We have a song premiere today from North-Dakota-born, Los Angeles-based songwriter and singer Tom Brosseau. No Matter Where I Roam is taken from his new album North Dakota Impressions, the 3rd record of a trilogy following on from Grass Punks (2014) and Perfect Abandon (2015). The trilogy visits life from a local perspective, taking the listener on a journey through time that doesn’t clip along uniformly on some common interstate, but treads at its own pace on a rural route. More glances, more investigations and introspections, more light, more dark. Memories, imaginings, longings for a place, a home. North Dakota Impressions is a hopeful album.
Tom shared this about the song:
“A funny thing happened the first time I performed ‘No Matter Where I Roam‘, a song about finding signs of your home in unfamiliar places. At the Kent Stage in Kent, Ohio in 2012, when I opened for the Punch Brothers, a man and his wife approached me in the lobby after the show, where I was selling my CDs at the merchandise table. They had arrived late and saw only the last song in my set. They didn’t know my name, they didn’t know my music. We came for the Punch Brothers, the man admitted. We didn’t know there was an opening act, too. But we’re curious. In the song you performed tonight you sang about sugar beets, and my wife and I thought to ourselves, OK, this kid’s gotta be from North Dakota.
“Sugar beets are big business where I grew up. My grandfather, Dean, worked at the American Crystal Sugar plant in Drayton: an important part of the local economy. Very much part of the local identity. When the harvest season is in full swing, the beet trucks roll right through town. Every now and again a beet will fall over the side, round and heavy and purple, partly masked in dirt. Mainly the beets are turned into table sugar. But it seems nothing of the beet goes to waste. Pulp and molasses are two of the by- products and both are used in animal feed.
“Everywhere I go I meet someone with ties to North Dakota. For a state that doesn’t have a huge population, and not too many tourist attractions, it sure has an impressive wingspan. When I mention where I’m from on stage, someone will always find me afterward, and say, Guess where I’m from.”
UK Tour Dates
Tom Brosseau is currently touring the US and will visit the UK in October for the following dates:
13 October: One Church (w/ Kristin McClement) – BRIGHTON
14 October: Moka East – LONDON
15 October: The Swiss Cottage Sessions, TWYFORD
16 October: Salt Café – BRISTOL
19 October: Eagle Inn – MANCHESTER
20 October: The Basement – YORK
21 October: Moka East – LONDON
22 October: Albion Beatnik – OXFORD
www.tombrosseau.com
North Dakota Impressions is released 16 September 2016 via Crossbill Records
Photo Credit: Carey Braswell