Tom was given his first guitar as a Christmas present when he was eleven. "My folks got me started, and I'll always be thankful to them for that. They got me a Japanese nylon-string called an Orpheus," he recalls. "Thirty bucks.  In retrospect I'm glad it wasn't a steel-string, because cheap steel-strings are such a bitch for a kid to play. The Orpheus was easy on the fingertips, so unlike a lot of my pals, I never had to quit because of pain..."

Along with the guitar, part of his gift included 12 half-hour lessons with a young teacher named Dave Zeitlin. "Dave was a terrific teacher -- very patient.  He's the guy who got me to stop listening to the Mouseketeers and start listening to Woody Guthrie. He was my only teacher -- after Dave I was spoiled!" (45 years later, Zeitlin just recently retired from teaching at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica.)

By the early '60s, The Folk Scare had taken hold and Tom was hooked.  "I can recall skateboarding around with my guitar and a harp on a rack, trying to be a Junior Dylan."  By middle school he had discovered the blues, primarily from listening to Public Radio.

In high school Tom met and befriended several other lads of like mind. "There were these three guys at my school who were expert fingerpickers: John Koenig, Carl Buffa and Bret Lopez."  In no time Tom was playing with Lopez and Koenig in The Yerba Buena Blues Band. "We played clubs in Hollywood and on the Sunset Strip: PJ's, The Sea Witch, Mother Neptune's... I wasn't even old enough to be inside those places. I was 16 years old and living a dream -- it was pretty heady stuff for a punk kid. Those guys, Carl, Bret and John, taught me a lot about acoustic guitar. Although I was playing harp (rather than guitar) in the band, I was listening to -- and stealing from -- those three guys.  And Ry Cooder, of course."

Cooder, a few years older than Ball, had grown up nearby in Santa Monica. "He was a monster already, at age 16!" says Tom. "He's the guy that unknowingly got me interested in Joseph Spence and Blind Blake. And meanwhile my brother Steve -- already a very fine banjo player -- had gotten me interested in bluegrass."

By then, when they weren't gigging themselves, Tom and his bandmates were regular attendees at Hollywood's celebrated Ash Grove. The influential guitarists Tom saw at the Ash Grove include many of the greatest of all-time: Lightnin' Hopkins, Rev. Gary Davis, Skip James, Son House, John Hurt, Merle Travis, Bukka White, John Fahey, Johnny Shines, Arthur Crudup, Clarence White, Mance Lipscomb, Doc Watson, John Estes, Furry Lewis, Ry Cooder, Brownie McGhee, Fred McDowell, John Jackson, and the list goes on and on. "And those were just the acoustic guys," Tom says, laughing. "On the electric side of things you had T-Bone Walker, Otis Rush, Earl Hooker, Freddy King, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, Albert King, Albert Collins and so many more. And all the great harp players, too!  What can I say -- those were just very fruitful days to be a young player. I was a sponge."

But it would be a decade before Tom would record an official release as a guitarist (or as a harp player.)  "The Yerba Buena broke up in '67 and I really didn't do much with music for awhile. I spent most of the '70s wandering around the world."  By 1978 he was road-weary and settled in Santa Barbara, where he soon made the acquaintance of guitarist Kenny Sultan. (see Tom & Kenny website.)

G U I T A R   R E C O R D I N G S                                     

Tom's first recorded solo guitar pieces, My Blue Belle and Wing and a Prayer, were released on the 1980 LP Confusion (Sonyatone ST-1006.)  "Those two tunes were played on a turn-of-the-century Washburn parlor guitar. That was before I got my Gibson."

In the summer of '81 he acquired a mid-30's Gibson PG-00 plectrum (4 string) guitar. "I always liked the 30s Gibsons, but I never liked the necks -- too blocky," says Tom. "So I figured if I got a 4-string, maybe I could turn it into a 6-string by having a custom neck made."  He took the guitar to Santa Barbara luthier Jim Lombard, who built a neck and bridge for it, converting it to a standard 6-string.  "Neither Jim nor I had any idea what it would sound like. It was only braced for 4 strings, so we knew it would bark -- but I don't think either of us realized just what a gem it would turn out to be."  The guitar has been used on every subsequent guitar recording Tom has made, and continues to be his instrument of choice today.

1983 saw the release of the Kicking Mule LP Who Drank My Beer (KM-176.) On it is a solo version of Tom's arrangement of Greensleeves.  "By that time I'd gotten heavily involved in Renaissance lute music. I began to study Francesco da Milano and John Dowland."  This interest came to fruition a couple of years later with the release of his first solo guitar CD Guitar Music, which was released on Kicking Mule and reissued on the Fantasy label.

These days Tom continues to play his Gibson/Lombard hybrid at every Tom & Kenny gig, chipping in at least one solo piece every set.  His third guitar CD, Solo Guitar - Music from Films, has just been released on Dog Boy Records.  "I'm extremely happy with this one," Ball says. "(Recording engineer) David West used some beautiful old tube equipment, and the sound is huge -- very warm and embracing."  (For a sample, click the link below.) Currently Tom is researching and recording pieces for his next solo project, "A Steel-String Christmas."

"It's good fun to throw a classical Cuban piece by Leo Brouwer at a Blues Festival crowd," says Tom, grinning.  "It either wakes people up or it puts 'em straight to sleep."

To hear samples from the new CD 'Solo Guitar - Music From Films,' click here.

_________________________________________________________________________________

(Psst..... By the way, here's another couple of reasons to learn to play guitar.....)

                                                                                   home           next page: vocalist