Tom Conway is a professional, versatile guitarist / vocalist / composer who lives on the beautiful island of Maui. A busy player, Tom has shared the stage with many great musicians and in August of 2009 he was hired by the legendary Willie Nelson to be the musical director for the official CD release of Willie's Blue Note Records album "American Classic".
Tom is a committed 'Live' performer and you can catch him playing around Maui in many diverse musical configurations - check out the Calendar page!
Early Influences:
Tom Conway was raised in the Detroit area of Michigan and began playing guitar at age nine after hearing bands like Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Johnny Winter & the Stones to name a few. As a young teenager it was Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, the Allman Brothers, Santana and Eric Clapton who inspired him, and he learned primarily by listening over and over to the vinyl recordings of his heroes. In high school Tom also began listening to a lot of jazz and fusion artists like Pat Martino, George Benson, John McLaughlin and Return to Forever. From fifth grade through high school he was always in bands and was mostly self-taught from records and books.
The Mid-80's:
Right after high school Tom moved to Maui but after a few years he decided to move to Los Angeles to study music more intensely with guitarists Jorge Strunz of Strunz & Farah and Ted Greene. Jorge had a lasting impact on Tom and really helped him with his picking technique in addition to exposing him to a lot of music he had never heard. Harmonic genius Ted Greene steered Tom in the right direction for the study of chords on the guitar and Tom also had a memorable lesson with Lenny Breau at his apartment two weeks before his still unsolved murder during the summer of 1984.
While studying with the above players, Tom also attended and graduated from G.I.T. in Hollywood which he says was an incredible experience. All of the teachers there were great players like Don Mock, Joe Diorio, Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale, and during this time Tom intensely practiced 6 - 8 hours daily.
1997 - Present
Tom moved back to Maui in 1997 and has been very busy ever since, performing and recording with the best musicians on the island. He was a founding member of Gypsy Pacific in 2002, the state's only gypsy jazz group at that time. Gypsy Pacific performed weekly for six years on Maui in addition to all the major jazz festivals throughout the state of Hawaii. They were brought on board immediately by jazz festival promoter Abe Weinstein who heard them over the telephone rehearsing in the bass player's kitchen!
Gypsy Pacific released an album of instrumental island standards titled 'Wela' which merges hot gypsy jazz with Hawaiian swing. Willie Nelson also recruited them to record an album of 17 songs with him and the result was a fantastic union of Willie's voice and Gypsy Pacific! This album is slated for a future release and will no doubt be embraced by fans everywhere!.