Tom Mark Gilbert

The Nashville Sessions

Stories came first. As an adolescent in a troubled home, I learned that a library filled with books could become an escape, a sanctuary, a place of healing. At 15 I took an initial, tentative step into songwriting with a ballad featuring my neighborhood friends on Carlton Avenue in my hometown of Tracy, California.

I compose as inspiration arrives, always in the midst of the everyday ebb and flow of life. “Song Of The Country” was begun on the Pine Ridge Trail in Big Sur while I sat on a rock with a borrowed guitar overlooking the Sur River. “All Things Bright And Beautiful” was written in San Jose at a time when I lived in a Christian community. Many of the early songs were composed during my college years at Point Loma in dorm rooms overlooking the vast Pacific Ocean. As is true in life, time can be an ally to the creative process. “Midnight Rain” was started in 2009 in the midst of failure and reflection. “Barlow Flat” remained alone the first stanza for decades. The final lyrics for both “Midnight” and “Barlow” were finalized the morning they were scheduled to be recorded in February 2018 in Nashville.

​“Back In The Days (1933)”, “River Road” and “The Old Man” comprise a trilogy that follows a Depression-era teenager through stages of life, from a raft journey down the Mississippi River to his days as an itinerant preacher and, finally, at the end of a long, fruitful life, as ‘the old man’. Originally written as three standalone songs, the idea of a trilogy – a continuous storyline following the narrator in “Back In The Days” – came from Matthew Tankersley (co-writer of “River Road”) after which I rewrote the ending to “The Old Man” to reflect the lifelong, even eternal, connection between the two characters.

Tom Mark Gilbert, Carlsbad, CA, January 2019