Tommy Womack
Venerable Nashville rocker Tommy Womack, 53, damn near died last year. And his new album, Namaste, includes an autobiographical song titled “I Almost Died.” The truth of the matter is he’s almost died twice in the past decade. Most recently, Womack had a pelvis-shattering, rib-smashing encounter with a truck in Elizabethtown, Ky., in 2015. Before that, in 2007, his heart stopped after the singer ingested a deadly dose of either cocaine or meth; possibly both. That near-death experience is the impetus of the new song.
I almost died, I almost died
The Lord or the devil nearly had my hide …
Did it scare me to death? Yes, I believe so
Did it make me stop [doing drugs]? Hell no!
“That song tells exactly the way it happened,” Womack tells the Scene. “I didn’t invent any details for drama’s sake, and I didn’t soft-pedal any details. I’m very remorseful and deeply sorry for what I put my family through.”
Five years after the overdose and a second stint in rehab, Womack quit drugs altogether.
“The sober brain is an amazing thing,” he says. “I couldn’t think in steps or do problem-solving type thinking [when using drugs]. Those are skills I didn’t have before I became clean.”
Nashvillians who remember the 1980s as the glory days of the Rock Block are also likely to regard Womack as a card-carrying charter member of Nashville’s once-thunderous rock scene, when he played in roots-rock supergroup Government Cheese and later as a member of the Bis-Quits. (The former has a one-off reunion show slated for Sept. 10 at the Basement East.) Juxtaposed nationally against New Wave and locally against radio-friendly country, Exit/In and Elliston Square (now The End) served as a launching pad for alt-country and rock musicians. It’s where White Animals had college girls in “Ecstasy,” and Walk the West wasn’t yet The Cactus Brothers. Bill Lloyd was fronting the December Boys, having yet to team up with Radney Foster. And members of R.E.M. could often be found sitting at the bar at The Gold Rush, then and now a haven for musicians of all stripes. This, for non-country musicians in the Southeast, was the scene to be a part of. And Kentucky native Tommy Womack was in the thick of it. He detailed portions of it in his raucous 1995 memoir, Cheese Chronicles: The True Story of a Rock ’n’ Roll Band You’ve Never Heard Of.
“It all coalesced on the Rock Block,” Womack recalls, hinting that a follow-up to the memoir might be forthcoming. “Everybody was a rock star and reeked of patchouli oil. Jason and the Scorchers, The Questionnaires, Webb Wilder, The Royal Court of China, The Georgia Satellites — these guys were gods.”
Nowadays, Womack is a staple on Nashville’s songwriter circuit, just as likely to play in the round at the legendary Bluebird Cafe as he is in newer venues like The Country behind Springwater. He’s a columnist for The East Nashvillian magazine, and serves up a short weekly YouTube webcast titled Monday Morning Cup of Coffee. He’s also a DJ on Nashville’s newly launched WXNA radio station, offering Tommy Womack’s Happiness Hour Mondays from 9 to 10 a.m. But before all of that, he was a P.K. — aka “preacher’s kid.”
“I’m a preacher’s son, and it wasn’t a happy home that I grew up in,” he says. “I learned that the Bible isn’t infallible. I believe you can measure good and evil in this world the way you measure temperature. I do believe there is something there [beyond this world]. I channel most of my religious thought through the Judeo-Christian [perspective], but I call myself a ‘fuzzy Buddhist Methodist’ — Buddhism with a soul.”
Onstage these days, he comes across as contented, and perhaps grateful that he’s still around to sing the heartfelt “Nice Day,” off his 2007 release There, I Said It!, another autobiographical song about the simple joys of family. He has long been married to Beth Tucker Womack, who served as the morning news anchor for WTVF-Channel 5 from 1992 to 2001. Together they have an 18-year-old son, Nathan. And perhaps Womack’s amazed that he’s survived to put out such a personal LP. Namaste is a seriously good record, with enough lighthearted songs peppered in to counterbalance the headiness of some of the themes. The record is the result of a talented musician whose axis shifted at his sudden awakening to life’s fragility.
“I don’t consider myself a bad person or even a good person — I’m average,” Womack says. “And I don’t consider God to be the Old Testament God, violent and mean spirited. I picture a warm and fuzzy place after this life, and just in case there is a hell, I try to be nice to people. I still can be an asshole, and I still can blow a gasket, but I try not to.”
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