Courtesy Blue Raven Entertainment
Local Drummer Puts the Fleetwood in Tusk Mac Tribute Band Playing Back to Back Shows at Deane Center By Gayle Morrow
W
ho puts the USC Trojans Marching Band front and center on a pop album? Fleetwood Mac, that’s who. It’s been forty years since the band released Tusk, their twelfth studio album (October 12, 1979, was the actual release date). As a follow-up to the huge commercial success of Rumours, Tusk was, in some circles, an out-there creation, a headscratcher that was expected to flop. The naysayers were wrong. The album, perhaps something of an oddity when compared to its predecessor, was a number one in the U.K. and gave Fleetwood Mac two top-ten singles in the U.S.—Lindsey Buckingham’s title track, “Tusk”, and Stevie Nicks’ ethereal homage to the mysterious poet in our hearts we know as “Sara.” 14
Fast-forward a few decades to find Liberty resident and former music teacher Tom Nelson living his dream: performing music. As the drummer in a Fleetwood Mac tribute band known as Tusk, scheduled to play at the Deane Center for the Performing Arts November 13 and 14, Tom admits he’s in his happy place. “Making music for a live audience is a great thing,” he says. “This has been a dream for a long time.” Tom grew up in New Jersey, played percussion in high school, and was a member of the marching band. He attended West Chester University of Pennsylvania, where he met his wife, who is from Liberty. The couple moved to Liberty in 1993, and Tom got a job as the band director
at Williamson High School. In 2000, a teaching position opened up in Liberty, he was hired, and he taught music there until 2018. “I enjoyed teaching,” he says, but admits he “always enjoyed playing music, and always wanted to be a performer.” Tom has played with the Williamsport Symphony, with the Wellsboro-based Spare Parts, and other with other groups. Over the years, he had kept in touch with his “musical performing friends” in New Jersey. Some of them were interested in doing a Fleetwood Mac “one-off tribute band” performance and asked if he was interested in participating. No need to ask twice. The event “went really well,” he continues, and the one-off became a semi-regular gig.