After many years spent in Europe, after so many gigs and shows, after giving so many bass lessons, and after mixing audio at so many events, I got a call from my youngest sister in New York. She was calling me in the city of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where I was living at the time. My sister dropped many hints on me during that particular phone conversation, and at long last I finally figured out that she was trying to tell me that she was pregnant with a new child. Now me, I will follow my youngest sister just about anywhere in the world. She said to me over the phone that day, “I need your help; I have my six-year-old son, my husband, and our elderly father to take care of at the same time. It’s a bit much; could you come here and help me out for a while?” As it seemed the proper time for me to leave Europe, the gigs were getting harder to come by and the money had all changed over to the monetary standard called the Euro, I went on ahead and made my way back to the U.S. in March of 2003.
When I arrived, I was in Newark, New Jersey. My sister and my brother-in-law came to the airport to pick me up. It was strange entering the U.S. once again, the terrible tragedy of September 11, 2001 had happened roughly a year and a half earlier, and there was still a lot of tension at the airport by the authorities as well as a lot of police and military presence at the bridges that we needed to cross to make our way out to Long Island where my sister and her husband lived.
After we had arrived at the house, I began my new life in the U.S. once again. I had been playing a lot of gigs and shows in The Netherlands, as well as Europe itself, and I began to look around and ask around for a new gig to play bass at. I had only been back a couple of weeks when one day my sister and my brother-in-law spoke to me about a married couple who lived just down the street from them, easily within walking distance from their house. “They have a recording studio in their basement, and they have been making music there for a while” my sister told me. I said to her that I was interested in meeting them, and so she arranged a meeting and a day or two later I walked down to their house from my sister’s house. I rang the doorbell, and a tall man came to the door and introduced himself as Tom Chappell. He asked me to come inside and then I met his wife, Trish Chappell. They were a beautiful couple; they both wrote songs and lyrics for all of the original music that they composed.
Tom sang and played the drums, as well as some keyboards, and his wife Trish was a singer. They had not only been in different bands on Long Island, but they had started their own group, led by both of them, and called it TN’T which stood for Trish and Tom. “Come downstairs to the studio and check it out” said Tom, as I followed him and Trish down to the studio they had set up. It was a Pro Tools based audio recording system that was residing inside of a powerful Apple computer, and Tom had all of the trappings and peripherals to connect microphones and many other outboard devices to the system and record them. I was very impressed as they played back their recordings from their first release as a couple; it was titled “Sweet Like Honey”. The sound was many things all at once to me. It was soulful, but funky; it was smooth, but the music had a grit all its own.
“Your sister told me that you play the bass Jerome, do you have one here?” asked Tom. I said yes, I do have one here. I then told them about my musical life as a bassist, and my many travels around the world as a musician and a technician. We hit it off as people, all three of us. I really liked their kindness, how very bright they were, and how dedicated they were to their music. More conversation that evening led to setting up recording dates in their basement studio. I began to show up with my bass at their studio in the late afternoon and stayed until the late night and early mornings to get some good bass parts down on the hard drive. Tom had been spending time coming up with bass lines on his various keyboards for me to listen to. I would then replace the keyboard bass parts with my bass guitar; we worked really well together developing the parts for each song.
On a couple of the songs, Tom had not come up with any bass lines yet, so he asked me to bring about some new bass parts from scratch, something that I love to do for brand new songs. As we continued to work together on their music during that summer of 2003, I found that I had made some new friends, and I was grateful to have both of them in my life.
The record that we were making was eventually titled “Something Good”. Tom had also teamed up with one of New York’s finest artists; the late great Ray Reid from the fabulous band Crown Heights Affair came in on the recording project for “Something Good” and produced a couple of its songs. I finished my bass parts for the remainder of “Something Good” once I had moved away from Long Island to Las Vegas, Nevada in the autumn of 2003. I would receive a new song template from Tom on Long Island, upload it to my recording program at home in Las Vegas, record my bass parts, and then render the audio file to match Tom’s computer operating system requirements. We got very good at this, and we became very effective with it too.
