The DUSK Issue: tommy oeffling
Words & Photos by Oliver Gerharz
Tom’s music is blowing up, but he doesn’t know why.
It’s not like he advertises his music. Hell, he wants to be a teacher. His best guess as to his recent success is that it might be a matter of algorithms. Sometimes people tell him that his music is nostalgic, but he doesn’t see it that way. “People who are older say that it’s nostalgic, and I think it might be nostalgic for them because it's me just writing about being 20,” Tom said, “but to me it’s not nostalgic, cause I’m 20.”
The nostalgia baked into Tom’s music, with its echoing guitar and far-off vocals, is only a part of what makes each song work so well. The rest comes from the way Tom imprints his personality and youth onto each track. Tom said that “liquor license,” a song off his new album, is the most “college” song he’s ever written. “That song is just about me and my friends. There's references to conversations we’ve had, there’s references to bars that we go to. One of the first things is just about the balcony we have here, because over the summer we’d always hang out there,” Tom said.
If Tom’s music is genuine, then talking to Tom is certified. After I parked behind his apartment building, Tom let me up into the apartment he and his closest friends share. When he was a student at Marquette, Tom’s dad lived in the same apartment as Tom does now – Tom’s landlord is even the son of his father’s landlord. The kitchen sags a bit, and the oil comes forward in the pan in the same way it did back then. When I got to the kitchen, Tom was in the middle of cooking what he describes as a “riff on shrimp sambuca” for the both of us. Cooking is a huge part of Tom’s life. “I always try to set aside time to cook – if I don’t cook at least once a day I feel weird,” Tom said.
After we finished lunch, the two of us sat down to talk in Tom’s living room, which Tom had been allowed to clutter with instruments for the absence of his roommates during Marquette’s winter break. As I was setting up my recording equipment, Tom pulled up an old French film on the TV, something he said he often does when working out of the living room.
Tom’s first “album,” which he released at age 7, sits on a CD somewhere in his basement. His first real album was something he made in middle school, but Tom said that when he first made the album he “wouldn’t put it out anywhere because [he] was terrified.” That terror kept Tom in a musician’s limbo until he was a junior in high school. “I was just like ‘I need to put this out,’ but I was still too scared to sing – so my first thing I ever put out on streaming was just piano.”
Tom is a busy guy. As a student at Marquette, Tom is juggling multiple majors, minors and jobs. Despite all he has going on, Tom said that “the music just finds a way to happen somehow.” “I’m always thinking about lyrics, or different chords, or different songs that I want to rip off,” Tom said.
I was a little shocked at the way Tom was calling his own music a ripoff, so I asked him why he uses that term in that way. He described it like this: “you take a short thing from another song that you like and then just try to expand it into your own thing.” Tom said his favorite artists to rip off (and favorite artists in general) are Mk.gee, MJ Lenderman and Pavement.
That kind of music taste comes from Tom being “blessed with public school teacher, NPR, indie-rock listening parents.” Tom said that he knows his parents “sounds really pretentious,” but said “the best thing is – they’re not.” They got Tom a drum kit when he was only four years old, which is patient parenting considering that 4-year-olds are generally pretty shit at the drums.
Though Tom’s parents aren’t pretentious, there are plenty of other musicians who are. Tom said he doesn’t like pretentious people, but also that being corny is unavoidable. As an indie rocker, Tom’s music is powered by how aware he is of his own corn levels. That awareness will be as important as ever on Tom’s next project, an indie rock opera.
Tom introduced this project to me with his doubts. “There is no reason to have a three part song,” Tom said, “what am I doing right now?” Yet the sneak peek that Tom gave me of ryan on the corner part 2 was magical. I don’t want to spoil too much of what makes this upcoming release so fun, but I thought that it really embodied the nostalgia of Tom’s other music, feeling like a montage of the things that make Tom’s music great.
“Borderline the music I’m working on right now, it’s an indie rock opera. I’m trying to make an unpretentious rock opera,” Tom said, “which is impossible.”
Despite his ambitious music goals, Tom actually aspires to follow his parent’s footsteps as a teacher. Tom is dedicated to that goal – his studies all work towards it – but the idea of “going all in” on music has its appeals. “I might tour this summer, but this has always been a hobby for me,” Tom said, “I think if I was more all-in on it I’d be a lot more insufferable to be around. My heart is not fully in music at this point in my life.” But if touring goes well, Tom says he “might have to reconsider,” even though he doesn’t want to drop out of college.
“If you go all in on anything, inherently you have to focus less on other parts of your life,” Tom said, “and there’s a lot of parts of my life where I think I’m at a point where I need to focus more on them than music.”
Towards the end of our discussion, Tom and I started to talk about the French film on the TV. Tom said that, like the movie that had been playing, his favorite stories were less formulated. In a way, that idea extends to the music Tom makes. “Maybe I just don’t like ambition,” Tom said, “but I also really just like honesty too.”
That honesty manifests in another core value of Tom’s, “be yourself,” which chiefly means no gimmicks. Tom said he dislikes when musicians aura farm or crack corny jokes between songs. “If a gimmick isn’t done correctly, you can hide yourself behind the gimmick,” Tom said, “it’s cool if you just get out there and play.”
“I like music that’s honest, just people that like doing it being honest about who they are in the music that they want to make.”
Yet despite his distaste for the corn, Tom has a gimmick of his own – his branding. Tom releases music under the name tommy oeffling, but hasn’t gone by tommy since high school – he switched over not long after he started releasing music. Early on he wanted to make the switch over to Tom, but didn’t since he’d lose his streaming statistics. Now he figures it’s too late to change it.
The other gimmick of Tom’s brand is the all–lowercase everything. In high school Tom typed everything in either all caps or all lowercase. He said it was “because [he] was pretentious at the time and trying to be artsy and it just stuck.” Though he continues to write all of his notes for class in a uniform letter case, he said he thinks he won’t publish his next album with this part of his brand.
Tom’s impending rebrand reminds me of what he said about “coming out as a musician” in high school. The tension between the comfort of his present situation and the side of himself that he doesn’t put out there as much is coming to the surface again. Either way, with his dedication to being himself, I’m expecting nothing but the best from Tom.
When I asked Tom what he was most proud of, Tom said that when he was with his friends in Indiana he improvised a really good pasta. I was expecting something musical, but the legendary “Pasta a la Tom” really was worth it when Elijah and I made it in the EMMIE kitchen. But in terms of pride in his music, Tom said that his favorite work was the stuff he does in collaboration with other people, or with the bands he’s in.
