Tommy Funderburk
Encyclopedia
Tommy Funderburk is an American rock and roll
singer. He has recorded with artists such as Jon Anderson
, Laura Branigan
, Coverdale-Page
, Melissa Manchester
, Magnum
, Mötley Crüe
, Steve Lukather
, Richard Marx
, Rick Springfield
, Starship, REO Speedwagon
, Whitesnake
, Yes
and many others.
Funderburk was born in North Carolina and grew up in the south. His favorite music included The Beatles, all kinds of R&B, soul and Gospel. In college, he played in a band he and some friends started called Sanctuary. He studied to be a high school history teacher and recorded jingles at a local studio. The band once opened for Andrae Crouch. Crouch and his drummer were impressed by the young singer and encouraged Tommy to come to L.A.
Funderburk sold everything he had and moved to L.A. where he met someone from Earth, Wind and Fire. He was introduced to David Foster
(who was producing the EW&F album I Am
) and Jay Graydon
, who were looking for a singer for their project Airplay
. The role soon fell to Funderburk.
In the early '80s he met drummer Bob Wilson from the group Seawind
, and in 1984 they formed The Front. The Front recorded a self-titled album, followed by a U.S tour and a European tour the following year. On the European tour the line-up was Funderburk on vocals, Wilson on drums, Seawind alums Buddy Nuanez and Ken Wild on bass and guitar, and John Andrew Schreiner on keyboards.
In 1986 Tommy Funderburk did the lead vocals on a track called "Never Too Late To Start" for the movie soundtrack "Running Scared". Funderburk also participated on an album entitled Voices with a song called "Lift up My Voice". In 1987 Wilson and Funderburk reformed their band, brought in yet another former Seawind member, Larry Williams, on keyboards
and saxophone
, changed the band's name to What If, and released a self-titled album on RCA
. This album also featured blazing guitar work from Michael Landau
.
Apart from fronting bands and doing sessions Tommy has also written songs for other artists including Starship. In 1989 the song "It's Not Enough" (from the Starship album Love Among the Cannibals), performed by Starship and written by Tommy Funderburk and Martin Page, reached #12 on the Billboard chart.
In 1988 Funderburk met Bruce Gaitsch
at a recording session with Richard Marx (Gaitsch and Marx were looking for a singer that could sing even higher than Richard Marx). Gaitsch and Funderburk decided to write some songs together. The first song they wrote, "King of Hearts", was as a tribute to Roy Orbison
that was later going to be included on the King of Hearts album and also became the name of the band. Apart from Funderburk and Gaitsch the band included Night Ranger
's Kelly Keaggy on drums
and vocals, and George Hawkins on vocals and bass. King of Hearts were signed to Polygram, but for some reason Polygram never released any of their material. The songs from these sessions were finally released ten years later by a Japanese record company on an album entitled "1989".
Some of the songs from the King of Hearts sessions were later re-mixed and together with some new songs their first album was finally released in 1994 in Sweden
, Japan
and Germany
- although now with the actual band King of Hearts only consisting of Tommy Funderburk and Bruce Gaitsch. On the successive tour the King of Hearts lineup was Funderburk and Gaitsch together with David Miner
on bass, Bill Cantos on keyboards and Billy Ward on drums - the band spent one week touring Japan and another week in Sweden.
In 1995 Tommy Funderburk and bassist David Miner, who Funderburk had known since the days of Andrae Crouch, recorded and released an acoustic collection of songs entitled The Dwelling Place. The album included a mix of classic hymn
s and songs originally written to be used for worship at the Malibu Vineyard Church where he was a worship leader at the time. In 1996 Tommy Funderburk and Bruce Gaitsch recorded a follow-up to the first King of Hearts album called Joy Will Come, that was released during the Autumn 1996 in Sweden, Germany and Japan. In December 1997, Thoughtscape released a King of Hearts compilation CD called No Matter What, likely to be their last recording.
