On His 14th Record, Love Commits Me Here, Singer-Songwriter Tom Breiding Celebrates Dedication To A Cause
https://www.pittsburghcurrent.com/tom-breiding-celebrates-dedication-to-a-cause/
“It’s my love of what I do, my love of where I come from, and love for where I’ve found myself, with some of these people I’ve met.”Tom Breiding (Current photos by Jake Mysliwczyk)
By Margaret Welsh
Pittsburgh Current Music Editor
Margaret@pittsburghcurrent.com
There’s a prayer that Tom Breiding used to say as a child. He’s forgotten most of it now, but one line remains in his mind: “Love commits me here.”
He chose that line as the title to his 14th album, which he released earlier this month. It shows up in the title track, which pays tribute to the love shared between his parents, while also mourning the hatred and violence of our world. And it finds its way on to “Fannie Sellins,” which tells the story of the union organizer who was murdered in 1919. “An angel of mercy, a guardian dear.” Breiding sings gently, in true and stirring admiration of a martyred hero. “A battle for freedom and love committed her here.”
That song was written to be performed at Sellins’ gravesite in Arnold, PA on the 100th anniversary of her death. Breiding had already written around the phrase by then, but when he started writing about Sellins, he recalls, “That line was perfect: Love committed her here.”
“Love is such a positive word to use anyway, and it means a lot of things,” Breiding says over coffee at Kaibur in Polish Hill a few months ago. “It’s my love of what I do, my love of where I come from, and love for where I’ve found myself, with some of these people I’ve met.”
In other words, Breiding’s music — and his life — has developed into its own act of commitment by love.
Part of that commitment is to telling the story of the American labor movement. As the artist- in-residence for the United Mine Workers of America, Breiding provides music for union rallies, among other things. In 2016 he played for an audience of 10 thousand as part of an event petitioning the U.S. government to fulfill its promise of cradle-to-grave healthcare for America’s coal workers.
Though he’s been declared “the greatest labor singer in the United States today” by UMWA president Cecil Roberts, Breiding is careful not to overstate his role. “There’s no way I’d ever want to inflate that or take credit where it’s not due,” he says. But, he allows, music can be a potent aid to political struggle. “The songs that I wrote were written directly for the cause, in some cases calling out CEOs by name, and it’s a powerful thing,” he says. It really stirs the emotions. It certainly made the rallies more colorful and successful.”
Breiding didn’t come from a union family, and never considered himself particularly political growing up. But music was a big part of his West Virginia childhood. “[My mother] loved to dance, she would sing to us,” he says. Music was always playing in the house, and in the car. Breiding particularly connected with the music he heard on A.M. radio in the ’70s. “There were these incredible storytellers writing songs and ballads, people like Jim Croce, or even simple hits like “The Lights Went Out in Georgia” he says. “I was drawn to that storytelling aspect.” When he started seriously pursuing songwriting, he turned to the big three of heartland rock — Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen and John Melloncamp — for inspiration.
True to his influences, Breiding wrote story-driven, folk-based rock about his surroundings. But over time, “I had kind of exhausted the themes of things that came naturally to me, writing about the rivers and the hills and the railroads and the steel mills and the blue collar people,” he says. He then turned to the history of the coal miners. “My research pointed me to this incredible history that I knew very little about. And i just started writing songs about these events and before I knew it, I realized, ‘I’m actually telling the history of the United Mine Workers.’”
In August of 2018, Breiding was commissioned by the UMWA to write a song in commemoration of the 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster, a West Virginia mine explosion that killed 78. The song, “Farmington No. 9,” which opens Love Commits Me Here, is a testament to Breiding’s powers as a songwriter. He presents an unthinkably tragic story simply, carefully, without sensationalizing, and but with an emotional urgency that makes the listener feel like it happened last week.
Breiding enlisted guitarist and recording engineer Daniel Marcus to play on and produce the track. “He sent me a copy of the finished product and I loved everything about it. I loved his guitar part, I loved the sound of it. It was such a special song to me that I felt like it really needed a home,” Breiding says. Using “Farmington No. 9” as his compass, he started writing songs that would fit with it on a record. “Whether it was the mixes, or the overall sound of things,” he says, “[Marcus] kind of redefined my sound.”