“Something Good” was released in 2006, and was met with critical acclaim, and a lot of new fans for TN’T were gained through that CD release. It was heralded by Bob Davis at Soul_Patrol dot com as one of the top ten releases of 2006 in the Nu-Soul category. To be well received by the public is an honor indeed.
Of course I listened to the music that I, Tom and Trish had made. Over and over, I listened to it, I liked it very much. But one thing that I began to notice about the recordings was Trish’s great singing voice. It is very special. There was something else great about her voice that I searched for in my mind for a while. Then it hit me one day; it was her uncanny ability to sing such great sub-hooks in the songs. You know, a tasty memorable short melody or saying that is sung within the framework of the song that seemingly becomes strong enough to be considered the song’s title by the listener. I was so taken aback by Trish’s ability to do this as she recorded her vocal parts. After a couple of years had gone by, I got the chance to ask Trish over the phone how she did that during her recordings. Was she thinking of this in advance of the music I wondered? Trish said to me that she actually was not thinking of developing those types of vocal hooks in the songs in advance, she said that she would really feel the spirit and vibes of the song and allow it to guide her musical and emotional state during her recordings.
I was glad that Trish had told me what was going on in her mind as she recorded her vocal parts. I continued to listen to “Something Good” for a couple of years more, and then I heard from Tom on the phone that he and Trish had started a new recording project. This time, I did all of my bass parts for the new CD entirely from Las Vegas and then sent the audio files containing my bass parts over the internet to Tom. He would then upload the audio files containing the bass parts that I’d sent him into his recording project. We worked together for a couple of more years this way of developing the music. Tom and Trish would record some scratch vocals as they went along with their projects, but the final vocals that they would record would come mostly toward the end of the recording process, when most of the music was already in place.
The new CD was titled “Don’t Let Go” and was released in the summer of 2014, and it too garnered positive critical and fan reviews. And once again I was taken aback by the vocal parts that Trish had recorded. She maintained her knack of being able to sing sub-hooks into the songs that made it seem as though what she was singing was the song’s actual title. So amazing to me what she sang onto the recordings.
Leading up to the release of the CD “Don’t Let Go”, TN’T did many live performances in the New York City area. Among the notable shows they did, the performances at the Sugar Bar in Manhattan where they brought a full live band were truly standout to all those in attendance. You see, the Sugar Bar in Manhattan is owned by the late Nick Ashford and his wife Valerie Simpson, a couple of the greatest songwriters and singers in the history of the music industry.
Tom told me on the phone one day that he found the crowd’s reaction to TN’T’s performances there somewhat amusing, because of the obvious comparisons that people were trying to make between theirs and Nick and Valerie’s accomplishments. While they were kind comparisons, I knew that Tom and Trish had established something new for the listeners, something fresh for those in love with the soul music of yore but still hungering for the new and modern soul music. Trish and Tom not only delivered this new and fresh soul music to the masses but gave the listener something to think about as well. Life, and its ups and downs were included in TN’T’s songs; their lyrics spoke of the things in life that so many of us go through daily as people. They sang also of hope, and they sang of love and togetherness. They had heart and soul as people, and that heart and soul found its way into their music.
I speak glowingly of this wonderful couple; I love them very much. We do our best as artists to give our best each and every moment that we have to share our craft with other great artists. I cherished the time that I had spent on Long Island with Tom and Trish, and I always enjoyed what we had created as artists and musicians. Sadly, Trish Chappell passed away in May of 2016, and much too soon for all of us who loved her. She was a kind and beautiful lady to all that she had met in life. My life is better for her having been in it, and I will always remember her smile and laugh; it could always light up any room. As artists and as people, we realize that the people that we love in our lives are there for but a season, and that we should embrace the people that we love in our lives as often as we can. Rest In Peace Trish Chappell, you are loved and missed by me and many others. Namaste.