Tom Cavanagh

To write a biography for Tom is a difficult endeavor. His resume and accomplishments read like someone who has lived two hundred years and yet he is still so young. The volume of bands he has toured with, recorded with, produced or is currently playing with is a task to manage in itself. At the present moment (June 2008) Tom is professionally performing, recording and touring with seven acts: his all original pop punk rock group Bent Pussycat, Almost Queen the Tribute to Queen, the legendary punk rockers The Crusher, pop rock country sensation Christine Vaskas, the critically acclaimed blues group The Mean Blue Spirit, Commando which is the Tribute to The Ramones and his solo acoustic career as just Tom Cavanagh. Yet somehow he is able to do this without compromise and still manage to run Bent Pussycat Studios, Bent Pussycat Records, Bent Pussycat Publishing, The Center for Musical Advancement and still teach privately as well as at several colleges and music education institutes. His band Bent Pussycat is really Tom's personal indulgence. Tom is the sole songwriter and often plays and sings all the parts on the recordings. The band has toured and opened for some of the legends of rock including Twisted Sister, Bent Brother, Pretty Boy Floyd, Zebra, Derringer, Starz, Randy Jackson, Pat Dinizio of The Smithereens, The Lone Wolves and Stryper. Bent Pussycat has released two L.P.'s and several singles and E.P.'s. Bent Pussycat is currently making a new cd scheduled for release in fall 2008. During the last four years Tom has been the guitarist playing the role of Brian May in the Tribute to Queen Production, Almost Queen. His job also includes being the bands harmony vocal director and transcriber. The band has played all over America and have traveled outside the mainland to perform in Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Mexico and Europe. Almost Queen has head lined countless festivals and provides the entertainment for many corporations such as Nestle. The band has been voted the best tribute band in the world and even made number one on Brian May's personal list of favorite Queen Tribute bands on Brian's website. In 2004 Tom Cavanagh was asked to join NY City's most popular modern day punk rock band The Crusher. As bassist in the band Tom gets to play along side punk guitar hero Sean Crusher. The band was voted NY's best and most original punk rock band and has received praise from some of the great legends in punk history. In 2007 The Crusher released a new cd engineered and produced by Tom Cavanagh. The cd has been a huge seller on itunes and at shows and continues to win the hearts and mohawks of many punk rockers. When not performing the music of Queen or stage diving with the punk rockers in The Crusher, Tom provides the guitar and co song-writing to country pop rock artist Christine Vaskas. Christine who has also garnished quite a record of reviews and awards in the last several years has just released her new cd produced and engineered by Tom Cavanagh called Stepping Outside myself. Tom plays all the instruments on the cd and wrote or cowrote the entire record. Tom and Christine have toured as an acoustic duo for the last few years but this summer embark on their first dates with a full band. The Mean Blue Spirit and The Mean Blue Duo are both blues bands that capture the true essence of the Blues. The Mean Blue Spirit released their first cd in 2002 and won over blues fans worldwide. They continue to enjoy the radio success in countries like Australia and South America as well as right here in the United States specifically the south. The Mean Blue Spirit is known for their authentic blues delivery rich in soul and emotion. The bands leader, Dee Harris also includes Tom on the smaller gigs making it The Mean Blue Duo which performs at Theaters, Cafes, outdoor festivals and restaurants regularly. Recently Tom joined the already well received Ramones Tribute band Commando. The band enjoys playing and reliving the glory years of The Ramones and plays to audiences throughout the tristate area. Tom provides the part of punk bass legend Dee Dee Ramone and has mentioned that playing is this band is purely a guilty pleasure. As a solo artist Tom has released just shy of fifty cds, has opened for folk and rock legends at theaters and clubs and enjoys a cult following and college and commercial radio success. Tom has released a variety of solo cds that range from solo acoustic folk, country, shred guitar instrumental music, avant garde classical music, music for meditation and swing guitar