Lindsay Tomasic

By Eva Smythe
Correspondent
Thursday, August 7, 2008

If homelessness in Ventura County were only a statistic, this is what it would look like: about 1,600 adults and 300 children without basic shelter or the necessities of life.

This may be a far cry from the nearly 150,000 homeless who inhabit the streets, back alleys and crowded shelters of neighboring Los Angeles County at any given time during the course of a typical year. But the humiliation, pain and suffering the homeless must endure is far more difficult to measure.

The Unitarian Universalist Church of Ventura is trying to do something about this growing problem. Inspired by the hymn "Lift Up Your Voice," the church has created a social action project of the same name that assists the homeless and marginalized segments of local society.

"We wanted to work with people whose voices are not being heard and take projects that we can work together as one," said Jan Christian, a minister of the church. "We want to work with the homeless, to be allies to end homelessness."

Renowned singer-songwriter Lindsay Tomasic has been enlisted to perform at a benefit concert to end homelessness on Saturday evening at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ventura. The concert begins at 7 p.m.; a $20 donation is suggested. Money raised for the event will be matched by The Unitarian Universalist Fund for Social Responsibility.

With an earthy voice reminiscent of Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Bonnie Raitt, Tomasic presents acoustic songs that are soft yet politically driven. Her latest CD is "A Slice of Life," released in February.

"I try to write songs that are uplifting, even when dealing with the water crisis," she noted. "I don't want it to be depressing. We need to keep it light and spread the word. We need more of a consciousness on what is happening in the world."

Benefit concerts are nothing new to this artist, who is well known for her support of various social causes, including domestic violence shelters, food banks, healthcare reform, freedom of speech and environmental issues such as global warming.

Growing up in upper Michigan, Tomasic was raised on social responsibility, and she began her foray into the music world as a musician when she was 6.

She started working professionally with her father's wedding bands at 14, and often was the one called upon to play "whatever instrument needed to be played — guitar, bass or even vocals."

She later partnered with another singer-songwriter and formed a duo in Ann Arbor, Mich., called Trees, modeled after the soothing sounds of Crosby, Stills and Nash, and James Taylor.

She moved to Los Angeles and began a solo career in 1987. She also works as a producer, recording engineer, and her songs have made their way to TV's "Desperate Housewives" and "Malcolm in the Middle."

For the concert Saturday, Tomasic will be sharing the bill with special guests String Planet and Nicole Falzone.

"Lift Up Your Voice" supports an ongoing 10-year plan to end homelessness in Ventura, and is as much about the people of Ventura County as it is about those they are trying to help, Unitarian Universalist's Christian noted.

"Until we find a greater purpose, a common endeavor that promotes a greater good, we are not what we can be and must be," she said.

"Individuals, couples, families, congregations, communities and nations miss this all the time. The thing that can most strengthen the smaller unit is to find a bigger purpose. In those moments in which we lose ourselves, we find ourselves."
- Ventura Star - August 7-2008

Two songs, "Sea To Shining Sea" and "Listen To The Big World," from local fave Lindsay Tomasic’s new album What In The World, are featured on Neil Young’s "Living With War" website and have remained in the top 200. Tomasic will perform at a CD release concert at Coffee Gallery Backstage on Sat., Oct. 6, at 8 p.m. This fall, she will be a guest performer on Tied To The Tracks (KCSN, Northridge) Picking Up The Tempo (KSCX, San Luis Obispo) and Please Stand By (KPIG.com, Santa Cruz). A NoCal tour is in the works. Check out the new CD at www.datoliterecords.com. - Music Connection

Sensitive and soulful


DEEP BUT LIGHTHEARTED
Singer and songwriter Lindsay Tomasic, known for her storytelling and her soothing vocal style, comes to the Steynberg Gallery on Saturday, Sept. 20.

Singer/songwriter Lindsay Tomasic has developed quite a following on the Central Coast, with her lighthearted but deep songs, her wonderful storytelling ability, and a soothing and earthy voice reminiscent of Norah Jones and Bonnie Raitt. There’s even a YouTube video of her live performance in the studio at Public Radio KCBX-FM 90.1 in San Luis Obispo.

Tomasic’s lyrical themes cover all sorts of subjects, including relationships and family, animals, global warming, and politics. She’s also an accomplished acoustic guitarist, with an in-the-pocket rhythm technique that always gets toes tapping.

