Tommy Walter

Tommy Walter breaks from the eels to pursue creative outlet in Abandoned Pools
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Tommy Walter has just returned from Japan where the surreal is a common occurrence and the bizarre is just another day on the island.Walter experienced it firsthand on his very first trip to the Land of the Rising Sun with his new band, Abandoned Pools, to play material from his recently released album, Humanistic.

"We played for the prime minister of Japan, and that was kind of strange," says Walter a little incredulously, still jetlagged from his return.
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"Fine with me," says Walter with a laugh.

Walter may be selling his own fame slightly short in handing all the credit for the Tokyo crowds to the head of his label.Walter himself has a fairly potent claim to notoriety already as one of the founders of the hugely popular eels, whose album Beautiful Freak was the first release on the fledgling DreamWorks label in 1996; the single "Novocaine for the Soul" became one of the biggest Alternative radio hits of the year.Working with singer/songwriter Mark Everett, better known as E, in eels proved to be problematic for Walter, who was looking for ways to express himself creatively, something that E did not encourage within the context of what he considered his band.

"I got into eels through a friend of a friend of a friend scenario," says Walter.
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Because of the stifling creative atmosphere, Walter left eels after the first album and subsequent tours.For a few post-eels months, Walter worked with a new band, Metromax, but nothing real developed from the association and he broke it up.
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Walter is used to working well outside the standard structure of convention.The son of a Canadian fighter pilot and his stewardess wife, Walter showed considerable musical promise at an early age, learning to play electric bass as a grade schooler and mastering the French horn after high school.Walter's classical training continued at USC where he ultimately switched his major to composition after running afoul of the politics of musical academia.

After a stint at University of Pacific in Stockton as both student and teacher, Walter gravitated toward the SoCal Pop Rock scene, where he honed his bass-and-vocal chops with a band called Mrs. God, which led him to open mic night at the Mint in L.A. where he met E and drummer Butch Norton and eels coalesced.

Upon his departure from eels, Walter set out to define his artistic strengths by making something that was creatively satisfying and still universally appealing.The songs that began to emerge from this period were personal statements that addressed his family issues as well as creative manifestos that represented his musical experiences to that point.

"I wrote a lot of songs and the ones that sort of came out working were the ones that I wasn't trying too hard on," says Walter.
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One of the problems involved with taking Abandoned Pools on the road was that the band is essentially Walter himself.With a few connections and a little help, Walter was able to assemble a terrific band to present his truly solo project -- Bryan Head on drums, former Hole bassist Leah Randi, and guitarist Pelle Hillstrom.
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"They're a great band," says Walter glowingly."We're a diverse group.
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"I think it's tough enough to make your own record, and write your own songs, and sing everything," says Walter."You're putting yourself out on the line much more in that situation.If you go with Tommy Walter, then it's so much more you.It's already about me. So when you call it Tommy Walter, and then you show up and you're like, 'Hi, I'm ... the guy.
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"I liked the imagery, I thought it was kind of poetic," says Walter.

Multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter Tommy Walter goes by the alias of Abandoned Pools.Growing up as the son of a former World War II bomber pilot for the Canadian Air Force, Walter picked up a bass guitar in grade school and was classically trained on the French horn shortly after high school.After attending South Cal University, Walter enrolled at the University of Pacific in Stockton, CA, where he studied and taught music theory (and such early 20th century, 12-tone and modal composers like Schoenberg, Bartók, and Stravinsky).But teaching didn't fulfill his desire to play rock music, as he sought other similar-minded musicians in the vast L.A. pop/rock scene.

One evening at an open mic night at a Los Angeles club, Walter happened to meet another singer/songwriter, E, resulting in a partnership shortly thereafter.
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Tommy Walter - Instrumentation, Producer, Programming

Tommy Walter and Abandoned Pools, playing in Virginia Aug. 5, head to Houston Aug. 17 with Lenny Kravitz and Pink.
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Riding the wave of a richly textured debut album, Humanistic, the band (guitarist/singer Tommy Walter, drummer Bryan Head, bassist Leah Randi, guitarist Luke Tierney) has spent much of this year on the road.
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The driving force behind Abandoned Pools is Walter, the band's founder and a spirited frontman who puts the jolt in the Pools' music.

Raised in Westlake Village, near Los Angeles, Walter began his rock music career as the bass player for the eclectic rock band Eels.He worked with the band on its first album, and then decided to strike out on his own.He felt confident about his chances, but knew it was a big step.

"When I left the Eels, I was like all gung-ho," says Walter."And I'm like 'I'm going to make this happen, I'm going to go out and do this for myself, I know I can do it.' And I met the people who were doing it, and I was like 'if they can do it I can do it.' So, then I was like saying to myself, that being said, 'you still have to learn how to sing and write songs.'"

A graduate of the University of Southern California and a one-time post-graduate music student at the University of Pacific in Stockton, Calif., Walter has a well-trained ear for music and knack for interpreting complicated arrangements -- talents that served him well on the Pools' first album.

Humanistic, features a blend of intricately layered songs and torrent rock tunes punctuated by Walter's honest, yet often biting lyrics.The opening number, The Remedy, sets the album's tone with an impish poke at his former band's first radio hit, while the following tracks tackle social pretense and deceit, with a few jabs at rock stardom to boot.

Not exactly the easiest numbers to perform live, the band nevertheless pulls them off beautifully with dauntless energy.

"For the most part we do recreate the record," says Walter."Remedy has the backing tracks.We do use tracks, but I just didn't want to be so dependent on them that if the tracks went down we'd be totally screwed.And then there's a lot of stuff that's just basically straight-ahead rock, and that's is easy to recreate.We just sort of had to strike that balance.We do change some things, but for the most part it's like recreating the record."

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Although busy with touring, Walter has found time to start work on the next Abandoned Pool's album -- with the assistance of his laptop computer.

"We just got a deal to release the record in the UK, and we're working on a deal to release it in New Zealand and Australia.So we might go do that," says Walter."But in the meantime, because recent technological advances, I can sit on the back of the bus with my Macintosh iBook and record the next record.I have an onboard sampler and I've been grabbing drum loops and throwing stuff together.So, I'm doing all sorts of fun stuff back there.

"There's this theme song I did for this new MTV show that's going to come out in the fall.I did it while on the back of the bus on the Garbage tour.

Abandoned Pools is the performing name of Tommy Walter, a former student and teacher at the University of the Pacific.

Tickets ($17.50) are on sale now at tickets.com and Music Go Round outlets for the

June 16 concert at John Thurman Field.Doors are scheduled to open at 10 a.m., with music starting sometime before noon.

Multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter Tommy Walter goes by the alias Abandoned Pools.Walter picked up his first bass guitar in grade school and was classically trained on the French horn shortly after high school.He began his career studying and teaching music theory at the University of Pacific in Stockton, California.When his desire to play rock music wasn't fulfilled in teaching, he sought other similar-minded musicians in the L.A. pop/rock scene.

Walter started out with the trio the Eels.Despite moderate success on their debut album in 1996, he left the group by the time they began writing their second album.He began writing and recording his own original material when he left the Eels and signed a record label deal.

Under the moniker Abandoned Pools, he issued a debut album, Humanistic, in September 2001.