For Tom Alter, life has become quite the head-scratcher.
The current social and political state of the nation and the world leaves him questioning the present, yet remaining hopeful for the future.
“I turned 65 this year, and there’s so much in this world that leaves me shaking my head,” said Alter, a Fraser, Michigan singer-songwriter and guitarist. “I really never thought things would be like this … and as I was writing, somewhere in the middle of the process, I wrote the song, ‘A Wilderness.’”
The insightful opener from Alter’s latest indie-folk album, Dispatch From the Lesser Middle, features a dream in which he speaks to his younger self about being resilient in life.
Backed by wise acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and bass, he sings, “Young man buckle up / Living takes a lot of trust / If this sounds cliché / Don’t know another way I can instruct you / If I only had / A wise old man / Tell me what he’d come to know when I was young.”
“It’s saying, ‘Well, what did you expect?’ It’s kind of always been like this.’ Some of it is just trying to understand some of these changes that are going on in the world, but also realizing that they may not be permanent,” Alter said.
“When we’re young, we think everything’s gonna go along swimmingly, and we can set goals, and they’ll be achieved. The line I like in this song is, ‘You better buckle up,’ and I was setting myself straight.”
Looking Backward and Forward
Alter weaves that reality check throughout the album’s 11 astute tracks, which reflect on personal, societal, and political struggles. His perceptive lyrics and earnest folk-inspired instrumentation invite listeners to quickly absorb and process those thoughts on Dispatch From the Lesser Middle.
“And I do get to a point where I realize that I’m not writing happy songs, and I don’t want it to be like, ‘I’m so full of despair,’” Alter said. “This also ties into the last song on the album, ‘Words / Hope,’ in which I straighten my spine a bit and say, ‘You can get through this. Don’t just fall into the depths of despair. Don’t watch the news too much.’”
Alter also addresses despair and regret on the somber ballad, “I Should Have Brought You Out,” which explores the grief from losing his father in September 2022.
Sorrowful piano, electric guitar, and pedal steel surround Alter as he sings, “It was the last time / I could have brought you out / The last time we could share a laugh / Talking ‘bout the ironies of life / I should have listened (I should have listened) to you reminisce / With stories (I should have listened) that I’ve heard time and time again (again) / And lamented over all the friends we miss / I could have brought you out.”
“Two weeks before my dad died, I went to visit him one time, and as soon as I got there—he was in this assisted-living home—he looked at me, and he said, ‘Let’s get out of here. Let’s go out to eat,’” he said.
“I was shocked because most of the time he was sleeping … and I thought, ‘I don’t even know how I would do this.’ It was so hard to get him out of a chair, let alone get him in a car and into a restaurant. I just talked him out of it, but I’ve always felt guilty and bad about it. I just had to get it out … and I put it out there for everybody to hear.”
Next, Alter ponders the future of humanity and the growing divisions in our society on “Galapagos,” a philosophical tale based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Kurt Vonnegut.
Alongside cautionary acoustic guitar and cello, he sings, “Will our reason to live be nebulous? / Will we solely exist for survival? / Satisfied to be living in exile / On some islands just like Galapagos / In endless days.”
“What amazed me about Vonnegut and inspired me to write the song was that he wrote this stuff so long ago. It’s so accurate in so many ways as to how our world and society are developing and how he saw things … like artificial intelligence,” Alter said.
“He also explained why all those different species can exist, and it’s because they don’t have predators. It’s not a big reach to think, ‘Is that what we’re going to end up hoping for?’ That we can just exist because we don’t have predators. It’s more about entropy than evolution.”
After viewing humanity through Vonnegut’s eyes, Alter shifts to the perspective of a person immigrating to the U.S. on “I Just Want a Life.”
Determined acoustic guitar and cello echo the protagonist’s courage as Alter sings, “I would walk a thousand miles / And I would walk a thousand more / I would push through fields of stone and mud / To shield my family from the wars.”
“When I talk about the general coverage and the debates about how to handle the border and everything like that, I rarely see anything that addresses why people are coming here. And so many have incorrect assumptions that they’re coming here because they want to collect our Social Security and they want to get on welfare,” he said.
“The other part of it relates to my dad and the assisted-living home that he lived in. It’s almost completely run and administered by people who have immigrated from Venezuela. In discussions with them, and with one of them, I get hints of how horrible things [are there].”
