Songs For Kids CD Review 

Flat Rock's own Tom Fisch is back with a collection of songs aimed at the younger crowd (or those of us who just feel young). Song for Kids is just what it says. Fisch takes the straightforward, uncomplicated approach on this recording, using simply his voice (sometimes in the form of a mouth trumpet) and his acoustic guitar to relate his take on a wide variety of traditional and contemporary children's classics. What I find interesting and ironically novel about this CD is that in an era where kids music is increasingly trying to find a new way to get the positive attention of children through the use of television tie-ins or over-the-top marketing campaigns, Fisch just takes these songs (most of which a lot of us grew up with), and sings them just as any father might sing them to his child. True, Tom has a better voice than a lot of us dads, but you get the point. There are even a couple songs on this CD — "Going to the Zoo" and "Somewhere over the Rainbow" — which I wouldn't have thought of as kids' songs, but listening to Fisch's take on them in this context, they seem perfect for this audience. Fisch always has a warm, heartfelt way about his music, and Songs for Kids is certainly no exception.

Brent Fleury  Bold Life Magazine  2012
 

SoundTrack Web Extra: Tom Fisch

October Boy, the latest release by Tom Fisch is the polished, thoughtful work of an established Nashville singer/songwriter (his songs have been recorded by the Oak Ridge Boys and Swiss country singer Erica Arnold). So why include it in a SoundTrack review? Well, for starters, Fisch relocated to WNC in 2004. And his album was recorded here in Asheville at Chris Rosser‘s Hollow Reed Studios.

This 11-song collection is very much focused on Fisch’s writing and sense of narrative. Themes of love, nostalgia and time passing are recurrent, though Fisch manages to approach each from fresh angles and often cheeky humor. “You come home late and you come home early. You come home big when you’re feeling small. You come home straight and you come home curly. Sometimes you don’t come home at all,” he sings on “Speed of the Sound of Lonliness.”

Though the vocals are up front throughout, warm and simple, the instrumentation on October is nothing to sniff at — and it’s provided by a cast of Asheville musicians: Billy Cardine on Dobro and lap steel (especially lovely on “Carolina Blue Sky Day,” an all-around stand out track), River Guerguerian on cajon and percussion, Susan Robinson on claw-hammer banjo, Akira Satake plays banjo, Jay Sanders plays upright bass and Duncan Wickle adds fiddle. Rosser himself plays piano and is joined by his wife, Lynn, on backup vocals.

If the album errs a little toward the cloying bluesy folk of, say, James Taylor, Fisch turns out a slow-burning, J.J. Cale-esque “Midnight Special” with a crisp turn on harmonica. And “Time,” the second-to-last track, is a poignant meditation on life’s progress — an apt balance to the sweet, wistful, floaty end song, “Sometimes (In The Morning).”

Alli Marshall, A&E reporter  3/25/2010  Mountain Xpress  Asheville, NC