiration. Somewhere back in the 1980s, one of his songs was used in a documentary soundtrack, and also recorded by Victorian folkie, Fay White, on her âTrees, Stars and Other Wondersâ album.

A bunch of stuff happens, life goes on, the songwriting continues, stops, starts again, some collaborations take place... and eventually, in 2003, he records his first album âAcoustic Caravanâ under the stage name, Sensible Tom. This is a sparse production featuring vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonies and percussion. At about the same time he starts taking the songs out to open-mic nights, then folk clubs and acoustic venues, pubs, festivals... stepping out on the road as a performer.

In 2006 he was joined on stage by Richard Grace (double-bass) and in 2007 tours nationally in Australia. His second album âWhen I Cross The Riverâ was recorded and produced by Jeremy P Martin, and a diverse collection of local musicians from Melbourne, Australia (including The Triangles) added their own character to the flavour of the album. The title track was inspired by the writing of the nineteenth-century romantic author, George Macdonald.

Tomâs songs are intense, poetic, lyrical... but always woven with distinctive melodies, considerable harmonic potential and infectious eclectic rhythms, inseparable from the intellectual and emotional threads of the words. His voice soars, then whispers, floating free one minute and falling fragile the next, roughened somewhat by the lessons of the years, wry wisdom and irrepressible hopefulness balancing raw emotion through the refinement of his craft. Rivers and oceans and shiny things feature a lot!