Tom Douglas – Love, Tom

About Tom Douglas

Oscar, Grammy and Golden Globe-nominated Tom Douglas, is proposing a residency of his popular one-man show Love, Tom, where he shares stories and some of his famed songs.

Douglas’ hit-making career began with his Collin Raye hit “Little Rock,” a 1994 CMA Song of the Year nominee. Douglas was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2014. His acceptance speech grew to such popularity that Douglas began writing a one-man show, with his son Tommy, and then a documentary based on the speech. The show, Love, Tom is now available on Apple TV and Amazon streaming services.

Tom’s performance storytelling opens with the titular writer fielding correspondence from a discouraged tunesmith. “Not too long ago I received a letter; a letter from a desperate young songwriter asking for advice,” Douglas recounts. From there, the performance is off and running and talking, to be precise.

All the while, he’s talking, explaining with poetic flourish the art of songwriting as it relates to his own life. “They say you write about what you know,” he says. “I’m telling you my story not because it’s the best one, it’s just the one that I know the best.”

In between his oration, Douglas pauses to perform some of his songs, “I Run to You,” cut by Lady A, croons “My Little Girl,” recorded by Tim McGraw, and, in the showstopper, plays his biggest hit, Miranda Lambert’s “The House That Built Me.”

The origin of “The House That Built Me” is a high point of Love, Tom, with Douglas recalling how his co-writer Allen Shamblin spoke those five words to him over breakfast in the summer of 2002. At that moment, he says, “the earth tilted on its axis, the forks were suspended in mid-air, the water froze in the pitcher — that’s the power of a good idea.” Douglas made Shamblin swear he wouldn’t repeat the title again until they could convene in a writing room. When they did, the result was a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year.

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