Thought I’d post this song and see if it gets stuck in your head like it does mine….Probably why I recorded the song since I’m not really a big fan of Lifehouse
I tried to keep it very minimalistic with very little post-production….Only 2 guitar tracks and 2 vocal tracks.
Although I have very critical views of my skills, the consensus says it’s quite listenable… Hope ya’ enjoy 
You and Me (Originally recorded by Lifehouse)
I haven’t had much time to do a lot of what interests me lately but I thought I’d take a moment to wish everyone a happy new year and give my best wishes for a great 2007.
Also, I did make a little time to continue the cover song collection I’ve been building. With the addition of Failure, you can see I’ve been trying to cover what I listen to instead of what I’ve been told I’m good at. I think it came out pretty decent and I’m happy with the fact that I can pull off something more than making music that makes women swoon….lol
Anyway, once again….HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!
Oh, and in case you’re interested in all the covers I’ve done and don’t feel like scrolling, they can all be found right here on VirtuallyTom.com
As some of you may or may not know, I have a personal site that I’ve maintained for over 2 years now….Do I really have a reason for said site? Not really, but once upon a time I needed some webspace for hosting files and learning some basic web design. So, I had very basic pages written in very basic html which served their purpose but weren’t much to look at and pretty much an embarrassment. Not to mention, when I first got a domain name, I really couldn’t think of anything cool so I went with my screen/forum name (tictoc5150) that I’ve used for years. Well, problem solved with the domain name, easy enough. Then I was still looking at the lame pages I had and really wanted to do something about it. I’m not that great at web design and with the limited time I have lately, there wasn’t going to be any kind of improvement in a reasonable time frame. Then I had the thought, “I wish my site were as “skin-able” as Wordpress“…Duh! How about I just install Wordpress in the root directory and build the site from that. It made my life a whole lot easier and site a whole lot better. My content is still a little lacking but it is just a personal site, after all. I’ve also noticed some pretty cool photo galleries installed on lots of sites and wanted one of those too….Coppermine seemed to suit my needs and then some. So, VirtuallyTom.com got the facelift it so desperately needed and I saved a ton of time doing it. 
So, to continue in my series of cover tunes that I’ve been doing, I have these to offer.
Doing the cover songs seem to be improving my recording skills as well as my musical abilities somewhat and I’ve had the urge lately to possibly start working on originals again. It’s been over 10 years since I wrote a song with lyrics and there’s good reason for that….They sucked!!! I can be very articulate and an eloquent speaker when I want to be but those qualities do not necessarily make for a good songwriter…but that’s what I’d like to do….While I like a lot of my work, my guitar instrumentals have always seemed a bit self-indulgent and more for my own entertainment of creating them than for entertaining others…sure hope I can deliver words and melodies that are worthy of at least being heard.
Until then….
3AM - originally recorded by Matchbox20
Rockstar - originally recorded by Nickelback
So, as I mentioned in my post yesterday, I bought a bass guitar and have been trying to get the feel for it. So anyway, I just finished up a couple more songs and hope I do them justice.
Question Everything - Originally recorded by 8stops7
Anymore - Originally recorded by Travis Tritt
And as a side note to someone that’s been very encouraging to me…
Thank you very much for all the kind words, they mean a lot to me, Kat. 
So, this is what it’s like to be 38 years old?….So far, I’m not impressed. 
I’ll try not to make this post indicative of the mild midlife crisis I seem to be experiencing….It is just a day like any other, correct?
NO!!!….It did seem to start off that way…Hell, I even had to remind folks it was my birthday…..After work I received a phone call that I’ve really wanted but it turns out it didn’t live up to my expectations. My childhood sweetheart (first love) and I have been trying to contact each other for almost a month and after 15+ years, it finally happened today. While it was nice to hear about her life and how happy she is, it seemed to bring me down a little about the things I feel that my life is lacking right now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m reasonably happy with my life but when you’re feeling a little down about growing older, you’re single and wanting not to be, you’ve worked all night and are likely to just sleep the remainder of your birthday away with no celebration whatsoever, the last thing you really want to hear is how “that someone” that you were once engaged to is happily married with 2 kids and twins on the way.
