Tom is a John Lennon Songwriting Contest winner and a Boston Music Award nominee for Outstanding Songwriter.

Tom uses a unique semi-standard guitar tuning that stays true to the artists’ signature fingerstyles while adding a deep, lower register to the instrument, essentially accompanying himself on bass to add a warmth and fullness for the audience. He went on to become an award-winning singer-songwriter himself and is thrilled to be paying homage to these musical giants. Tom Glynn is a child of the seventies, who spent countless hours learning every guitar and piano lick by his musical heroes as he wore out the grooves on their records. American Tune: Simon, Croce and Taylor showcases the songs you know and love from these master craftsmen during this brilliant span, framed in engaging stories about the artists themselves. And James Taylor emerged as the definitive singer-songwriter with his singular guitar style and uncanny ability to touch people’s hearts with that distinctive voice on classics like 'Fire And Rain' and 'Carolina In My Mind'. Jim Croce made an enormous impact in his criminally short time on earth with deceptively complex chord progressions, strummed and fingerpicked underneath accessible, stirring melodies in songs like 'Operator' and 'Time In A Bottle' that permeated the radio dial. Paul Simon, never one to rest on his laurels, started exploring even more harmonically-rich sounds than he had during his peerless Simon & Garfunkel period as evidenced by such gems as 'Still Crazy After All These Years' and '50 Ways To Leave Your Lover'. Relive the intimate storytelling, intricate chord changes and breathtaking melodies of these gifted artists - their work building on and transcending the more traditional folk-influenced acoustic music of the previous decade. Yet, it still has the potential to speak to us today as it did in 1973.American Tune: Simon, Croce and Taylor takes you on a magical trip back to the 1970s to experience the timeless music of these three prolific singer-songwriters. Simon’s tune, American Tune, is a great song that has roots that are more than 400 years old. There she performs with Francesco Turrisi and Martin Hayes and the audio is much cleaner and just as powerful. What I do offer instead is Rhiannon Giddens performance of the Simon rewritten song in October 2022 at Other Voices Dignity. Unfortunately, I don’t like the live audio from the Newport Folk Festival, but I have included a link to that performance here for your pleasure. Her version, with two lines rewritten for her by Simon, reminds the world that we all didn’t come on the Mayflower (at least not all of us voluntarily), but we all strive to be part of the fabric of the American quilt. As one reviewer put it, it was like a prayer. Her version of his song was a soulful and beautiful one. During a Paul Simon performance at the Newport Folk Festival on July 23, 2022, Simon was joined on stage by Grammy winner, Rhiannon Giddens, to sing his song, American Tune. So, as disgraced comedian Bill Cosby used to say: I told you that story to tell you this one. Below is a rendition of the translated hymn performed by the York College Concert Choir. Around 1830, it was translated by American Presbyterian minister, James W. The poem was later translated into English in 1752. Johann Sebastian Bach later arranged the melody and poem in his oratorio, St Matthew Passion in 1727. The music was later adapted in 1656 by Johann Crüger. Hans Leo Hassler is said to have set the poem to music in 1601. The poem was translated into German in the very early 1600s. The hymn, O Sacred Head, Now Wounded, is based on a Latin poem written during the Middle Ages. Well, it turns out that while the lyrics are by Paul Simon, the melody was adapted by Simon from a religious hymn with a significant history. Below is Paul Simon performing the tune in 1975. Yet, it was also a hopeful song about the fortitude of the American spirit. It contrasted nicely with the album’s lead song, the fast paced and bouncy Kodachrome.Īmerican Tune reflected a national mood of a nation tiring of the Vietnam War and dreading the Watergate crisis underway. The first track on the B side was a relatively slow song called, American Tune. The album was entitled, There Goes Rhymin’ Simon. In 1973, musician Paul Simon released his third solo album after his break from the singing duo, Simon and Garfunkel.

Oh, and you will probably get an earworm from this post. A caveat: I don’t claim my research is complete and factual.

American tune simon and garfunkel