Tom Toce Music

Lyricist and Composer

Shalom, Santa

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Shalom, Santa appears on

Hopelessly In Love: The Lyrics Of Tom Toce
Featuring Carole J. Bufford, Jack Donahue, And Jennifer Sheehan
with a guest appearance by Jane Monheit

Sung by Carole
Music by Douglas J. Cohen

Piano: Matthew Martin Ward
Bass: Boots Maleson

Shalom, Santa

Dreidl, dreidl, dreidl
I made one out of clay
And Daddy hung it on the tree
On Christmas Eve day
Adam Mitchell is a Quaker
He’s a Quaker through and through
Sally Baker is a Baptist
That’s another point of view
We were walking in the park one day
I heard them say
“Hey, Maggie, what are you?”
I said, “My Daddy is a lapsed Catholic
And my mama is a cultural Jew.”
Now, I have to say my parents
Aren’t religious in the least
But my grandpa is a rabbi
And my uncle is a priest
And they’re always playing
Monkey in the middle
And the monkey is–guess who
When your Daddy is a lapsed Catholic
And your mama is a cultural Jew
Wish I had a faith I could have faith in
Like everybody in my homeroom does
But nobody I turn to has the answer
Not even Judy Blume does
Are you there, God?  It’s me, Margaret
Uh—Margaret Kugelman-Kelly
Kind of wish I were a Moslem
Or a budding Buddhist monk
A reborn Jehovah’s Witness
With my pamphlets in a trunk
If I only were a Hindu
I could do all day
What all the Hindus do
But instead I’ve got this Irish temper
From the tsuris I go through
Now, perhaps I tend to overstate the guilt
And contradictions that ensue
But it seems that what on one hand
Is a mitzvah
On the other is taboo
So I’ve gotta say an Ave
And an oy vey
And a mea culpa, too
‘Cause my daddy is a lapsed Catholic
And my mama is cultural Jew

Glad We Got Away

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Glad We Got Away appears on

Hopelessly In Love: The Lyrics Of Tom Toce
Featuring Carole J. Bufford, Jack Donahue, And Jennifer Sheehan
with a guest appearance by Jane Monheit

Sung by Jack and Jennifer
Music by Kim Ole

Piano: Matthew Martin Ward
Bass: Boots Maleson

Glad We Got Away

Sure we miss the hustle and the bustle
But I guess the two of us’ll have to cope
And I have hope
High, high hope
That you and I can conquer this dismay
Sure we miss the taxis and the traffic
And the sirens and the people
The millions of people
The way we miss a headache
When the headache goes away
Red sky over Cape Cod Bay
A couple of gin and tonics
At the end of day
Nothing much to talk about
And that’s okay
Glad we got away
Fresh catch with a white bordeaux
And later we’ll go dancing
At a place I know
Everybody’s hurrying
So we’ll go slow
Glad we got away
Away, got away from the city
Away, got away with you
And hey, you’ve got a way
Of looking so pretty
It’s a pity
We can only stay a day or two
Blue moon through the cool night air
The way the light is playing
On your black-brown hair
Sometimes with the craziness
It gets to where
You’ve got to get away
Hey, babe, glad we got away

The Night I Fell In Love With Paris

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The Night I Fell In Love With Paris appears on

Hopelessly In Love: The Lyrics Of Tom Toce
Featuring Carole J. Bufford, Jack Donahue, And Jennifer Sheehan
with a guest appearance by Jane Monheit

Sung by Jane
Music by Tom Toce

Piano: Matthew Martin Ward
Bass: Boots Maleson

The Night I Fell in Love with Paris

On the twenty-first of June
With a waxing croissant moon
There was music all along the Rue du Bac
There was nary un chanson
Yet the memory lives on
The night I fell in love with Paris
On the summer’s shortest night
We were jet-lagged from the flight
It was nine or five or seventeen o’clock
I stood weeping there with you
As the band struck up U2
The night I fell in love with Paris
Paris is for lovers
Paris is in France
Paris has the Metro and the Seine
Paris has the Louvre
And when I get my chance
I’ll return and then—mon dieu—return again
And again. And again. And again
On the twenty-first of June
To an old Nirvana tune
We put je vous aime beaucoup onto a lock
Which you hung upon a pont
It was all a girl could want
The night I fell in love with Paris
Et avec vous
For in Paris I fell once again in love with you
Paris has the Left Bank
Paris has the Right
Paris has museums by the score
Paris has the power
On any solstice night
To make you feel more passion
Than you’ve ever felt before
And more. And more. And more
On the second of July
As we bade Paree goodbye
I was wondering what possessions
We might hock
So that we could somehow stay
Et revivre s’il vous plaît
The night I fell in love with Paris
Et avec vous
For in Paris I fell once again in love with you

