Tomzap is a rock and roll group from Leander, Texas, composed of
- Tom Penick Guitar, Vocals
- Rodger Hutchins Bass Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals
- Jeff Pounds Drums, Flute, Vocals
Tomzap plays mostly original songs plus a few cover songs including 3 Spanish-language songs from the band, Soda Stereo. We like to play good time rock and roll, that is, we choose mostly songs that are upbeat, positive, and fun. Both the originals and the cover songs are an ecletic mix from past and present. The name Tomzap is recycled from another active project, The Pacific Coast of Mexico.
Tom Penick and Jeff Pounds met in 1978 when they played together with Randy Staudt in a band called Innerphase. Many of the original songs we play now were written around that time. After a time, Jeff had to move away and he sold his drum set to Tom and left the band.Later, in 1982, Rodger Hutchins, John Slider, and Tom Penick formed another version of the band, Innerphase. Eventually these members also moved on to other pursuits.
Finally, Jeff moved back into the neighborhood in 2011 and contacted Tom. We contacted Rodger and realized that we all still had a strong interest in playing rock and roll. Tom still had Jeff's old drum set which he resumed playing.
We needed a name and "Innerphase" was already being used by another band. So we adoped the name, "Tomzap", which was being used by Tom Penick for an unrelated project, "The Pacific Coast of Mexico" web page.The name, Tomzap, is born of a need for uniqueness in what is now a global community thanks to the internet. It came about from Tom Penick's search for an unused email address from the popular ISP, aol.com. Addresses such as tom@aol.com, tomp@aol.com, tpenick@aol.com were already taken. AOL wanted to add numbers to the email address but Tom didn't want a number so continued to search for something short that didn't include numbers. Tom, who was an electrician at the time finally coupled the name, Tom, with the electrical sound, zap, to produce the email address tomzap@aol.com (no longer retained) and that is where "Tomzap" came from. Tom now holds the URL tomzap.com and his email address is tom@tomzap.com.
The funny name has the advantage that it has no meaning in any language and there are no places by that name, so when performing an internet search, it is pretty easy to find us.
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A lot has changed with band equipment since the early days of Innerphase. Amplifiers and speakers have become lighter and more compact, computers have replaced tape decks, processors can replace guitar amps as well as a stable of guitars and effects, and radios more easily replace cables. It is definitely a better world. So we have no guitar amps, we have only one guitar each, and we have no floor monitors. We use wireless in-ear monitors and the guitar signals are processed and go directly to the PA system. This makes for a clean setup and a clean sound without a lot of heavy lifting involved.
By "good time rock and roll", we mean upbeat, positive rock and roll. We are not interested in dark or unpleasant topics in our music, so we play the music that we like and we have a good time doing it.
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