A Conversation with Tommy Womack (continued)

PM: I know you're a very good prose writer. Is reading something you like to do and make time to do?

TW: I wish I had more time to do it. I love to read. One of my favorite things in the world is to be in bed with Beth and Nathan asleep--yes, he still sleeps with us a lot of the time--

PM: Wow.

TW: --which I hope we're not scarring him for life. But it's kind of cozy. We got to admit we kind of like it.

PM: Yeah.

TW: But one of my favorite things in the world is they're both asleep, I'm still awake in bed with a bowl of Doritos--because you can't have the bag in bed, it makes all that noise.

PM: Right, it crinkles.

TW: So I pour some Doritos in a bowl. And I do a lot of historical biographies. Abraham Lincoln is a particular favorite.

PM: Wow.

TW: And reading--now that things are changing in my life where my mind is not stressed out all the time--working at Vandy all the time really stressed me out a lot. I couldn't leave it at the door when I left at night.

PM: Ouch.

TW: And it messed with my ability to read. And now that things are getting better--I haven't been this relaxed in years. I'm eating better. I'm feeling better. I'm doing what I want to do. This record is doing well. I really feel like I've finally knocked a hole all the way through the wall after 22 years. So I'm feeling a little new peace of mind, which I think is going to be conducive to doing what I want to do, which is get back into fiction. I like having read fiction once I've done it. Fiction is always--you got 30 pages of investing your time, wondering, "Am I going to give a fuck about these characters in this situation. It's fiction, it's made up." Whereas historical biographies, I'm just a junkie for them.

PM: Right.

TW: Because I already know the character I'm reading about, I know that I'm interested in it. And the one I'm reading right now is called The Misquoted Jesus. I bought that at the airport.

PM: Oh, that's a good book. I just bought that myself.

TW: Oh, really?

PM: Yeah.

TW: I started that on the plane ride to Austin, so I'm into that. I've had The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.

PM: Oh, one of my other favorite books!

TW: I hadn't read it yet. It's on the side of the table. And I've got this Abraham Lincoln oral biography, which was originally published in the '30s, and it's all first-person accounts.

PM: Wow.

TW: Everything in it is somebody who talked to Lincoln that day and wrote it down in their journal, or wrote it in a letter, or it's a saved piece of correspondence. It's all first-person, first generation.

PM: Oh, my God.

TW: No Carl Sandburg--nothing is twice removed. And Lincoln endlessly fascinates me. He's my favorite rock star in a lot of ways.

PM: [laughs] He's one of your role models.

TW: Yeah, yeah, totally. I'm always asking, "What would Lincoln do?" He was a bandleader's bandleader.

PM: [laughs]      continue

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