Tomisheep

Tamàs Bàràny took the scenic route before getting his passport stamped as Tomisheep and embarking on this Rhodes Trip.


The journey began in Szolnok, Hungary, February 1975.  The setting: a dull, mid-sized Communist town, which, until now, could boast nothing but the biggest train station built by the Nazi army in Europe.  The dark divide between East and West.


Tamàs inherited his love of music and being on stage from his folk singing mama, whose loud and killer crystal clear voice made old folks gathered in community centers around the country cry at the poetic beauty of it all.


His more sarcastic, analytical side comes from his dad, a smooth-talking former cop, secret agent and now, private investigator.  (Jules Bond, track 5, is dedicated to him.)


Tamàs was just a young squirt with inquisitive brown eyes pounding on his dad’s clavinet while his folks threw house party after house party, placing them high on the Communists’ list of hooligans.  While Tamàs danced around to old illegal records, his parents made magic in the kitchen, serving up homemade palinka and finger-licking meat dishes that lured guests back time and time again. 


When he was eight, his dad scored him a used grand piano, and Tamàs spent the next years - the rest of his life, actually - falling in love with the instrument.  He surprised everyone, and a few weeks later, was running to class at the National Béla Bartok Music Academy.  He learned so quickly that he did the four-year program in two, and still lists Bartok, Chopin, and Liszt as inspirations.


He became the cool kid at school (or so he says!), and wore American jeans and high tops bargained from the black market.  He let his hair grow, making the girlies swoon, and listened to illegal home-recordings of The Cult, Def Leopard, Bon Jovi, Depeche Mode, Beastie Boys.


When he was 16, he got his first official gig: recording his mom’s long over-due folk album to cassette. Getting the gypsy orchestra accompanying her to sound just right was a major test for his ears, back in those strictly analog days.  Another test he passed.


Around the same time, he got kicked out of high school for being different, having long hair and mouthing off.  The director, a wholehearted Communist, saw Tamàs’ rebel father in him, and wanted to make the family pay.  Determined to stay, however (partly because the school combined a music department with the all-girls’ nursing studies) Tamàs kept on attending, till finally the teaching mafia got the best of him. He moved out to Budapest, and two years later was playing on TV and to sold-out crowds in the country’s biggest stadiums.  He sent videos of himself to his former teachers, with a short, sweet note telling them to shove it where it hurts.


Over the next ten years, Tamàs played with household Hungarian names:  Gjon Delhusa (the hunky gigolo crooner); Bikini (the Magyars' real rebel rock band); Dopeman (the rapper whose name says it all); Groovehouse (the teeny-pop goddess).  He toured Hungary and Eastern Europe, helping various artists earn gold and platinum albums along the way.  Sony Music signed him for a playback pop mistake, then the sought-after keyboardist had to spend three months in hospital recovering from a leg surgery.  With this, plus following a decade of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, Tamàs needed to escape.  He took off for Australia with a bassist and guitarist buddy, and ended up loving the lizards and sunshine.  He spent two years there.


One day while the boys were jamming, a Warner Brothers producer walked by their window, backtracked and knocked on their door.  He offered the musicians a gig with Kulcha, a band who’d just come back from opening up the Janet Jackson tour in Japan.  Unfortunately, visa problems got them kicked out just before the major New Year’s Eve show.


Back in Hungary, Tamàs returned to work, on and off, for Yamaha Music Europe as a product demonstrator, touring Europe and learning the tools he needed to eventually get him to where he is today, front seat driver with his Open Labs machine.


He was working on HUNCUT, an album of Transylvanian delights, when he met a Canadian darling who eventually lured him to Montreal.  He quickly took his place as composer and sound engineer in a big downtown studio, where he worked, among other things, on music for local tv stations (TQS, TVA and CBC) and the international Discovery Channel.  Antsy and dissatisfied, sensing that he needed to exploit his burning creativity, Tamàs' Rhodes Trip journey began somewhere around that time.


Today, after having released his album and taken the stage with the full Rhodes Trip band at the 2010 edition of the Montreal International Jazz Festival, Tamàs is feeling confident and re-energized from all the support and positive feedback his music has received.  He's decided to keep going in this direction, where real quality music is key, more important than all the cash he made while following the nonsensical "The client is always right" slogan of the commercial world (where, let's face it, most people have bad taste and little culture.)  Tamàs/Tomisheep is now his own (gasp!) not-underqualified boss and pursuing projects in the field he loves and knows best: MUSIC, as a producer and musical director, trying to influence music listeners rather than follow them.  And this, with the deepest respect for culture. Because he believes that music is important for the senses, for the ears, and that all our senses deserve the best treatment as they lead into our body to affect our soul.