In 1998 Tommy recorded an a cappella album with the vocal group West Coast All Stars (featuring Funderburk, Chicago's Jason Scheff, Bobby Kimball from Toto and Joseph Williams former Toto) entitled Naturally. The album contains a cappella versions of classic hits from the seventies, for example "Stairway to Heaven
", "I Shot the Sheriff
", "What's Goin' On", and "Sir Duke".
In 2004 Tommy Funderburk co-founded Sovereign Artists, a record company that has recently released the first Heart
album in over a decade, Jupiter's Darling. In the first press release Funderburk said, "We wanted to go to those artists that have an established fan base, and those tend to be slightly older. We're trying to be genre-agnostic. We would like to just concentrate on good music."
In January 2005 the Italian record company Frontiers released Tommy Funderburk's debut album Anything For You, an album featuring several songs co-written by Funderburk with the likes of Michael Thompson, Bruce Gaitsch and Greg Mathieson in the style of Toto, Richard Marx and Journey
.
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
singer. He has recorded with artists such as Jon Anderson
Jon Anderson
Jon Anderson is an English singer-songwriter and musician best known as the former lead vocalist in the progressive rock band Yes...
, Laura Branigan
Laura Branigan
Laura Ann Branigan was an American singer-songwriter and actress of Italian and Irish ancestry. She is best known in the United States for her 1982 Platinum-certified hit "Gloria" and in Europe for the number-one single "Self Control"...
, Coverdale-Page
Coverdale-Page
Coverdale and Page is an album by former Deep Purple and Whitesnake lead vocalist David Coverdale and former Led Zeppelin and London session guitarist Jimmy Page , released by Geffen Records on 15 March 1993.Adding to the Led Zeppelin sound of this album was the John Bonham-influenced and former...
, Melissa Manchester
Melissa Manchester
Melissa Manchester is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Beginning in the 1970s, she has recorded generally in the adult contemporary genre. She has also appeared as an actress on television, in films, and on stage....
, Magnum
Magnum (band)
Magnum are a British progressive rock band from Birmingham, England. Formed as a four piece by Tony Clarkin , Bob Catley , Kex Gorin and Bob Doyle in order to appear as the resident band at The Rum Runner night club Birmingham...
, Mötley Crüe
Mötley Crüe
Mötley Crüe is an American heavy metal band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1981. The group was founded by bass guitarist Nikki Sixx and drummer Tommy Lee, who were later joined by lead guitarist Mick Mars and lead singer Vince Neil...
, Steve Lukather
Steve Lukather
Steve "Luke" Lukather is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, arranger, and record producer best known for his work with the rock band Toto. Lukather has played with many artists, released several solo albums, and worked as a composer, arranger, and session guitarist on more than 1,500 albums...
, Richard Marx
Richard Marx
Richard Noel Marx is an American adult contemporary and pop/rock singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. He had a string of hit singles in the late 1980s and 1990s, including "Endless Summer Nights", "Right Here Waiting", "Now and Forever", and "Hazard"...
, Rick Springfield
Rick Springfield
Rick Springfield is an Australian-born singer-songwriter, musician, and actor. He was a member of pop rock group Zoot from 1969 to 1971 and then started his solo career with his début single "Speak to the Sky" reaching the top 10 in Australia. In mid-1972, he relocated to the United States...
, Starship, REO Speedwagon
REO Speedwagon
REO Speedwagon is an American rock band. Formed in 1967, the band grew in popularity during the 1970s and peaked in the early 1980s. Hi Infidelity is the group's most commercially successful album, selling over ten million copies and charting four Top 40 hits in the US...
, Whitesnake
Whitesnake
Whitesnake are an English rock band, founded in 1978 by David Coverdale after his departure from his previous band, Deep Purple. The band's early material has been compared by critics to Deep Purple, but by the mid 1980s they had moved to a more commercial hard rock style...
, Yes
Yes (band)
Yes are an English rock band who achieved worldwide success with their progressive, art, and symphonic style of rock music. Regarded as one of the pioneers of the progressive genre, Yes are known for their lengthy songs, mystical lyrics, elaborate album art, and live stage sets...
and many others.