jazz. Tom often opens for Almost Queen and headlines a few solo shows each year when not booked with his other acts. He was the first independent artist to be carried in Sam Goody and Tower Records, he was the first unsigned musician to perform an in-store appearance at a Sam Goody. He paved the way for New York and Long Island musicians to sell their cds in corporate record chains and even designed the contracts for both Sam Goody and Tower Records which were still in use to recently. Tom hold the record for more appearances than any other New York artist in magazines and hold the record for consecutive covers and issues. He has set sell out records at many of the venues he performs at and enjoys enormous radio and tv success. Tom provides an astonishing number of background music selections for the E Channel, TBS, ESPN Sports, the Oxygen Network, Spike TV and much more. His music has been used in the theatrical movie releases such as Evil Streets, Man in The Window, Losing It, Graduation, Inside Outside, Competition Kills and so many more. His previous bands have had no shortage of success either. While in Wardance Tom and his band mates won several prestigious music awards, had international radio success, appeared on countless TV shows worldwide and released three albums and a some DVDs. Wardance set a record for appearing on more covers and issues of magazines consecutively only to later be beaten by Tom Cavanagh himself. Tom's instrumental band The Sons of Infinity released two albums that are still huge sellers today ten years after their release. The band band provided music for several theater released movies and appeared regularly on TV and in magazines around the globe. Tom Cavanagh's two years in Rhino Caravan was more rewarding then some bands entire forty year career. Rhino Caravan managed to release two full length records, one full length Irish music cd, two Christmas albums and four E.P.'s. The band broke attendance records at the biggest New York and Long Island clubs and theaters, had numerous TV appearances, incredible radio success and won the hearts of acoustic based folk pop rock enthusiasts internationally. Additional bands Tom has performed, recorded and toured with in the past are The Hasbro's, Garlic, Blackout, The Mess, Double Dare, Blues Abstract, Shock Treatment. UR Group II, The Hank Lane Orchestra, Opus Forte, The Threetles (The Beatles Tribute) Eat'em and Smile (The David Lee Roth Tribute), Sweetspot, Pet Project and Surprise Surprise. Recently Tom's big thrill was to perform with legendary Twisted Sister guitarist Eddie "Fingers" Ojeda's solo band as the second guitarist. Tom has been the sideman and music director to bass legend Jerry Jemmott (Aretha Franklin and BB King) and bass master Jerry Rizzi. Tom's session work includes performing on over two hundred commercially released records, radio ads for Honda, Oreck Vacuums, Cadillac, Together, The Downtown, The Bunnery, Nassau and Suffolk county fairs and so many more. Recently Tom was honored to be asked to sing with Twisted Sister's Dee Snider and Mark Mendoza to provide and even arrange the background vocals and harmonies for Jesse Blaze Snider's new record with Baptized by Fire. For two years Tom played a lead role and the bass in the off broadway and traveling production of The Fab Four which was a play about the early years of The Beatles. This brief acting period was followed by appearances in several indy films and even some modeling for clothes and hats that were displayed in the thousands of retail stores including the Hot Topic stores coast to coast. Tom Cavanagh is a graduate from Five Town's College of Music and has degrees, awards, certificates and certification in Music Performance, Composition, Jazz Commercial Music, Music Theory, Music History, Music Education, Music Business and Ethnomusicology. He has taught and colleges, High Schools and Middle Schools on Long Island is often an Adjunct Professor and guest speaker at some of New York's top schools. He teaches private lessons when available and continues to do master classes and guitar clinics. The ability for Tom to switch gears so drastically is astounding to audiences and critics. As one critic wrote "one must ponder that a warehouse exists somewhere and there are multiple clones of Tom Cavanagh bred for the sole purpose of each act he plays with and delivered to each gig accordingly".-Put to paper by Burkland WestORDER CDS AT: http://cdbaby.com/cd/tcavanagh2 http://cdbaby.com/cd/tcavanagh http://cdbaby.com/cd/bentpussycat http://www.bentpussycatrecords.com