Singer-songwriter and producer Tom Cunningham is based in Berlin Germany, and divides his time between there and Nashville, Tennessee. His music reflects his well-traveled past: an individual style drawing on folk, rock, and international roots tempered with blues, jazz, and country elements. His well-crafted songs are distinguished by their keen, insightful lyrics, which are witty, heartfelt, and profound. Tom is equally at home as a soloist, accompanying himself with his excellently played acoustic guitar, or in front of a seven-piece rock band.

Born in New York, Tom grew up near Boston, Mass., went to college in Ohio, but has lived mostly in Europe since an early age. Berlin, Germany has been his home since the 1970's, and he has a list of solid achievements there to his credit: 6 solo albums, dozens of chart successes as a songwriter, appearances as a musician and singer on countless record productions, and a gold album as a producer for his work with the East German band "City".

Tom moved to Nashville, Tennessee in the 1990’s and admits to having "caught the Nashville songwriting bug" in his second home. In Music City he has recorded his most recent albums, produced several international artists, appeared live as a singer-songwriter in numerous venues, and co-written with such top Nashville personalities as Chuck Jones, Michael Garvin, Dan Tyler, Larry Wayne Clark, Debi Champion, Scott Carter, Barbara Cloyd, David Llewellan, and Kim Parent, among many others. A song co-written with Kim Parent, "Learn to Love," won the British Unisong contest in the pop category in February 2002.

Tom’s recording career began in earnest with the release of his first solo album, “Have a Little Faith in the Kid,” on the German Intercord label, in the early eighties. It was followed in the eighties by "Comin' Back for More" and „Blitz: the Game," both on Intercord, und "Tom Cunningham & the Broadcasters: Germany" on Deutsche Grammophon. This followed with a period devoted to producing other acts: Romy Haag, Queen Yahna, Rik Delisle, Princess, Robby Bauer, City, Keimzeit, and Karat, to name a few. A stand-out success was City’s “Casablanca,” produced “behind the iron curtain” in East Berlin in 1985. The album went gold in the German Democratic Republic, and its brilliant production, great songs, and thinly-veiled political lyrics are said to have contributed artistically to the growing movement that culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

By the early nineties Tom had returned to his solo career, appearing live with “Tom Cunningham and the Bell Rings” and the “Tom Cunningham Band, and releasing “Lost in Thailand” on TGM Records in 1991 and “What If?” on Edel in 1996. In 1995 he produced and performed on the acclaimed “Hagelberger Street” CD on Powerplay Records, a tribute collection to the Berlin expatriate music scene of the seventies. The sessions for “What If?” brought him to Nashville, where the top-notch participating musicians (Michael Rhodes, Steve Nathan, Craig Krampf) were a contributing factor in his decision to move to “Music City.”

Tom released a live-in-the-studio independent CD, "...a little time," in 1999, recorded in Nashville with a topnotch crew of musicians including Larry Chaney and Dave Jaques. And the success of his vocal performance on the theme song of the German television primetime drama "Happy Birthday" on the ARD network led to writing and recording an album entirely in German for the Monopol label, "Denn Du bist da", released in the spring of 2000. These albums, as well as his back catalog, are available online at CD Baby (http://www.cdbaby.com/link?u=13913 ).

The latest recording project, recorded in Nashville and Berlin, is entitled “A Beautiful Lie,” and is slated for an early 2005 release on Dunefish Records. Recent cover versions of Cunningham songs include Beppo Pohlmann's "Spanisch" and Larry Schuba's "Das Geschenk," the German version of the Debi Champion-co-written "The Present." Tom has produced the British country-pop sensation Shannan, whose first single has just been released in Holland.

In Berlin Tom began hosting a singer-songwriter live showcase, Songwriters-in-the-Round, almost four years ago. In this time the show has expanded from the original venue of Rickenbacker's Music-Inn to the Kulturbrauerei in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, Munich and Hamburg, Germany (in cooperation with Ellie Weinert’s “Songs Wanted Presents Songwriters Live!”) as well as several other cities and towns as Songwriters-in-the-Round-on Tour. The show has delighted audiences and given countless singer-songwriters, both “old pros” and newcomers, the encouragement of an excellent performance forum. The Berliner Morgenpost newspaper credits Tom Cunningham with “reinvigorating the nearly moribund Berlin songwriting scene.”

"Tom writes upbeat, lively songs with an edge; he's an artist, a craftsman, and a pro. A must-hear - don't miss him!"- Dick Shannon, broadcaster, studio owner ("Maxx Trax")

up