• Eskimo Multicultural without the Culti
• Ebola Soup Vehicular-mammalslaughtercore
• Vaccination Records East Bay Record Label Vortex (Eskimo, etc)
• Clubfoot Orchestra Silent film and loud music
• Herb Andy Kaufman meets Hugh Hefner, with plenty of horns.
• Tom Yoder's Home Page

"I wanted to make that SOUND"

I've been strongly affected by sound and music for as long as I can remember. I started to play the Trombone after a sound came into my head as I drifted into sleep.

I wanted to make that sound. I was seized. That was 26 years ago.

I played all through school and the summers too. Indoors, outdoors, concert halls, closets, daytime or 4 am. I played so much I got a degree, but along the way I forgot about the sound.

I was a Jazz musician until I realized I'd never create an original jazz document. All around me, creative people were forming weird rock bands and decorating the void by their own rules. I started listening to Jimi Hendrix, Minutemen, Sonic Youth. Eventually I remembered the sound, remembered why I was playing. I joined Wrestling Worms. That was, I think, 1986.

Now I play in Eskimo, Clubfoot Orchestra, Herb, Ebola Soup, Suicide Clutch. In Eskimo and Ebola I get to put the Trombone to work in a rock band. Clubfoot is a boisterous chamber group free of classical dogma. Suicide Clutch is a 10-minute mechanically timed improv duo (with drummer Mic Gendreau) concluding with a small explosive detonation. Herb is a Herb Alpert cover band. I also play in local salsa bands and record for other bands now and again.

I play because I love making the sound or being a part of it, and because it stops my brain. Sometimes I go into trance, everything works without knowing anything, I receive irrefutable evidence that there is something else beyond, and I'm still OK to drive home.