Breiding and Marcus met serendipitously, a couple of years ago, when Marcus happened to be walking past the Leaf and Bean in the Strip District, where Breiding performs regularly.
“I heard Tom’s music and I stopped to listen,” Marcus says over the phone. Seeing a second guitar on stage, he asked Breiding during a set break if he could sit in on a couple songs.
Marcus laughs, remembering. “I think he was kind of hesitant because I was just some stranger. But he trusted me, and I ended up sitting in and playing some songs and we had a great time.”
Having spent many years working with singer-songwriters in New York, and now in Pittsburgh, Marcus knows the genre. “I love when songwriters kind of lay it out on the table and are brutally honest, and Tom definitely has that,” he says. “He really is a folk singer in the true sense — it’s not just pretty acoustic music, but he really has a strong message … and he’s really trying to help people, and educate people.
“I just really appreciate that, how earnestly he goes about that. And how much he cares about his message.”
Love has commited Breiding to do the work of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, but he’s the first to admit that he found this path almost by accident
Early on, when the UMWA invited him to perform for a rally in St. Louis, he admits, “It was kind of a selfish thing, like, ‘How cool is this? I’m going to be playing in front of three thousand coal miners and their families.’”
But when he got there, “I saw these people getting off of busses with canes and walkers, some of them had oxygen tanks. And I started talking to them, and they were telling me about their ailments and how important this healthcare was.
“That was it. I went home and i started to write. I wrote for the cause. It all came from the heart.”
The Aquarian, Mike Greenblatt's Rant 'n Roll
https://www.theaquarian.com/2020/01/29/mike-greenblatts-rant-n-roll-29/
For the Unions...
Singer/songwriter Tom Breiding is so earnest, his middle name should be Hemingway. Like Guthrie, Seeger, Ochs, and early Dylan before him, he writes of injustice. Folk music, before rap, was always the CNN of its time. You could learn a lot about America through the songs of those aforementioned folksingers. Love Commits Me Here (AmeriSon Records) continues the tradition. Cecil Roberts, the International President of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) calls Breiding “the greatest labor singer in the United States today.”
“Farmington #9” recounts the tale of the 1968 West Virginia mining disaster that trapped 78 and left 19 lost in the rubble. Breiding performed the song at the 50th anniversary of the event to family members. That took guts. He memorializes “Fanny Sellins,” whose murder galvanized the Great Steel Strike of 1919. He sings of Karen Gorrell, whose name should be taught in schools for her organizing the elderly to withstand the pressures of a corporate giant for six years until they were successful in restoring health care to over a thousand retirees. He sings of immigrants. He sings of the hatred that prompted the Pittsburgh synagogue killings that took place just blocks away from the studio where he recorded this.Yeah, he’s earnest, alright. His is a voice that should be heard.
Americana Highways
Start with Woody Guthrie, go toward Ramblin’ Jack Elliott too. Then move to the ’60s where originally you’d explore Bob Dylan, but it’s really Phil Ochs & at times Joan Baez who took up that labor hammer in song. Then as time passed the most likely labor-singer would be Billy Bragg. Though not a young troubadour today, West Virginia’s Tom Breiding is regarded as one of the best labor singers in the United States by impressionable sources.
Tom’s latest LP Love Commits Me Here, (AmeriSon Records) dropped Jan. 7. What sets him aside is that he doesn’t focus solely on the plight of mine workers but also the history of female workers, past labor strikes, restoring health care for retirees, immigrants, floods, senseless violence, trials & tribulations — that continue at present. But Tom doesn’t preach & this is important.
The songs are simplistic, with vocals that recall Hamilton Camp, Burl Ives, Will Geer, David Blue, early Gordon Lightfoot, Victor Jara & Oscar Brand. Tom carefully constructs each with as much care as Tim Hardin, Leonard Cohen & early Dylan. He doesn’t paint his lyrics in hard-accusatory lines. But with simple points of logic that bring the seriousness to light.
“The Flood,” is driven by banjo but the melody unfolds with strength. “Holiday,” is a polished short-story lyric. The acoustic guitar brightens the words & Tom sings with little anger or disdain. He almost portrays his lyric as Norman Rockwell would his portraits.
Few songs are hard-assed protests but in their lone beauty shine on the difficulties, tragedies, blood, sweat & tears that is — after all — life.