I honestly wasn’t thinking that it was gonna turn out like some sappy Maury Povich show about first love reunions but I really didn’t expect to feel down about it….And now we’ve said the obligatory “well, let’s keep in touch” and she said she’ll send me some pictures….Just what I need to see, a friggan happy couple…..YUCK!!!!
On a brighter note: I, once again, bought myself the best present that I received for any of the major holidays….And yes, I’ll probably do the same for Christmas also but I digress….I bought me a bass guitar, finally! I’ve been doing a bit of recording as you may have heard in my last post but have always thought it was lacking by not being part of a band….Well, with the help of Fruity Loops for the drums, any of my 3 six strings guitars +1 bass and my voice, I think I can almost pull off sounding like a band. This all may be part of the midlife crisis I mentioned but I don’t think getting in touch with what you’ve always loved doing and getting back to your roots is an unhealthy outlet for such a crisis. In fact, I’ve felt more driven to go more public with my music and possibly look around for like-minded musicians in need of a guitarist, bassist, or singer and take another stab at the rockstar dream or at least play some gigs and meet some cute girls.
Anyway, 38 year old VirtuallyTom, signing off
I used to consider myself an adequate musician to at least entertain a roomful of drunk people….even could entertain some sober ones on occasion.
But somewhere within the last year, I really haven’t played guitar all that much and can’t remember the last time I entertained anyone besides myself. I used to bring my guitar with me to any party that I’d attend (especially if I knew there were going to be pretty girls there 
) and inevitably someone would ask me if I brought my guitar…hopefully it was before I was too intoxicated to play.
So, given that I’m on vacation this week, I decided to make some time to find out if I could still entertain if someone put a gun to my head and said “play, dammit!”…It took a couple days find my groove again but managed to record 3 songs in 3 days. While these are someone elses songs, I do try to put my own “stamp” on it and hope I don’t suck….obviously I probably wouldn’t even share a song that I thought I sounded terrible doing. If you give them a listen and decide to post a comment telling me how much I suck, I swear, I will hunt you down, handcuff you to the most stationary object I can find and play them till your ears bleed.
So, here ya’ go, I guess….
When There’s No One Around - Originally recorded by Garth Brooks
When You Say Nothing At All - Originally recorded by Alison Krauss/Randy Travis/and a handful of others I think
Far Away - Originally recorded by Nickelback
A while back I had a talk with Jeff about copyright issues of posting cover songs on websites, since his father is a lawyer, I trust the info that he got from him (which indicated it’s a no no).. however , I cannot find any mention of infringment when it is not offered commercially and since all I wanna do is entertain and could care less about making a buck off my substandard recordings, I don’t see anything wrong with it…But I will remove the links if Jeff requests doing so…or Hell, he can do it himself…lol
Another blog!!!!….lol
It’s funny that you should start doing this now, Jeff (kudos for the generosity to your site visitors, btw)…I had let my blog die back in Jan. and recently cleaned out the spam comments (a few hundred…/me thanks WP for giving the option to moderate!) and was considering picking it back up again as well as completely redoing my site but I guess one can never have too many blogs, especially one on a site that gets indexed on a quite regular basis.
Anyway, I guess I’ll just cover my site “makeover” for my first post and talk about why….
Well, here’s the “why”, Besides the obvious fact that it was designed by someone lacking knowledge in web design, I’ve always felt that it lacked personality…One would think a personal web site should share a little about the person that owns it, right? Lately I’ve felt like my pseudonym has worn out its welcome and was totally unacceptable as a domain name from the beginning….Easily remedied….I introduce VirtuallyTom.com, a work in progress and best intentions to make it worthy of visiting. Now, back to the obvious of poor design skills, I find myself having to plan, learn css as well as any other language it takes to make my site do what I want it to, and re-create it from the ground up…Correctly.
Wish me luck.