Featured Project
A Multi-Medium Memoir & Original Album Series
“The deliberate, conscious decision to either unleash or restrain one’s full nature based on the landscape of the moment.”
Seventy-two years. One life. One switch.
Unbridled is Tom Erb’s most personal and ambitious creative work — a multi-medium exploration of seventy-two years of living, delivered simultaneously as a serialized memoir and an original album. Every week, a new chapter of Tom’s life is published in raw, reflective prose. And with every chapter, a new original song is released — composed and produced in the exact musical style of the era being described.
This is not a greatest hits collection. This is a life told in real time, in the only two languages that have ever made complete sense to Tom Erb: words and music.
“The Switch — chosen freedom rather than recklessness. The power of controlled wildness. A gift and a curse held in the artist’s own hands across seven decades.”
The Concept
📖 Weekly Memoir ChaptersA serialized autobiography delivered in a raw, reflective prose voice — published weekly on Facebook. Each chapter covers a specific period of Tom’s life, from early childhood in Norfolk, Virginia through seven decades of living, loving, creating, and surviving. | 🎵 The Switchman AlbumA parallel musical component where an original song is released to accompany each chapter — serving as a sonic timestamp of that moment in time. A 1958 story sounds like 1958. As the story moves forward, the music evolves in perfect step. |
Tommy Erb, featuring Jackson Rail and the Rail City Band on select tracks
New releases from the Unbridled sessions, most now live everywhere
Every released track, always up to date, stream anywhere.
Tommy Erb
Jackson Rail and the Rail City Band
Listen everywhere:
The Artist
At the center of Unbridled is Tommy Erb — author, lead vocalist, and rhythm guitarist. He is the sole constant across every recording and every chapter, providing the singular thread of continuity through seventy-two years of personal history.
Surrounding him is The Switchman — a rotating collective of session musicians curated to serve the specific era-sound of each chapter. The roster is fluid; musicians are brought in based on their ability to authentically replicate the genre and tone required for a specific year in Tommy’s life.
| Tommy Erb | Lead Vocals · Rhythm Guitar |
| Jack Malone | Lead Guitar |
| Ray Calloway | Bass Guitar |
| Eddie Briggs | Drums |
| Niko Saunders | Keys & Piano |
| Cliff Davis | Saxophone & Harmonica |
| Wanda Cole | Background Vocals |
| Bobby McClannan | Pedal Steel Guitar |
| Penny Rhodes | Fiddle & Harmony Vocals |
| Lloyd Burns | Trumpet & Flugelhorn |
| Steve |
The Norfolk Chronicles
Late 1950s · Early Childhood · Folk-Americana
Early childhood within a Navy family. Key moments include a train trip to California, kindergarten, and first friendships. The Switch is already operational — Tommy is observed performing and calculating his environment from the very beginning.
Early 1960s · Upbeat Americana Rock
Life on Ashby Street. Formation of the Band of Brothers. First heartbreak with Kathy Watson. And the audacity that would define a lifetime — Tommy walks off the street and successfully auditions for the local Bozo the Clown show.
Mid-1960s · Rock with Soul
The peak high-energy era of Norfolk. The mentorship of Niko and Cliff Davis. Tommy’s band, the Garage Beatles, wins a regional talent show. A legendary confrontation with a drunk, belligerent Bozo the Clown, resolved with a recitation of Shakespeare.
Mid-1960s · Searching Rock with Piano
Tommy acquires his Gibson guitar. Enters the professional world with Frank Guida at Legrand Records. Explores solo independence. Meets Tammy from Tennessee — the first person to make him feel truly seen.
Mid-1960s · Dark Folk Rock
Domestic deterioration sets in. Tommy’s retired father comes home for good, and the drinking that once came and went with deployments becomes a constant, unpredictable presence in the house — leaving a thirteen-year-old who had always known how to hold things together searching for solid ground for the first time.
Mid-1960s · A Single Night
A single night when fourteen-year-old Tommy became the one holding the family together — locking the doors, gathering his sisters into one room, and waiting through the longest thirty minutes of his life for word of his father.
Bonus Track
Live Music · New Release
Gospel · Blues · Americana
“The rails are humming again. From Clarksdale to Memphis to New Orleans, nine voices rose out of the dark and brought the dawn with them. This is our parade — gospel, blues, and hard truth rolling on steel tracks.”