I like Tom’s style; he comes across with his music as a likable man. I’m often amazed at how a spare tune with little instrumentation can be so forceful in its message rather than bombastic. It all comes down to one simple comparison my son has said: “it’s old man strength dad.” He doesn’t know where it comes from when some old fragile man shakes his hand like a vice – and my son is over 250 lbs. of muscle. “Far Away,” is an old man’s strength. It has stamina — that’s what makes it beautiful.
With “Mama K” vocally, Tom brings out his inner-Townes van Zandt. Gary Jacob’s’ steel guitar infuses the feel. “My Cares & Woes,” dips a finger into Mickey Newbury tradition with a touch of Guy Clark. Libby Eddy (fiddle) & the Soulful Horns provide the backup musicianship on the 10-track, 40-minute LP.
Produced by Daniel Marcus (lead guitar) & Tom (acoustic) in Pittsburg, PA.
Making a Scene Magazine
REVIEW Tom Breiding
Love Commits Me Here
AmeriSon
https://www.makingascene.org/tom-breiding-love-commits-me-here/
Singer-songwriter Tom Breiding writes a specific kind of Americana song, ones devoted to laborers and union workers. Hailing from West Virginia, he has been doing so for his entire career due to his intense connections with union members and groups. Several on Love Commits Me Here highlight his word as Artist-in-Residence for United Mine Workers of America. As such, this is a musical biopic of some of the significant events, positive and negative, within the mining and other unions in this country.
Musically it is sparse, without any drums of bass with co-producer Daniel Marcus adding electric guitar to Breiding’s own acoustic and Gary Jacob (steel guitar), Libby Eddy (fiddle) and the two-piece Soulville Horns add more texture. Breiding delivers most tunes in half-sung, half-spoken folk style. The opening “Farmington No. 9” explains the 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster, one that trapped 78 workers and left 19 disappeared in its rubble. He performed this song last November 20 for family members on the 50th anniversary of the event. The quiet nature of the music belies the harrowing subject matter, one of America’s most tragic industrial accidents.
While it may be the most memorable song in this collection of ten, Breiding also recounts some important chapters on women’s history in America, first through “Fannie Sellers” whose brutal murder was the catalyst for the Great Steel Strike of 1919 in Pittsburgh. The other is “Mama K” where he relates the story of Karen Gorrell, a West Virginia native who organized retirees to withstand the pressure of a corporate giants for six years until they successfully restored health care to more than a thousand retirees.
Others address several relatively recent events. “The Flood” chronicles the WV flood of 2016 where Breiding relates to helping residents who endured the catastrophe. “Far Away” champions immigrants. The title track stems from a line of a prayer he was taught as child as he cries out against hatred = the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh two blocks from the studio where the song was recorded. Still others like “Holiday” and “Kayford Workshop” are less intensely topical but instead focus on early reflections from childhood or recent perspectives. Throughout, you sense Breiding’s solid value system of family, brotherhood, and the need for love in our increasingly violent and divided country. While the music remains calm, his words are mostly uplifting. - Jim Hynes
Midwest Record - Entertainment Review / Tom Breiding Love Commits Me Here
http://midwestrecord.com/MWR1619.html
The lineage from Joe Hill to Woody Guthrie to Pete Seeger to Phil Ochs to Si Kahn has a new, modern link in the chain---and probably not a moment too soon. The artist in residence for the United Mine Workers of America and hailing from West Virginia, he might not get rich from doing protest/labor music but he's got the skills to be mentioned along with his august fore bearers and makes his impact just as clear. Easily lumped into roots/Americana, this telegram to the fat cats is something more and deeper. Hard hitting stuff that needs to be heard as jobs are getting harder and paying less. Well done from a voice that comes from the heart.
(AmeriSon 190609)
Review by Chris Spector
Peters Resident Releases New Album
Brad Hundt, Observer Reporter
Life holds any number of possibilities and surprises, but here’s one thing you can almost certainly take to the bank: Tom Breiding will never create an album like David Bowie’s rock opera “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.”
“I don’t think so,” Breiding laughed. “Unless my son wants to cut a record like that.”
No, the 56-year-old Peters Township singer, songwriter and guitarist is dedicated to crafting songs “about things that are real.”