The L.A.-based musician has also caught the attention of Hollywood, where she’s penned music for a diverse range of films and TV shows including The L Word, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Desperate Housewives, and Malcolm in the Middle.

Lindsay Tomasic performs at the Steynberg Gallery (1531 Monterey St.) in SLO on Saturday, Sept. 20 at 7:30 p.m.

- New Times _San Luis Obispo, CA

Lindsay Tomasic: "Vision and Vibe"
By Dan Kimpel

In the early Nineties, Lindsay Tomasic was earning a credible living in Los Angeles, performing at high-end niteries like The Genji Bar at the New Otani Hotel in Little Tokyo. She recalls this epiphany. “I had a friend who was performing at the Pasadena Hilton Hotel, and I went to see her. She was sitting on a stool with a guitar, and four shots of cognac lined up in front of her and she said, ‘Lindsay, don’t turn out to be me.’”

Tomasic soon discovered a much more fulfilling and lucrative path as a composer and a producer. Now, she adds entrepreneur to her credits with the founding of her own firm, Frameworks Music. The boutique company provides music across a spectrum of styles for visual mediums including network television and promos. With an in-house studio, a stable of on-call composers and a cast of world-class players, Frameworks is capable of creating custom music literally overnight. In addition to custom music, the company represents catalogs in electronica, Americana, string quartets, old school salsa, drum & bass and lush orchestral tracks. Most significantly, the company’s composers participate in both sync and publishing income – a far cry from the traditional music catalogue model wherein the company retains every penny.

Originally from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Tomasic recorded and toured regionally and first arrived in L.A. as a singer/songwriter. “I knew that could put me in my grave really fast,” she laughs. “How many club owners did I have to appeal too? And look out for their head count to play my music?” She took an interest in engineering, and made the acquaintance of the eminent engineer, Harry Maslin (Bonnie Raitt, David Bowie, Michael Jackson.) “He didn’t take me on as a student, but I sat next to Harry and he hipped me to EQing, and making things sound fantastic. I put myself in situations where I was around more engineer and producer types. And I followed that path.”

Through ASCAP, Tomasic realized she could earn lucrative backend fees for on air placements, and she credits an ASCAP Workshop with opening her eyes to career possibilities. In 1996, Tomasic cold-called CBS television and spoke to the head on-air promo, Warren XXX> “He met with me and we were instantly like brother and sister. He sent me home with an assignment: write ten cues in the style of America’s Most Wanted, Enya, whatever. I delivered the cues, and two weeks later I was watching CBS and the music was playing.”

Writing the theme song for The Roseanne Show was a major career breakthrough and Tomasic is currently composing for the new Allison Grodner Productions series, Get This Party Started. In recent years she worked to develop 5 Alarm Music, a division of Pasadena’s DMI Music and Media Solutions, where she managed the company’s world-class facility, Firehouse Recording Studios.

Tomasic’s own studio may be on a more diminutive scale, but from her control board she can observe lush greenery, Buddha statues, and a pair of Dobermans dozing on sun-splashed flagstone. Designed for optimal comfort from top to bottom, it possesses all of the latest technology to turn out picture perfect music, both electronic and organic.

“You should have the latest sample libraries, know your tools, prepare your files so they’re importable into ProTools and Digital Performer and Logic,” comments Tomasic. “And it really helps to understand engineering because a lot of times you don’t have the money to hire an engineer. Prepare your ears by listening to film composers – study scores from people like Thomas Newman to understand production for picture as opposed to being a songwriter.”

Becoming not only a composer, but also a producer, Tomasic believes, is a necessary step in this technology driven present. But it’s not all gigabytes and time code; it’s also about people chops. “You have to be able to take feedback like you’ve never taken in your life,” she confides. “The things you submit for television are going to be under intense scrutiny. They’ll come to you for a million revisions and you have to be a sport about it. Keep a friendly, positive attitude toward the people you work with and really hone your skills.”

