A remembrance of T. C. Sweeney, by Rick Clogston
Thomas Christopher Sweeney, Jr. was born on July 30, 1955. His father was a Master Sergeant in the Army National Guard. By the age of 17, both of his parents had passed away, and both of his sisters were married and moved out of the area. He was on his own.
Thomas Christopher Sweeney, Jr. was born on July 30, 1955. His father was a Master Sergeant in the Army National Guard. By the age of 17, both of his parents had passed away, and both of his sisters were married and moved out of the area. He was on his own.
A pivotal moment in his life had already taken place. At the age of 14, he and the band he was in played for an audience of roughly 5000 people at the town of Ashland, NH’s bicentennial celebration. He never forgot it, and always hungered to get back in front of a big audience again.
Most people knew him as Tom. He had been introduced to me as Chris. But, he preferred being introduced on stage as T. C., so that is how I will refer to him here. Playing music was his world, to the exclusion of just about everything else. He never married, never had children, never owned a home, or did much of anything else that most people have done by the time they reach their mid-40’s. All he wanted to do was write and play music.
It would be easy to think that he had no friends, but once you got to know him it was easy to see that this was not the case at all. He had a lot of friends, most of who relied on him heavily. I cannot say that I was his best friend, because I know a lot of people who might also qualify for that honor. I can say, though, that he was mine. He supported and encouraged me for a lot of years. He was there when I needed him, and I tried to be all the same for him. We would pump each other up when it seemed that no one else in the world cared about our music or us.
A core group that came to be known as V8 did most of the recordings on this disc. In this band TC played bass, I was on guitar and lead vocals, and Jim “BoHammer” Kelly was the drummer. TC could play guitar, keyboards, sang fairly well, and could get around all right on drums, but with this group he was the bass player.
Unlike a lot of people with his level of talent, he shunned the spotlight. It wasn’t from lack of confidence, or stage fright, or any of that. He simply knew his limitations. He was not a front man, and yet he was a great field general. He usually had a wireless on his instrument so he could cruise around the room, checking the sound. He was always the first to arrive for a gig, and the last to leave. He spent the better part of thirty years in the ‘bar band wars’ and knew all the tricks.
What he most wanted to do was play original music. He wasn’t the best songwriter ever, but he was good, and he knew it. Again, he was fully aware of his limitations. He could have played and sang all the parts, but instead reached out and pulled in people he trusted. Kelly was always his drummer of choice, although producer Bryce Chicoinne laid down some drum tracks for these sessions that TC felt were worthy of inclusion. He asked me to come in on lead guitar and vocals, and I was given complete freedom to at least try anything I felt like trying.
He would get frustrated with any band that didn’t want to make the effort to play originals. He would leave, or get kicked out of, quite a few very good, very successful bands over the years because of his insistence that they record. By 1992, he had come to the conclusion that the only way it was ever going to get done would be if he did it himself. I remember that a lot of musicians that knew TC laughed about it, and thought he was crazy. Apparently, they didn’t know him as well as Kelly and I.
TC didn’t have a driver’s license or a car at the time, so he would ride from his home in Plymouth with either Kelly or myself to BCM Studios in Claremont, NH for the sessions. He usually went over about once a week on the average. He and Kelly would go and lay down drum tracks, and sometimes scratch vocals and guitar. Later, he and I would go and put down my parts. Sometimes he would work with a click track, and Bryce would later lay down drums, most of the time to be replaced by Kelly. In this fashion the songs got velcroed together.
We started with Rainbow’s End, with me putting down vocals and the solo alongside what had already been done with his previous band, Driver. The original idea was to do a couple songs, but they went so well that we just kept going. TC, Kelly and I hadn’t even been in the same room together until we landed a gig as V8 near the end of the sessions. With no rehearsal, not even a sound check, we played for a party as the opening act to a Grateful Dead tribute act. We played everything from the Ricochet sessions, and pulled whatever covers we could think of out of our hats, and it went over big. A band was born.
Unfortunately, it was about that time that Jim Kelly and his family decided to move to Ohio, where they live today. TC and I found a drummer and bass player and performed once as a four-piece version of V8, but that was all. A few years later TC moved out to Ohio and tried to put a band together with Kelly. I went out for a week in 1997 and we did a V8 reunion performance. Soon after, TC returned to NH.