“I can write songs about my own life and people I know and love, and history,” Breiding said. “When I was a kid, we were all kind of naive, like the Santa Claus thing. You listen to artists sing songs, and you think, ‘oh, that’s really them.’ And that’s not the case. You learn pretty early on that they’re writers and inventors and they create characters and put themselves in situations they’re not used to. I don’t feel the need to create characters or imaginary scenarios.”
Breiding stays down to earth on “Love Commits Me Here,” his first album in four years and his 14th overall. Released earlier this month, it’s a collection of spare acoustic songs that touch on mine disasters, the Tree of Life massacre and the plight of immigrants. Breiding started work on it in November 2018 and wrapped up last July. Recording started in earnest after he was commissioned to write the song “Farmington No. 9” to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a mine explosion near Farmington, W.Va., that left 78 miners dead.
A native of Wheeling, W.Va., Breiding explained mining lore surrounded him when he was growing up even though there were no miners in his immediate family. Now the artist-in-residence for the United Mine Workers of America, Breiding wrote “Farmington No. 9” after watching an online interview with a survivor of the disaster.
“I just tried to retell the story as well in song as he did in a 45-minute interview,” Breiding said.
“Love Commits Me Here” is co-produced by Breiding and fellow Pittsburgh-area musician Daniel Marcus. The two struck up a friendship when Marcus asked to sit in with Breiding on a couple of songs during the latter’s regular gig at the Leaf and Bean club in Pittsburgh’s Strip District. From there, they decided to take the collaboration into their respective home studios.
Breiding’s dedication to writing about gritty blue-collar work and life raises a question: As manufacturing and mining continue to ebb, is there the possibility that someday someone will be writing songs about, say, toiling in an Amazon fulfillment center?
“I don’t know,” Breiding said. “Its an interesting question. When we’ll see something like that would be in the aftermath of the disappearance of unions altogether. There’s legislation right now that would make our whole country a right-to-work country, and if these people are that intent on breaking the structure of labor unions, and they succeed, people will realize how much they were needed.”
Outside of his own solo career, Breiding is the immersion trips coordinator for the Clifford M. Lewis Appalachian Institute at Wheeling University. He puts together the logistics for high school and college students when they take trips into Appalachia for service and learning opportunities. Breiding is also a guitarist in Hard Rain, the band that backs Pittsburgh singer-songwriter Bill Toms.
“I just love that,” he said. “I don’t have to front the band. As a child, I wanted to plug in my electric guitar and make some noise. I’ve never gotten over that, and that’s still my favorite thing to do.”
New album by Peters musician Tom Breiding focuses on coal miners’ lives
Rege BeheREGE BEHE | Monday, February 10, 2020 9:29 a.m.
If not for a theme-oriented album he released in 2008, Tom Breiding’s life would have been less complicated. He was then content being a schoolteacher and releasing albums that cast him as a storyteller with a rocker’s heart. He was happily married with a young son.
Then art interceded, and his world dramatically changed.
Breiding’s “The Unbroken Circle: Songs of the West Virginia Coalfields” is a chronicle of coal miners in the Mountain State. Songs such as “Union Miner,” “Obituary of Joe Fry” and “The Bull Moose Special” cast the men and women who worked in coal mines, their hardships and plights, in sympathetic, sometimes heroic terms.
“I did it as an artistic statement,” says Breiding, who lives in Peters and is a native of Wheeling, W.Va. “I became fascinated with the history of this union” — the United Mine Workers Association — “and the primary industry of my home state.
That album eventually led Breiding to Wheeling Jesuit College’s Appalachian Institute, where he works as the school’s immersion trip coordinator, exposing students to varying cultures in Appalachia and visiting schools to explain the region’s history through song. He also became an outspoken advocate for coal miners on a national level, playing at rallies and benefits for the UMWA across the country.
“I was 40 years old,” Breiding says. “I was teaching and I told my wife (Janet) I’d given up a lot of opportunities. I told her I think I can build an entire career on this record. She knew of some of the sacrifices I’d made (to start a family) and she said if you don’t do it now, you’ll never do it.”