www.myspace.com/lindsaytomasic



- Music Connection

http://www.ascap.com/network/audioportraits/index.html - ASCAP

LINDSAY TOMASIC TO PERFORM IN THE COPPER COUNTRY

How does a nice girl from the Copper Country end up in the music business in Los Angeles? As soon as it was announced that Lindsay was coming to 3rd annual Porcupine Mountain Music Festival August 23-24, it seemed only right to fire her an e-mail to ask that very question. Just like her music, the answer contained many interesting elements and told a captivating story – one that more people will get to know as her CDs find a wider audience. The trip she is taking back to the Upper Peninsula this August will give everyone a chance to catch up with the most recent developments in Lindsay’s music career.
Perhaps the best place to start is at the beginning – Lindsay says she caught the folk music bug real bad at age 16 after hearing Jesse Fitzpatrick sing at Houghton High
school. Lindsay had always had an interest in music. From age on 12 she was involved with neighborhood bands and had already begun dabbling in recording with a little two-track cassette recorder. Hearing Fitzpatrick sing was the point that turned her toward the singer/songwriter path that eventually began her long term writing/singing partnership with Jesse and ultimately lead to the formation of their band Trees. Tomasic mentioned that her parents were very supportive of her music aspirations and that meant a lot to her through all the ups and downs a musician’s career can bring.
One of her first glimpses at the downside of the music biz occurred during the mid-1970s when the band decided to give Los Angeles a shot. After some disappointing experiences, they found themselves back home wondering what to do next. Lindsay admits that the jump from the UP to LA was a pretty big step at that point in her career so they set their sights on a ‘little less intense city’ with a small but thriving music scene; a place to develop their folk rock sound and writing skills. The ‘next place’ ended up to be Ann Arbor where they teamed up with bassist Randy Tessier, drummer Don Kuhli and flutist Carolyn Bemloehr in the next incarnation of Trees. Many of the songs on the Trees album recently released on Tomasic’s Datolite label have their origins during this time period. Tessier and Kuhli also have UP connections in that they performed with the band Walrus while students at Northern Michigan University prior to joining the second version of Trees in Ann Arbor.
In the late 1980s, a friend attending UCLA offered Lindsay another chance to try out the big city and although it was a hard choice to make, she left Trees and headed west again. Tomasic says, “A lot of the clubs we were playing (in Ann Arbor) were closing and even though it was hard to leave, it was something I had to do”. The other key ingredient she took with her from the Ann Arbor days was the experience she had gained working in her own basement studio – experience that would pay off for her big time in LA. Geoff Michael, her good friend and producer in Ann Arbor helped her make the decision to start up her own studio and those basic recording skills helped keep her afloat in LA between her early gigs playing cheesy clubs.
According to Lindsay, “I really wanted to stop playing in clubs that were doing nothing for my career and figure out a way to keep the focus on my producing, recording and songwriting, and wanted to only perform as an artist and not play covers anymore. That was a tough transition and after years of struggling to get my name out there a little more in the TV and film circles, I finally landed a theme song to Roseanne Barr’s talk show. The show only lasted two years but the royalties from the show helped me to become free of debt and put my name out there to world-wide production music catalogues who then started hiring me to write music for their libraries.”
This turning point in Tomasic’s career allowed her to continue make her own artist albums and to start the indie label Datolite Records (a name sure to sound familiar to folks familiar with the Copper Country’s copper mining heritage). From 2001 to 2005, she was given the opportunity to manage Firehouse Recording Studio, a 5 - star digital facility in Pasadena, CA. She says ‘it was like being in graduate school for me’ and after leaving Firehouse, she began her own production music catalogue, Frameworks Music, which is now enjoying worldwide distribution.
How does a nice Copper Country girl end up in the music business in LA? A couple of false starts, a lot of work and a learning curve that just won’t quit. Oh yes – it doesn’t hurt to write, produce and perform great songs. Currently Lindsay has CDs called ‘Well Kept Secret’ and ‘Paradise Road’ in circulation along with the recently released eponymous Trees CD. ‘Paradise Road’ will ring true for Copper Country residents because the songs, as the title hints, are all influenced by people, places and feelings about the Copper Country. She also will release a new CD on Datolite Records called ‘What in the World’ in August of 2007.
Not one to stand still very long, Lindsay will be in Ann Arbor in July to record a couple of new tunes and to perform at the Top of the Park Festival. Add a road trip to the UP in August for the Porcupine Mountain Music Festival in Ontonagon, a gig at the Little Gem Theater., some promotional media visits for her new CD release and a little family time (Lindsay’s mom lives in Dodgeville and her father worked for the Daily Mining Gazette for over 30 years) – it will definitely be a whirlwind summer for Lindsay Tomasic. More information about Lindsay’s CDs can be found at www.datoliterecords.com. A web search of her name will produce dozens of hits about her music career. The following statement by Harry Maslin (producer and engineer for artists like Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Carly Simon, David Bowie and more) gives a pretty good picture of where Lindsay Tomasic stands in the music business: “In my book, Lindsay Tomasic is among the best singer/songwriters in the world. Her songs are sweet and poignant, her voice is mesmerizing and her acoustic guitar style is expressive and beautiful. I have recorded some of the best in the business and Lindsay is their equal.”