Alter addresses another atrocity on “Tulsa Underground,” an eye-opening track about uncovering a hidden burial ground in Oklahoma a century after the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.
Fearless electric guitar, bass, saxophone, and drums reveal the truth as he sings, “One hundred years after / Unveiling the matter / Bodies burned, homes and lives burned down / Hidden from the pages / Secret through the ages / They’ve tried to keep Tulsa underground.”
“That was written almost immediately after reading a newspaper article about how they had found this burial ground, and that was quite a while after this had become a subject that people were just learning about—myself included,” Alter said.
“It relates to this whole initiative about just saying happy things about America and our history and covering things up and not teaching about anything bad that ever happened in the past. In fact, there are initiatives now to never teach about slavery being a cause of the Civil War.”
Despite these developments, Alter keeps an optimistic outlook on life on “Words / Hope.” Comforted by serene acoustic guitar, he sings, “It’s true I sing out loud about / Things that bring me doubt / That everything is going to be okay / Yet I pack those words up in a sack / And read the words to take me back / To the promise that sustains me to this day.”
“I do have my faith … and I spend time reading the Bible and the gospel,” he said. “I do spend time listening to discussions. There’s a podcast that’s just incredible for me. It just helps me put things in perspective.”
Being in the Lesser Middle
Alter also reiterates that perspective throughout his Lesser Middle album series, which includes six releases over five years that explore having a moderate viewpoint in a divisive world.
“It’s just me … It’s what I write about, it’s what I’m thinking about, and it’s how everything seems so extreme,” he said. “I think [the Lesser Middle idea] will continue—even if it’s just as a theme—and even if it’s not in the title.”
With Dispatch From the Lesser Middle, Alter spent 18 months writing the 11 tracks for it and started with “I Just Want a Life,” “Tulsa Underground,” and “Galapagos.” After compiling the songs, he started recording the album in late 2022 in his home studio.
“The only one that came on late was the last song, [‘Words / Hope,’], and I was very deliberate in wanting to put together this collection. And I had a couple of other songs that didn’t fit and seem right, so I took them off,” said Alter, who also mastered the album.
“My mixing process took from the beginning of August to the end of November [2023]. All of my previous recordings were done in GarageBand, and I finally upgraded to Logic. There was a little bit of a learning curve there, but it was worth it.”
Alter also collaborated with four musicians on the album, including After Blue bandmate Katie Williamson (vocals), Sara Gibson (cello), Jeremy King (pedal steel), and Kevon Scott (saxophone).
“Katie’s just an automatic, and it’s just a matter of her time and what are the right songs. I did have in mind that she might be on more [songs], but she said she wanted to stick to the ones where it felt like her voice—and having a female voice—was suiting the lyric,” he said.
“And then Sara is amazing. I just sent her a very raw track, and she comes in and knocks that out in like two hours. She does a few pizzicato parts, especially on ‘I Just Want a Life,’ and that’s in the bassline at the beginning.”
When he’s not in his home studio, Alter is performing frequently in Metro Detroit solo and with After Blue. He’s also hosting a Songwriter Spotlight series featuring other local artists at Fraser’s Infinity Hall & Sidebar.
“I’ve been inviting one person once a month to come with me. We’re playing our original music, but we’re also highlighting someone that the other performer picks,” he said. “The first one was Neil Young with Steve Pichan and another one was John Prine with Kandy Fredrick.”
In addition to his Songwriter Spotlight series, Alter is making his debut at Ann Arbor’s North Star Lounge on April 5. He’s also returning to the venue on May 18 with Milan Seth.
“Milan and I have done several things together, and I play guitar on Milan’s album, Can’t Find the Words…” he said. “I’m on like seven or eight songs on it.”
Outside of live performances, Alter is writing new material for another solo album and After Blue release.
“I’ve started writing quite a bit again, and I’m trying to write as fast as I can. I’m trying to get the idea down quickly and then sit on it for a bit. I’ve been accumulating a lot of shorter songs, and I’m not sure if I’ll use them all,” he said.
“We’ve also had some discussion of writing and recording something for After Blue in the summer. I’m going along with both things and shooting ideas off to Katie and keeping a few to myself.”
Show details:
Friday, April 5 | 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
North Star Lounge, 301 N. Fifth Ave. in Ann Arbor
Free
The Stratton Setlist 