Breiding’s new release, “Love Commits Me Here,” is a quiet, engaging album that mirrors his ongoing commitment to transcendent and meaningful music. The songs — notably “Farmington No. 9,” The Flood” and “Fannie Sellins” (about a union organizer who was killed while trying to protect striking coal miners of the Allegheny Coal and Coke Company in 1919 and is buried in New Kensington) — have a quiet, sparse tenor. Breiding enlisted guitarist and engineer Dan Marcus of Squirrel Hill to flesh out the stark sound.
While the music is striking, it’s almost secondary to the impact Breiding has made. According to Phil Smith, director of communications and governmental affairs for the UMWA, when Breiding offered to support coal miners it was a godsend for the organization.
“He captured our struggle, he captured our message, he captured our hearts,” Smith says. “No one since Woody Guthrie has told American workers’ stories with the passion that Tom brings to his lyrics.”
Breiding has been especially passionate about the plight of retired coal miners who are continually in danger of losing their pensions and health care benefits, appearing at rallies for the Miners Pension Protection Act. That devotion earned Breiding an honorary membership in the UMWA.
“Other unions may want him, but we claim Tom as one of our own,” Smith says.
Breiding, who also plays guitar in Bill Toms’ band, Hard Rain, admits his life is a “dream come true,” albeit a bit surprising. Through high school and college, he never played an acoustic guitar, let alone owned one.
Now a Gibson J-45 is his trusted companion as he sings about a history and a people embedded in his heart.
“Here I am today writing meaningful songs and doing good work with my original material,” Breiding says.
Breiding’s website, tombreiding.com, contains his tour dates and more information about his work.
Rege Behe is a freelance writer.
Pittsburgh Music Magazine
BY ALAN D. WELDING ON JANUARY 6, 2020
https://pittsburghmusicmagazine.net/2020/01/06/roots-americana-artist-tom-breiding-set-to-release-his-new-studio-album-love-commits-me-here-january-7-2020/ “The greatest labor singer in the United States today” – Cecil Roberts, International President, United Mine Workers of AmericaPittsburgh, PA — Many would say that country music, as well as the broader Americana genre, is the musical heart and soul of our nation, but singer/songwriter (and working rock guitarist) Tom Breiding has been creating a sub-genre of Americana for decades. A celebrated writer, Breiding focuses on the true heart and soul of America: our laborers and union members. Hailing from West Virginia, a state with a large populous of mine workers and laborers, Breiding has shared an intense artistic connection with union members and groups for the entirety of his career, most notably United Mine Workers of America. Breiding’s new collection of live-in-studio songs, titled Love Commits Me Here, is a musical biopic of some of the most significant events, both positive and negative, within the mining and unionized industries in our country.
Several in this special collection of songs highlight Breiding’s work as Artist-In-Residence for United Mine Workers of America. “Farmington #9” which opens the album, explains the 1968 Farmington Mine Disaster; a deadly explosion in a West Virginia Mine that trapped 78 workers and left 19 disappeared in its rubble. Breiding performed the song live on November 20, 2018, at the 50th anniversary of the event for family members of those who perished. Breiding’s calm ballad style provides a striking juxtaposition to his lyrics; melodious undertones give way to story lyrics that highlight some of the most harrowing times in America’s industrious development.
Breiding, a seasoned lyricist and storyteller, provides a unique perspective on women’s history in America as well. Other labor compositions on the album introduce more inconspicuous heroines from past and present such as Fannie Sellins whose brutal murder galvanized the Great Steel Strike of 1919 and Karen Gorrell, a West Virginia native who personally organized retirees to withstand the pressures of a corporate giant for six years until they were successful in restoring health care to more than a thousand retirees.
Breiding, however, does not limit himself to the mining industry when it comes to inspiration for his songs. Other themes on the 9-song LP address topics from the plight of immigrants to the WV flood of 2016 and the senseless violence and hatred that led to a mass killing in a Pittsburgh synagogue two blocks from the studio where the title cut “Love Commits Me Here” was recorded. Recorded at AmeriSon Studio and Daniel Marcus Music in Pittsburgh and produced by Daniel Marcus and Tom Breiding, the album provides a varied look into Breiding’s career as a labor writer, musician, and Artist in Residence with UMWA, all while highlighting the trials, tribulations, and successes of the industries to which he most relates and cares for.
Love Commits Me Here is set to release on January 7, 2020, and can be found wherever music is sold and streamed.