Tom Howard

Saturday 1/30/2010 I was awakened by a phone call from my longtime and close friend RJ (A.K.A. Bobby Emmons) He told me the news of Tom Howard's passing the day before. Sadly I ponder the meaning of life and reminisce about the only time I worked with Tom. He was in New York for some reason that eludes me right now. He traveled to Central Jersey to visit Bobby and do some work on a Crosstones song in my studio. It has been said time and time again he had a wonderful touch on the piano and my experience with him bears that out. He added a wonderful piano track to the previously recorded Crosstones song "Be Careful" and to their cover of the sixties hit "I Love You" written by Chris White of "The Zombies" and successfully covered by "People" which already had original member, Larry Norman singing with Bobby. After we finished those tracks we took a little time to jam on a blues based progression that I had written. The players were: Bobby Emmons; Bsss guitar, Neil Passanello; drums, Tom Howard; piano and my self; guitar. In yet another an exhibition of poor judgement I chose not record that track. It had some peculiar changes and Tom picked them up immediately and began embellishing the song with terrific piano parts. Regretfully, that track has been lost forever but the memory remains. We all believed that Tom would return someday and we would do a real take of this song. The song may get recorded but it will never sound as good to me as it did that day. Fortunately, all is not lost as Tom will live on through his performances on so many projects and of course his own works. I wish I had gotten to know him better because he seemed to be a genuinely nice guy. That type of person is so rare today. I want to thank my close freind "RJ" for providing the photograph of himself and Tom below. If anyone reading this can provide me with some additional photographs of Tom that I could put on this page I would deeply indebted to you.