Leaching On

Thanks to all who stopped by to visit The Big Rock Candy Mountain Top 100 Drinking Songs. The list has moved over to Barstool Mountain, where you can find the full list in it's entirety. We'll be covering all the bases over there, from the Top 100, the Top 286, and anything and everything else drinking song-related in between. Check it out. Should be fun.

Now that that's over, let's cover some other great tunes.

We're real keen on Tom's over here. Tom Waits, Tom T. Hall, Tom House (who we covered way back when), Tom of Tom and Jerry fame, Rev. Tom Frost, and today's cover star, Tom Leach.

Tom Leach mines some pretty dark territory, and does so with a kudzu-ravaged throat and kitchen sink production. A sense of late-night loneliness permeates his songs, the last to leave the bar at night and the first to arrive at opening time. He'll tell you all the reasons she done him wrong, and he'll tell you why he still shows up at her doorstep day after day, court order be damned.

It's been 9 years between Leach's last album and his newest offering, Seven Song Tape/Thank You For The Coffee. In the in between years, his previous album, "Tom Leach" was never far from my record player. Both albums are a gospel of sorrow and desperation, with obvious nods to Cash, Lefty, and Merle at their most down and out, the gospel of downtrodden.

Leach is a masterful songwriter in a minor key, plundering the Country lexicon, throwing out the sentimental, and turning the expected phrase into something all his own.

"Doris Days", which you can find below, is a particular favorite here at the Mountain, with a swell little twist on the title and the namesake, delivered in a bittersweet melody of melancholy.


Tom Leach: Doris Days (mp3)

Tom Leach: Yesterday's News (mp3)

Tom Leach: At The Bottom Of A Barroom On a Hill In Tennessee (mp3)

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