Tom Herman

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Tom Herman is a guitarist and composer.

He was a founding member of Pere Ubu, performing and recording with them from 1975 to 1979. He quit the group, then rejoined in 1995. One of his main reasons for leaving Pere Ubu (among many) was that the band was not as interested in spending time on the road as he was. He left and, ironically, never got back on the road with a band until rejoining Pere Ubu in the nineties.

After leaving Ubu, Tom spent some time working on an oil rig in the south as well as playing bass in a hotel band. Eventually he started working as a mechanical technician, repairing equipment in hospitals and occasionally restaurants.

In 1980 or 1981 he moved to Erie, Pennsylvania, where he started Tripod Jimmie with bassist Lenny Bove and drummer Roger Prehoda. The band was named after photographer friend Mik Mellen's three-legged dog and/or the tape deck mounted on a tripod that functioned as the fourth member of the band. The tape deck was used to play tape loops which the band would then play "with" rhythmically or "against" (where the loop served more as a textural element) depending upon the demands of a particular song.

While notably different from Pere Ubu, the two bands do have similarities. The band's music bore a relation to R&B, but in a unique sense. "... one of the things I was thinking about at the time was what it would be like if some alien was exposed to all relevant information about R&B except actually hearing it," as Tom put it. This thoughtful and conscious approach to the band as a project shows a similar sensibility to Ubu's.

Some time after recording the album Long Walk Off a Short Pier (which was in fact recorded on a pier), Tripod Jimmie moved from Erie, to Oakland, California in the mid-eighties, swapping Roger Prehoda for Glenn Reynolds on drums. This lineup released the album A Warning to All Strangers. The band broke up in 1988 and Tom dropped out of actively playing music for a few years.

In 2003, Tom recorded an album called Wait For It, which was issued by Return-to-Sender Records in 2004. Highlights include a cover of Blind Lemon Jefferson's Jesus and Red Haired Girl.

In early 2005, Tom left Pere Ubu again. In August of 2006 he played on stage with Oakland rock band Ovipositor. He has also since played a few shows with a new incarnation of former Pere Ubu drummer Scott Krauss' band, Home and Garden.

One critic has praised Herman's playing, describing it as "postmodern Chuck Berry riffing." ^[1]