In 1999, TC called me and asked if I’d like to play in a pick-up band with him and Lisa Egan, the co-writer and original vocalist on Rainbow’s End. We called ourselves The Flexibles. Due to circumstances beyond her control Lisa was unable to continue, but TC and I soldiered on with a succession of drummers. Al Boucher took the seat for a while. Finally, we met up with Bill Joyner, and the job was his.
He was as anxious as we were to do original material, and liked the concept we had for the group. How TC and I saw it was actually as two bands. The Flexibles was a bar band that played covers for money. The other band would play and record original music. We never really settled on a name for that side of the group, but the one time we played as an all-originals band we called ourselves SDG. By the end of 2001 it looked like we were finally in a position to do everything we wanted.
On New Year’s Eve, 2001-02, The Flexibles played what we all agreed was one of our best performances at the Bridgewater Inn, in Bridgewater, NH. We were scheduled to play there again the following Saturday night, the 4th. The B. I. had been our home base from the beginning, and was our favorite place to play. Come Saturday, I showed up with half of the equipment about 4:00, and Bill arrived with his drums shortly thereafter. By 6:30 we had set up all our gear and had dinner, and still no TC. The plan was that, since I was coming from work, he would go to my house and pick up what wouldn’t fit in my car, and meet us there. He was always the first to arrive.
As he didn’t have a phone, we decided that I would go home and get the rest of the gear, and Bill would go to TC’s house and see if he’d slept in. My wife and I loaded the car and I was just about to leave when the phone rang. It was Bill on his cell phone. He had knocked on the door of TC’s apartment and got no answer. He went upstairs and got the landlord to let him in with an extra key. TC was lying on the floor, dead from a heart attack. He was 46 years old.
TC’s sisters and their families handled the funeral arrangements, but the place was packed with all his friends. The family very graciously allowed me to have his papers and recordings, and said I could put this little package together. It’s been such a difficult task for me that it’s been over four years in the making, but finally, here it is.
If you knew TC, I have no doubt that you still miss him. If you didn’t, then I hope you enjoy this exposure to a simply lovely guy. He was an inspiration to me. I have never known anybody in my life that was so totally dedicated to his vision. Even he would agree, a little too dedicated. I remember him telling me once that the reason he never married was that it would be unfair to any woman to make her go through it with him. He had a dream, and he followed it, and he never wavered.
He was the night porter at the Ashland, NH Burger King. Night janitor, basically. He drove a ten-year-old Dodge minivan that barely ran. He lived alone in a small, one-room apartment in the basement of a house on a back road. All his spare money went to buy musical equipment. He had a set-up that you could have used to play the Fleet Center in Boston. He lived on coca-cola, Tylenol PM, and whatever food passed in front of him. It would be easy to look at all that and declare him a failure. A loser.
But the TC Sweeney I knew was no loser. He was one of the best, most versatile musicians I’ve ever known. He was talented and humble at the same time, and how often do you find that particular combination? And whatever talent he lacked, he made up for with hard work and determination. He was generous, both artistically and personally. He freely gave of his time, energy, and possessions to whoever needed them.
I should warn you that he was not satisfied with these recordings as you hear them now. He wanted the drums to sound like they did on the early Heart albums, for one thing. I have to admit, a lot of it’s pretty rough. As time went by, he was determined not to let these recordings ever see the light of day, intending to re-do them. Unfortunately, that is no longer an option. What you’ve got is all there is. I hope you enjoy it. It is a life’s work, and a labor of love.
Rick Clogston, Warren, NH, April 15, 2006
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Postscript: Easter Sunday, 4/8/07
It's been almost a year since writing what you see above. The original intention for this, and everything I've posted here, was for it to be part of an enhanced CD that included the Ricochet Project sessions. Unfortunately, there were problems with putting the files on the CD, so I've put all that stuff here.
If you don't have the CD, and you want a copy, get hold of me and I can probably arrange it. It includes a lot of files that worked just fine in that format, including copies of every photo of TC I could get my hands on. And, the music's damn good, if you ask me.
If you're one of his many friends, please leave a comment. Especially if I got something wrong! I'm hoping this will become a place where the people who miss TC Sweeney can get together. So, have fun, and remember a good friend with me.
Rick
