Principal writer and artist for Seedbank Publishing is Tomi Lunsford, joined by fellow songwriter Warren Denney. Seedbank songs have been recorded by Lunsford, Hank Williams III, Tom House, and others. TOMI LUNSFORD is a singer and songwriter with deep family musical roots living in Nashville, Tennessee who thrives outside the margins of the typical Nashville sound. Her voice is incomparable. Note
d rock critic Greil Marcus has referred to it as “stunning” in Esquire; Robert K. Oermann in the Tennessean has written that “Lunford’s offbeat style is evident in just one listen. Imagine a bluegrass/mountain soprano who slides in and out of notes like jazz divas Billie Holiday and Carmen McRae and somehow slips into the blues phrasing of Alberta Hunger or Memphis Minnie… At one moment you’d call it folk, at another it’s jazz, and around another corner, it’s country.”
Her album High Ground, released on Veracity Records out of Munich in 1997, received high praise and critical acclaim. It was selected as one of the ten top records of that year by Berlin TIP Magazine, interestingly enough between efforts by Jesus Jones and Janet Jackson. Bill Friskics-Warren declared in No Depression that High Ground “sometimes recalls the solo albums of Hazel Dickens, it just as often evokes the magnificent jazz and blues-inflected recordings of the early-‘70s Bay Area combo Joy of Cooking. He also stated in the Nashville Scene that Lunsford “uses her liquid soprano to convey meanings beyond the ones contained in her lyrics.”
Lunsford comes by it all naturally — possessing a rich musical heritage. Her great uncle, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, is a renowned folklorist and started the Mounain Dance & Folk festival in 1928 — the longest running folk festival in the Southeast, in Asheville, N.C. He also penned the world-famous “Old Mountain Dew.”
Her father, Jim Lunsford, was a well recognized songwriter and fiddle player who played and recorded with Roy Acuff, Reno and Smiley, Jim and Jessie, Marty Robbins, Don Gibson and many other classic performers. His songs have been recorded by Charlie Pride, Ronnie Milsap, The Cox Family, and others. Tomi, along with her father and two sisters, Nancy and Teresa, made up the popular group The Lunsfords, until Jim’s death in 1978. Lunsford has had several bands over the years out of Nashville, and has performed and recorded with the likes of Porter Wagoner, David Olney, Tom House, Amelia White, Steve Runkle, David Ball, Walter Hyatt, Delbert McClinton, Hank Williams III, Champ Hood and countless others. Recently, she has put music to, and recorded songs from the Maggie Valley Trilogy, a collection of three books for young readers out on Viking Press. Today, she continues to write, perform, and do session work. Her song publishing company, Seedbank Publishing, is administered by BMG. For booking information, send queries to [email protected].
