Tommy Funderburk - Anything for You

Imported from Italy

Tommy Funderburk was born in North Carolina, and grew up in the southern parts of the United States, while listening to the Beatles, r&b and soul music.

Tommy played in a band, The Boston Tea Party, at college while planning to be a high school history teacher and he also recorded jingles at a local studio. Once Tommy and the band opened for Andrae Crouch. Crouch and his drummer were impressed by the young singer and encouraged Tommy to come to L.A.

Tommy sold everything he had and moved to L.A. where he met someone from Earth, Wind and Fire. He was introduced to David Foster, who was producing the EW&F album "I am", and Jay Graydon who were looking for a singer for their project Airplay. Funderburk joined Airplay as their lead singer and the rest is history.

Since the late 70's Tommy Funderburk has recorded with artists such as Whitesnake, Motley Crue, Boston, Yes, Steve Lukather, Richard Marx, Russ Taff, Amy Grant, Rick Springfield, Starship, REO Speedwagon, Coverdale Page, Jon Anderson and many others...

In the early 80's Tommy met drummer Bob Wilson from the group Seawind and in 1984 they formed The Front. The Front recorded a selftitled album, followed by a U.S tour in 1984 and a European tour in 1985. On the European tour the line-up was Funderburk on vocals, Wilson on drums, Buddy Nuanez on guitar, Ken Wild on bass and John Andrew Schreiner on keyboards.

In 1986 Tommy Funderburk did the lead vocals on a track called Never Too Late To Start for the movie soundtrack "Running Scared". Funderburk also participated on an album entitled "Voices" with a song called "Lift up My Voice".

In 1987 Wilson and Funderburk reformed their band, brought in Larry Williams on keyboards and saxophone, changed name to What if and released a self titled album on RCA.

Apart from fronting bands and doing sessions Tommy has also written songs for some artists including Starship. In 1989 the song It's Not Enough (from the Starship album Love Among the Cannibals), performed by Starship and written by Tommy Funderburk and Martin Page, reached #12 on the Billboard chart.

In 1988 Funderburk met Bruce Gaitsch at a recording session with Richard Marx - Gaitsch and Marx were looking for a singer that could sing even higher than Richard Marx... Gaitsch and Tommy decided to write some songs together. The first song they wrote, King of Hearts, was as a tribute to Roy Orbison that was later going to be included on the King of Hearts album and also became the name of the band. Apart from Funderburk and Gaitsch the band included Nightranger's Kelly Keaggy on drums and vocals and George Hawkins on vocals and bass. King of Hearts were signed to Polygram, but for some reason Polygram never released anything. However the songs from these sessions were finally released ten years later by a Japanese record company on an album entitled "1989".

Some of the songs from the KoH sessions were later re-mixed and together with some new songs the first King of Hearts album was finally released in 1994 in Sweden, Japan and Germany - although now with the actual band King of Hearts only consisting of Tommy Funderburk and Bruce Gaitsch. On the successive tour the King of Hearts lineup was Funderburk and Gaitsch together with David Miner on bass, Bill Cantos on keyboards and Billy Ward on drums - the band spent one week touring Japan and another week in Sweden.

In 1994 you could also hear Tommy Funderburk sing lead vocals on some parts on the Boston album "Walk On". Tom Scholtz called Tommy and asked him to sing lead vocals on the new Boston album but as Tommy was busy writing and recording with Bruce Gaitsch he ended up contributing to only a few songs.

In 1995 Tommy Funderburk and bassist David Miner, who Tommy had known since the days of Andrae Crouch, was recorded and released an acoustic collection of songs entitled The Dwelling Place. The album included a mix of classic hymns and songs originally written to be used for worship at the Malibu Vineyard Church where Tommy was a worship leader at the time.

In 1996 Tommy was a part of the Jay Graydon All Star Band tour, together with Graydon, Joseph Williams, Bill Cantos, Sherwood Ball, Tris Imboden, Jay Oliver and Ned Doheny.

Also in 1996 Tommy Funderburk and Bruce Gaitsch recorded a follow-up to the first King of Hearts album called Joy Will Come. that was released during the Autumn 1996 in Sweden, Germany and Japan.

In December 1997, Thoughtscape released a King of Hearts compilation CD called No Matter What, and that's probably the last thing we're gonna hear from King of Hearts.

In 1998 Tommy recorded an acapella album with the vocal group West Coast All Stars (featuring Funderburk, Chicago's Jason Scheff, Bobby Kimball from Toto and Joseph Williams former Toto) entitled Naturally. The album contains acapella versions of classic hits from the seventies, for example Stairway to Heaven, I shot the Sheriff, What's goin' on and Sir Duke.

In January 2005 the Italian record company Frontiers released Tommy Funderburk's debut album Anything For You, an album featuring several songs co-written by Tommy with the likes of Michael Thompson, Bruce Gaitsch and Greg Mathieson in the style of Toto, Richard Marx and Journey.

Imported from Italy

Price- $17.00

 

1. Learning How to Love
2. Remember Our Love
3. Anything For You
4. Only You Can Give me
5. To Say You Love Me
6. You Got The Love
7. Skin
8. The Garden
9. Second Chance
10. Say A Little Prayer

To hear songs, click here - http://cdbaby.com/cd/funderburk