Abandoned Pools

Under the name Abandoned Pools, multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Tommy Walter produces his own recordings. He first handled a bass guitar during elementary years, then became a formally schooled French horn performer once he reached high school. At the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, he both studied and instructed music theory, focusing on early-twentieth-century twelve-tone and modal figures including Schoenberg, Bartók, and Stravinsky. Classroom work, however, left his drive to perform rock music unsatisfied, so he began seeking out compatible players throughout the expansive Los Angeles pop and rock community.

Work alongside local singer-songwriter E produced the band Eels, yet Walter exited the lineup soon afterward, even though the group’s first album, Beautiful Freak, carried strong prospects in 1996. Alone once more, he remained inside his apartment and started creating and tracking original songs. Those recordings formed the foundation of Abandoned Pools, which issued its opening full-length, Humanistic, in September 2001. The project reappeared in 2005 with the Reverb EP and the Universal album Armed to the Teeth.