At the crossroads of multiple sonic influences, Jackson Rail delivers a sound rooted in absolute emotional honesty and lived experience. His voice carries the weight of a life fully lived — rare, real, and utterly compelling. A regional festival headliner and Billboard-charting independent artist, Jackson Rail is currently poised to introduce his most fully realized work to a global audience.
New Release
12-Track Studio Album · Out August 30, 2026
Nine voices. One road. The gospel, the blues, and the hard truth of the American story — delivered with the urgency of a train that doesn’t stop. A deliberate choice to leave acoustic imperfections in and preserve raw emotional textures. No polish for its own sake.
Hear the Album Preview on Suno
Available on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music & more everywhere starting August 30, 2026.
The Turning PointSparked by a period of profound personal change, forcing a total re-examination of the artist’s path. | The Sound & VisionA deliberate choice to leave acoustic imperfections in and preserve raw emotional textures. | Independent ArtistryAbsolute creative freedom used to push arrangements into entirely new sonic territories. | The Live ExperienceImmersive, emotional events designed to bring the record’s sweeping arc directly to the audience. |
Audio Series
Original Audio Stories & Music · SoundCloud
B-Side Stories is Tom Erb’s audio storytelling series — each episode built around a classic song and the memories, moments, and personal history it carries. Like the B-sides of the vinyl records he grew up with, B-Side Stories finds the deeper meaning in the music we thought we already knew.
“MacArthur Park” was written by Jim Webb. The recording appeared on Richard Harris’s album “A Tramp Shining” in 1968 and was released as a single that same year — the B-Side was the shorter 4-minute radio version. The song peaked at No. 10 on Billboard’s Easy Listening survey, and in 1969 received the Grammy Award for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists.
I wasn’t familiar with Richard Harris and the song was OK — I thought it was odd he was singing about “leaving the cake out in the rain.” Little did I know this song would make another appearance in my life — a profound encounter with Richard Harris himself.
Many don’t remember what it was like to be 6 years old, but for me I have a couple of very big memories of 1960 — the biggest was going to the World Series. That was the year the Pittsburgh Pirates won against the New York Yankees with a bottom-of-the-ninth home run by Bill Mazeroski, who became the first player to hit a game-ending home run in a Game Seven to win a World Series.
The first time I ever heard this song was on one of my favorite television variety shows, “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” Warner Brothers first released “Classical Gas” in 1968 on the B-Side of “Long Time Blues,” with Mason Williams playing the acoustic classical piece. I wasn’t much for classical music — I was a hardcore rock and roller — but in high school in 1972, this song would make a comeback into my life.
It’s 1965 and I am still expanding my new love for music that was unleashed by the Beatles invasion. One of the shows that really affected and inspired me was The Man From U.N.C.L.E. — written by Ian Fleming, creator of the James Bond novels. Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, agents of U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement), fought the evil of T.H.R.U.S.H.
There are millions of stories about the day the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show — Sunday, February 9th, 1964. This was the first televised live performance of the Beatles in America. I was 9 years old, and the buildup was amazing. Every young person in America was waiting and watching with anticipation.
It was the summer of 1962. I was 8 years old, raised on my parents’ music — Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Porter Wagoner. Then came The Beach Boys. I begged my mother to buy me the 45 “Surfin’ Safari.” When I flipped the record over and heard “409,” it opened my eyes to something closer to home — my father, a Navy mechanic who worked stock car races at the Southside Speedway in Chesterfield County, VA.
I’d work the pit stop alongside my father, cleaning windshields and making friends with the sons of drivers and mechanics — Junior Johnson, Rex White, Jimmy Pardue, Cliff Stewart, and Richard Petty among them. One Saturday I brought my Beach Boys 45 to the garage, and the B-Side, “409,” became a popular favorite. It was the first time I realized music must be a part of my life.
A B-Side Stories episode built around “Fill Your Heart,” written by Justin Martell — continuing the series’ tradition of pairing a song with the memories and meaning behind it.
Theme Song for Newport RI: The Series
Lyrics by Jeremy Harple and Tom C. Erb · Music by John Monllos and Jeremy Harple · Performed by John Cunha and John Monllos
“The ocean spray has told me / Morning sun lights a rocky shore / And the people that surround me / Well, who could ask for more? … He’ll say, ‘Hey friend, lemme paint your picture’ / You’ll say, ‘It feels just like we live here.'”