Funderburk was born in North Carolina and grew up in the south. His favorite music included The Beatles, all kinds of R&B, soul and Gospel. In college, he played in a band he and some friends started called Sanctuary. He studied to be a high school history teacher and recorded jingles at a local studio. The band once opened for Andrae Crouch. Crouch and his drummer were impressed by the young singer and encouraged Tommy to come to L.A.
Funderburk sold everything he had and moved to L.A. where he met someone from Earth, Wind and Fire. He was introduced to David Foster
David Foster
David Walter Foster, OC, OBC , is a Canadian musician, record producer, composer, singer, songwriter, and arranger, noted for discovering singers such as Michael Bublé, Josh Groban, and Charice Pempengco; and for producing some of the most successful artists in the world, such as Céline Dion, Toni...
(who was producing the EW&F album I Am
I Am (Earth, Wind & Fire album)
I Am is the ninth studio album by the R&B band Earth, Wind & Fire, released in 1979 on Columbia Records. The album features the singles "Boogie Wonderland" with The Emotions and "After the Love Has Gone". Also recorded in the I Am sessions were "September" and "Love Music" which were both included...
) and Jay Graydon
Jay Graydon
Jay Graydon is a Los Angeles songwriter, recording artist, guitarist, singer, producer, arranger, and recording engineer. He is the winner of two Grammy Awards with twelve Grammy nominations, among them the title "Producer of the Year" and "Best Engineered Recording". Jay Graydon has mastered many...
, who were looking for a singer for their project Airplay
Airplay (band)
Airplay was a short-lived American band, formed by David Foster and Jay Graydon. The band released a self-titled album in 1980, containing "Nothin' You Can Do About It" and the original version of the Earth, Wind & Fire hit "After The Love Has Gone", written by Foster and Graydon with Bill...
. The role soon fell to Funderburk.
In the early '80s he met drummer Bob Wilson from the group Seawind
Seawind (band)
Seawind was a jazz fusion group from Hawaii, featuring lead singer Pauline Wilson. They recorded two albums for CTI Records, one for A&M Records and one for A&M subsidiary Horizon Records...
, and in 1984 they formed The Front. The Front recorded a self-titled album, followed by a U.S tour and a European tour the following year. On the European tour the line-up was Funderburk on vocals, Wilson on drums, Seawind alums Buddy Nuanez and Ken Wild on bass and guitar, and John Andrew Schreiner on keyboards.
In 1986 Tommy Funderburk did the lead vocals on a track called "Never Too Late To Start" for the movie soundtrack "Running Scared". Funderburk also participated on an album entitled Voices with a song called "Lift up My Voice". In 1987 Wilson and Funderburk reformed their band, brought in yet another former Seawind member, Larry Williams, on keyboards
Synthesizer
A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
and saxophone
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
, changed the band's name to What If, and released a self-titled album on RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
. This album also featured blazing guitar work from Michael Landau
Michael Landau
Michael Landau is a prolific session musician and guitarist who has played on a large number of albums since the early 1980s with artists as varied as Seal, James Taylor, Helen Watson, Richard Marx, Steve Perry, Pink Floyd and Miles Davis...
.
Apart from fronting bands and doing sessions Tommy has also written songs for other artists including Starship. In 1989 the song "It's Not Enough" (from the Starship album Love Among the Cannibals), performed by Starship and written by Tommy Funderburk and Martin Page, reached #12 on the Billboard chart.
In 1988 Funderburk met Bruce Gaitsch
Bruce Gaitsch
Bruce R. Gaitsch is an American guitarist, composer, and producer. He is best known for working with notable musicians such as Richard Marx, Chicago, Peter Cetera, Madonna, Agnetha Fältskog and many others as a session musician and songwriter...
at a recording session with Richard Marx (Gaitsch and Marx were looking for a singer that could sing even higher than Richard Marx). Gaitsch and Funderburk decided to write some songs together. The first song they wrote, "King of Hearts", was as a tribute to Roy Orbison
Roy Orbison
Roy Kelton Orbison was an American singer-songwriter, well known for his distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly/country & western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis...
that was later going to be included on the King of Hearts album and also became the name of the band. Apart from Funderburk and Gaitsch the band included Night Ranger
Night Ranger
Night Ranger is an American rock band from San Francisco that gained popularity during the 1980s with a series of albums and singles. The band's first five albums sold more than 10 million copies worldwide...
