Today we’d like to introduce you to Tom Gire.
Tom, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I started as a kid playing piano in my parent’s house. They supported me and made sure I had lessons, a tuned instrument, and ‘enforced practice times’. I still am very free-spirited and love to play like a kid. I never liked to practice, but my father realized that without a little discipline in the mix, the talent won’t amount to as much as it could. I played jazz in high school and was accompanying singers and musical theater gigs so I was really planning to come to LA and be a session musician.
I was offered a full-tuition scholarship to Pepperdine to come to Malibu and go to school. After a couple of years, I was restless and decided to go chase a ‘working musicians’ life on my own. I worked for Princess Cruises for several years as a musical director before I met my wife who was also working on ships as a jazz pianist and vocalist.
We moved back to LA where I was immediately discouraged about my session dreams when I saw what kind of a sight reader you had to be to compete with the monster talent in the LA studio scene. I played in a top 40 band for many years in Westwood at a now defunct restaurant called Monty’s Steak House which was at the top of an office building right off the UCLA campus. It was a haunt of Dr. Dre and company as well as movie stars and sports figures.
Knowing that I needed to find a better ‘long term plan’ than $100 a night to play “I’m Too Sexy” for drunk frat girls, I was introduced to my now 25 years business partner John Sponsler.
We hit it off and started working together on our first big gig- the teaser trailer for The Matrix. John had been working in the film and TV industry and had built up a few impressive contacts and offered me a position as his helper, tech, etc. We worked on dozens of trailers, did additional music for John Debney, Hans, Zimmer, Trevor Rabin, and produced all of the ethnic and electronic elements for John Williams’ score to Memoirs of a Geisha and Munich.
John and I were offered a studio at Remote Control Productions where we worked for Hans on three Pirates films, Despicable Me, two Transformers, and even a couple of romantic comedies.
We had also formed Brand X music which was originally the ‘left over’ and repurpose library for all of the trailer tracks we were accumulating doing custom gigs. As the years went on, the library grew and was becoming quite popular and successful even though John and I weren’t paying it much attention.
We decided to break away from film scoring and pursue Brand X full time. I took over as Head of Creative and COO, John is the President and CFO.
I still manage to do some small films from time to time, and have been so lucky to produce, record, and create music with musicians and composers from all over the world. Brand X now has 8,000 tracks which John pointed out the other day is one track a day, every day, for 20 years. Wow, I’ve been doing this a long time.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There were always struggles. Some internal (self-doubt, fear) some external (life, work, family balance) and it’s always terrifying to be freelance. We had two small kids and never knew when money would come in, studios have a bad habit of paying up to 180 days after the job is over and it’s impossible to plan when the future is so in motion.
Having a long term business partner has been a huge blessing even though we have had to work through issues along the way as any two people will do as their lives and circumstances change. I have always tried to stay ahead of the curve and be proactive but as the world evolves so fast it is hard to express yourself in a relevant way while still staying true to your artistic self even if you are getting ‘vintage’ in your thoughts!
The biggest unexpected for me was the change from musician to composer to business owner. Each morph was hard and required me to allow something to become less important that used to be my life and death obsession as new opportunities emerge.
Please tell us about Brand X Music.
I am a co-owner of Brand X Music which is a boutique music library in Los Angeles. We are known for high-quality cinematic music for trailers and movie advertising, production music, and our sound design collections. We license music to all major studios and networks in the US as well as working closely with a couple of dozen foreign sub-publishers that license our music to our clients overseas.
We are also available for custom film scores, adverts, and consider ourselves easy to work with and passionate about quality above all else.
My personal specialty is fun and zany over the top family adventure, huge uplifting epic tracks, jazz keyboards, as well as producing production catalogs that feature live musicians and authentic compositions that highlight the style we are going after.
I’m most proud that we’ve been able to build a business that not only supports my family but the families of our employees and gives creative and financial opportunities to artists around the world.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Having a 5-acre farm outside of Seattle so that getting dirty, digging holes, breaking things, and being a ‘kid’ was something that was encouraged.
Contact Info:
- Address: 321 Pass Ave #330Burbank CA, 91505
- Website: brandxmusic.net
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @brandxmusic
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