Tom Kimmel

Over a span of two decades, Tom Kimmel built a modest audience through his independent work, yet his greatest accomplishments arrived when other prominent musicians placed his compositions on their recordings. He entered the world in Memphis, TN, spent his formative years in rural Alabama, earned a degree from the University of Alabama, and moved to Nashville during the first half of the 1980s. Initial songwriting recognition followed after Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman, formerly of the Byrds, along with Levon Helm of the Band, recorded several of his pieces. For Polygram he issued a pair of solo albums, 5 to 1 in 1987 and Circle Back Home in 1990. The track “That’s Freedom,” extracted from the first of those releases, registered on the Hot 100, though it achieved greater domestic success when Australian star John Farnham took it to number one in his own country. In 1993 Kimmel issued the anthology Don’t Look Back on his self-established imprint Point Clear; twelve months afterward he followed with the live-acoustic collection Bones. Entering the 2000s he continued writing and performing, with material adopted by Joe Cocker, Johnny Cash, Stray Cats, Maura O’Connell, the Spinners, and Linda Ronstadt.