Description
Peace and Love is the solo debut album by the American singer, songwriter, session bassist, and producer Tommy Sims of White Heart fame, released on Universal Motown Records in August 2000, a division of UMG Recordings.
Featuring Tommy Sims Positive Group consisting of Duawne Starling, Tiffany Palmer, Darwin Hobbs, Natalie Grant, Wendy Moton, Betty Sims, Bill Hackworth, Andrew Ramsey and Pam Holman. Peace and Love is reminiscent of the Golden Age of Soul, and it comes as no surprise when Stevie Wonder appears with his harmonica on the fifth track, “Summer”.
My album is purely driven by human beings, no drum machines, no sequences. I’ve included songs that I’ve written over the past 15-20 years. My style is honest, down-to-earth, raw and true-to-life. I’m the voice of the regular people. – Tommy Sims
Trivia: Tommy Sims is the songwriter behind “Change the World” (co-written with Wayne Kirkpatrick and Gordon Kennedy, the latter of White Heart fame), the Grammy Award winning Song of the Year recorded by Eric Clapton in 1996, as well as “The Power” (co-written with Judson Spence), a song recorded by Amy Grant on her 1994 album House of Love and later covered by Cher on her 1998 release Believe, an album that sold 10 million copies worldwide. During 1992-1993, Sims played bass on the Bruce Springsteen and the “Other Band” Tour. “Streets of Philadelphia” by Bruce Springsteen won Grammy Award for Song of the Year 1995 (as well as Best Rock Song, Best Male Vocal, and Best Song Written For a Motion Picture or Television). The song was recorded with Springsteen supplying almost all of the instrumentation, with bass and background vocals from Tommy Sims. Sims also co-produced the song.
Tommy Sims’ debut album starts and ends with a Greg Brown-Tracy Chapman-esque Jim Croce cover, but somewhere in the middle, it gets awful soulful-gospelly-funky. With songs reminiscent of (and written in tribute to) much of Motown’s royalty and guest spots by Pastor Marvin Winans (father of Bebe and Cece) and Sims’ own “musical father,” Stevie Wonder, the former Springsteen side man and composer of Eric Clapton’s smash «Change the World» goes back to his own soul to plot the Soul of the future. From the McCartney-ed balladry of «It Don’t Matter to the Sun» to the Earth, Wind & Fire-y stringed epic «Love’s Patience» and the Pendergrass-y urgency of the title track, Sims mixes old school heart with contemporary spirit, dipping deep into himself for «Write One This Way» and into the Philly Sound and “Dixie” on «Comin’ Home». From intimately personal jams to universal celebrations, Tommy Sims shows who got the funk and what R&B is meant to be. [Matthew S. Robinson]
Tommy Sims has played a major role in shaping Gospel hit projects including as Cece Winans’s Everlasting Love and Darwin Hobbs’ Vertical, plus tons more. As a songwriter, arranger, producer, instrumentalist and vocalist, he’s basically got it all covered.
Here on his solo debut, Peace and Love, Sims offers up a wonderfully pure, clean and honest throwback R&B project, where he lays bare his soul and his searching heart. We focus on the two Gospel cuts.
«100» is a take on the ’99 and a half won’t do’ theme, bringing a vocals focus with bass, B3 and dry percussion imprints. Guests Darwin Hobbs and Tiffany Palmer impress (as they usually do), trading leads with Sims, with The Positive Group offering soulfully rich backing vocals.
Marvin Winans enters the picture on the title track, «Peace and Love». Inspirational in theme, it’s a thick jam of vocals between Winans and Sims with a busy, 70’s-ish, swirly, string commentary courtesy of the Nashville String Machine. No programming, it’s pure song and music, expressing that faith, hope and love is the key. [gospelflava.com]
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/peace-and-love/1443854894)
CD tracklist:
01. Which Way – 1:51
02. 100 – 6:40
03. A New Jam – 5:39
04. When You Go – 6:23
05. Summer – 4:03
06. Write One This Way – 4:52
07. Alone – 4:25
08. The Way It Used To Be – 4:09
09. Comin’ Home – 4:09
10. The Ballad Of Sophie – 5:35
11. It Don’t Matter To The Sun – 4:16
12. Love’s Patience – 8:04
13. Peace And Love – 6:27
14. Which Way Part Two – 2:23
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.