's Kelly Keaggy on drums
Drum kit
A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
and vocals, and George Hawkins on vocals and bass. King of Hearts were signed to Polygram, but for some reason Polygram never released any of their material. The songs from these sessions were finally released ten years later by a Japanese record company on an album entitled "1989".
Some of the songs from the King of Hearts sessions were later re-mixed and together with some new songs their first album was finally released in 1994 in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
- although now with the actual band King of Hearts only consisting of Tommy Funderburk and Bruce Gaitsch. On the successive tour the King of Hearts lineup was Funderburk and Gaitsch together with David Miner
David Miner (musician)
David Miner , sometimes credited as David Minor, is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, perhaps best known as a member of Grace Slick's The Great Society in the 1960s. He actually co-founded The Great Society along with Jerry, Darby, and Grace Slick as well as Bard Du Pont, in the sense...
on bass, Bill Cantos on keyboards and Billy Ward on drums - the band spent one week touring Japan and another week in Sweden.
In 1995 Tommy Funderburk and bassist David Miner, who Funderburk had known since the days of Andrae Crouch, recorded and released an acoustic collection of songs entitled The Dwelling Place. The album included a mix of classic hymn
Hymn
A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...
s and songs originally written to be used for worship at the Malibu Vineyard Church where he was a worship leader at the time. In 1996 Tommy Funderburk and Bruce Gaitsch recorded a follow-up to the first King of Hearts album called Joy Will Come, that was released during the Autumn 1996 in Sweden, Germany and Japan. In December 1997, Thoughtscape released a King of Hearts compilation CD called No Matter What, likely to be their last recording.
In 1998 Tommy recorded an a cappella album with the vocal group West Coast All Stars (featuring Funderburk, Chicago's Jason Scheff, Bobby Kimball from Toto and Joseph Williams former Toto) entitled Naturally. The album contains a cappella versions of classic hits from the seventies, for example "Stairway to Heaven
Stairway to Heaven
"Stairway to Heaven" is a song by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, released in late 1971. It was composed by guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant for the band's untitled fourth studio album . The song, running eight minutes and two seconds, is composed of several sections, which...
", "I Shot the Sheriff
I Shot the Sheriff
"I Shot the Sheriff" is a song written by Bob Marley, told from the point of view of a man who admits to having killed the local sheriff, but claims to be falsely accused of having killed the deputy sheriff. He also claims to have acted in self defense when the sheriff tried to shoot him. The...
", "What's Goin' On", and "Sir Duke".
In 2004 Tommy Funderburk co-founded Sovereign Artists, a record company that has recently released the first Heart
Heart (band)
Heart is an American rock band who first found success in Canada. Throughout several lineup changes, the only two members remaining constant are sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson. The group rose to fame in the 1970s with their music being influenced by hard rock as well as folk music...
album in over a decade, Jupiter's Darling. In the first press release Funderburk said, "We wanted to go to those artists that have an established fan base, and those tend to be slightly older. We're trying to be genre-agnostic. We would like to just concentrate on good music."
In January 2005 the Italian record company Frontiers released Tommy Funderburk's debut album Anything For You, an album featuring several songs co-written by Funderburk with the likes of Michael Thompson, Bruce Gaitsch and Greg Mathieson in the style of Toto, Richard Marx and Journey
Journey (band)
Journey is an American rock band formed in 1973 in San Francisco by former members of Santana. The band has gone through several phases; its strongest commercial success occurred between the 1978 and 1987, after which it temporarily disbanded...
.