We all have our own unique sources of inspiration that drive us to create and achieve great things. For Tommy Oeffling, a promising shoegaze artist, inspiration came from an unlikely place – a video of Mac DeMarco recording ‘Another One.’ Despite the video being niche, it sparked something within Oeffling that led him down a path of musical exploration.
Born and raised in Illinois, Oeffling’s talent for music was evident from a young age. He taught himself to play the drums and piano before even reaching eighth grade. However, it wasn’t until he stumbled upon the Mac DeMarco video that his passion for music truly flourished. Watching DeMarco’s effortless recording process inspired Oeffling to pick up his dad’s guitar and embark on a new musical journey.
Oeffling has accumulated a solid 89k monthly listeners on Spotify since 2022 with the release of three albums. On Oct. 20, the artist released his fourth album titled ‘secret knowledge of backroads’.
“All the recordings happened in June, but the writing has been taking place for like forever. That’s common with my process,” Oeffling said. “I kind of just get ideas, keep the good ones, don’t do the bad ones. And then they don’t get put out until they’re done essentially.”
Following the mellow vibes of “cardigan hate train,” Oeffling decided to create a louder and heavier shoegaze album. His sources of inspiration included artists such as my bloody valentine and Dinosaur Jr.
“‘cardigan hate train’ is a fine album, but it’s like the musical equivalent of like 2% milk,” Oeffling said. “I wanted to get more interesting and louder and have less catchy songs in a way. And I wanted this to be more representative of the music that I actually listened to.”
In addition to big stars, Oeffling also drew inspiration for this new album from his friends and everyday experiences.
“Sometimes I’ll try to make a song sound like what a friend is to me, in a way,” Oeffling said. “I take the most inspiration from things that happened around me and try to put the mood that I get from that into song.”
Oeffling even drew inspiration from his friends in his track names, with ‘franks theme’ titled about his friend Frank, whom he thought the song sounded like. ‘whartons jorts’ is also about a friend of his, named Will Wharton, who apparently has “crazy jorts.”
“It makes me sound like I’m insane, but I hate when there’s two songs in a row that start with the same letter. Not kidding. I think it looks bad,” Oeffling said. “I don’t think I have a single release where two songs I wrote start with the same letter.”
Aside from his solo career, Oeffling is also the lead singer of the four-member band Company Calls, with his best friends Caiden Dohr, Ethan Bailey, and Luke Tinsley. The band is a louder, heavier and more complete version of the shoegaze Oeffling creates for his solo career.
“Me and Caiden write the songs like half and half. I play bass and if you can call it sing, I sing,” Oeffling said. “I’ll write a song, and usually I’ll know right off the bat like this is a me song or a band song.”
Like many other musicians, Oeffling finds it difficult to achieve complete satisfaction with his music.
“It’s this weird thing with writing songs, you can never make it perfect. I guess that’s part of the beauty of it. I’m always gonna have a problem with every single song I’ve ever made, really,” Oeffling said. “Hopefully if I’m in a good financial position later in life, I will be able to afford good studio equipment, but I can’t do it production-wise right now.”
Oeffling’s passion lies in teaching high school history, a career path he hopes to pursue in the future. While he enjoys music, it remains a beloved hobby rather than a career aspiration.
“The weird thing is, I don’t I don’t take this seriously at all. I don’t play shows. I don’t know why my Spotify listeners have gone up so much. It’s really weird to me,” Oeffling said. “I don’t think I want people to leave no one like, ‘oh, this dude doesn’t take it seriously at all.’ But like, I think there might be beauty in it. Like, I make music simply because I like it.”
Is there anything else you want to talk about?
“I’d like to apologize to everybody for something. I have this song called ‘patrick j. swanson vs. the state of wisconsin’. Don’t listen to it. Just listen to ‘Satellite’ by Elliott Smith. It’s the same song, totally ripped it off on accident. So I’m sorry to everybody. Didn’t mean to rip it off. I think it was subliminal. Is that the word for it? Yeah, that’s my one message.”