- Ontonagon Herald - Ken Raisanen

By SARA WAISANEN, DMG Writer

LOS ANGELES — After playing polka and blues with her father and forming bands in high school with classmates and friends, Lindsay Tomasic tried to make it big.

The Dodgeville native was popular locally with her band Trees in 1972, performing regularly at vegetarian restaurant Funkey’s Karma Cafe and The Salty Dog in Calumet, Tomasic said.

Singing and making music has always been Tomasic’s passion, so much so that she taught herself how to play the guitar by ear.

“It was something that was in my blood,” she said.

Tomasic heard Jessie Fitzpatrick sing and knew she wanted to go down the singer-songwriter path. Together their voices sounded like they were siblings, she said. The duo performed together and eventually formed the band Trees.

In 1979, Trees, which in addition to singer-songwriters Tomasic and Fitzpatrick, included flute player Carolyn Bernloehr, moved to Ann Arbor and took on two new members, bassist Randy Tessier and drummer Don Kuhli.

Trees had no problem finding places to play their music.

“It was real word of mouth with us,” Tomasic said. “They (booking agents) would come down to hear us and get hooked.”

Trees became weekly performers at Mr. Flood’s Party and The Blind Pig and were often featured at Ann Arbor’s major acoustic venue, The Ark, Tomasic said.

They also opened for Kenny Rankin at the club Chances Are and performed at Detroit’s Renaissance Center, she added.

Tomasic and Fitzpatrick were given a grant by the state of Michigan to write, produce and record an album.

They worked with mentally handicapped children for a year and produced an album called, “Let It Out,” which was used by teachers state wide to help the children learn basic skills, she said.

The popular folk rock band performed together for 15 years before splitting up to move on to bigger and better things.

Tomasic moved to Los Angeles to pursue singing, songwriting and producing while Fitzpatrick moved to the Upper Peninsula, opening a music club in downtown Calumet and expanding her creative wings by working as a stained glass artist, Tomasic said.

“There weren’t as many cool venues to play at anymore,” Tomasic said. “I wanted to meet people who were professionally driven like I was.”

And driven she is. Tomasic has recorded four albums of commercial releases on her own label, Datolite records, which stems from the Copper Country’s copper mining heritage, she said.

Tomasic called her lyrics autobiographical, based on the people in her life and her experiences growing up in the Copper Country.

Her new album, “What in the World,” features a distinguished cast of fine producers, musicians and recording engineers, joining her as she sings songs about love, life, family and the state of the planet, she said.

Tomasic and Trees are reuniting Aug. 24 to perform a concert at the Porcupine Mountains Music Festival and Aug. 25 for the grand re-opening of The Little Gem Theater.

Tomasic will perform a solo set and a set with Trees at both concerts. Last summer Trees got together to make an album and performed a CD-release concert in November at the Community Arts Center, Tomasic said.

“I’m really looking forward to enjoying the spirit of the Copper Country again,” she said.

For more information about Tomasic’s albums and the work she is doing in Los Angeles visit www.datoliterecords.com.





- Daily Mining Gazette

November 7 through 14 2007

This Southern California singer-songwriter’s blend of roots music, soulful ballads and gentle humor, has won her acclaim as well as spots on shows like The L Word, Malcom In The Middle and Desperate Housewives-no small feat for a kid from Michigans Upper Peninsula. Maybe it’s because she has her ear to the ground in a way many songwriters don’t. Tomasic’s new CD What In The World, types into the zeitgeist with a mix of gorgeous contemplative pop numbers and songs of warning about the state of the planet and social injustice –and always with a sense of play. Today she and her band play Sleppy John’s show on KPIG before heading to Cayuga Vault this evening as part of the “Save Your Fork There’s Pie Tour”, a fund rasier for the second harvest food bank. And there really is pie, furnished by local bakeries and served at the door.


- Metro Santa Cruz Magazine