Tom Cridland was encouraged to make his own music by a childhood obsession with The Beatles and the career of his friend, Nigel Olsson, Elton John's legendary drummer. Like Nigel, Tom started by learning drums by ear. He then began writing songs and got encouraged to sing them himself by Kenji Suzuki of Simply Red. He then taught himself the piano. When he started writing songs in 2019 he prolifically recorded over 100 of them in just a couple of months and immediately followed these sessions by playing a gig all 48 contiguous US states. This caught the attention of the legendary Grammy nominated "Philadelphia Soul" group, The Stylistics, who invited him to play with them at 19 concerts in the UK in October and November 2021.
Jailbound Fool is the second studio album by The Tomicks, recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London. Tom and Nick Whitehead were joined in the studio by former David Bowie guitarist, Earl Slick. The tracks were written in early 2018 and cut in April of that year. The album was only released in the summer of 2020 and was considered doomed for a long time. Many of Earl Slick's parts were re-recorded by longtime Tomicks session players John Wright and Robbie Blake. Tom fell out with the engineer at Abbey Road and did not enjoy the studio sessions, plagued by insecurity due to his lack of musical training and being in the early stages of his sobriety. The mixing process was even more difficult and the album was nearly abandoned. Nick's friend, Justin Woodward, rescued the project, mixing and mastering it in early 2020.