Rid Of You

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Rid of You appears on

Hopelessly In Love: The Lyrics Of Tom Toce
Featuring Carole J. Bufford, Jack Donahue, And Jennifer Sheehan
with a guest appearance by Jane Monheit

Sung by Carole
Music by Alan Garb

Piano: Matthew Martin Ward
Bass: Boots Maleson

Rid of You

Yesterday, I felt defeated
Burdened with a man who cheated
And a lot of other woes
Some of which may yet undo me
Life is gloomy
Bill collectors sue me
Still and all, there’s big improvement
I got rid of you
At the worst, I’m
No worse than last week
And for the first time
I think I’ll pull through
No more late nights
How I used to hate nights
Wondering were they blond and perfect
Were they married, too
No more. No more shouting
No more doubting
All you say
When people ask me
I say I’m okay
I tell them, look, I stopped the skid
Damn smartest thing I ever did
When I got rid of you

You Believe in Me

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You Believe in Me appears on

Hopelessly In Love: The Lyrics Of Tom Toce
Featuring Carole J. Bufford, Jack Donahue, And Jennifer Sheehan
with a guest appearance by Jane Monheit

You Believe in Me
Sung by Jennifer
Music by Zina Goldrich

Piano: Matthew Martin Ward
Bass: Boots Maleson

You Believe in Me

When my confidence is shot
And my self-esteem just barely not
And there’s hopelessness as far as I can see
I don’t go to pieces, babe
The way I used to do
Oh, no, I tell myself that you believe in me
When I’m left with two left feet
And my insides feel like cream of wheat
And it’s down to where it’s either fight or flee
I don’t run for cover, babe
The way I used to do
Oh, no, I tell myself that you believe in me
Little boys believe in Superman
Bigger ones believe in Peter Pan
You believe that I’ll come through
I’ll have you know it kills me when I do
Little girls believe in fairy tales
Bigger ones believe in Bloomingdales
I believe in nothing much
Except the crazy tonic of your touch
So when things are looking good
And I start to think they always should
And the day’s about as sunny as can be
I don’t hunt for thunderclouds
The way I used to do
Or sit around and wonder when
The trouble’s gonna brew
The change was oh, so simple
All it took was someone to
Believe in
And to believe in me

After All

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After All appears on

Hopelessly In Love: The Lyrics Of Tom Toce
Featuring Carole J. Bufford, Jack Donahue, And Jennifer Sheehan
with a guest appearance by Jane Monheit

After All
Sung by Jack
Music by Kim Oler

Piano: Matthew Martin Ward
Bass: Boots Maleson

 

After All

The world has its attractions
Some are worthy of a glimpse
And I’m grateful for the travelling I’ve done
And I’m grateful for the people
Nice to meet you–that I’ve met
And for all of the beguines that I’ve begun
But the older–sorry–more mature
I grow the less I find
That it matters one iota in the end
And what matters, really matters
Is the life I share with you
My partner, my lover, my friend
After all
After all the nameless faces
After all
After all the fancy places
I recall
That the face I love the best
And the touch I crave the most
Belong to you
Astounding
True
When I fall
I’m the kind who falls forever
It takes gall
To start speaking of forever
After all
But the hand I’ve always held
Is the hand I need to hold
And our love
However old
Is ever new
You’re the one who sees me
As I used to be
And as I yearned to be
And as I am today
I am not the person
That I used to be
Or that I yearned to be
Still I’m yearning
After all
After all the years you’ve mattered
After all
After all the fears you’ve shattered
Large and small
There is one surviving fear
It’s the fear that no one’s there
And no one’s gonna answer when I call
Anytime, I may call
And you answer
After all

Ask For The World

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Ask For The World appears on

Hopelessly In Love: The Lyrics Of Tom Toce
Featuring Carole J. Bufford, Jack Donahue, And Jennifer Sheehan
with a guest appearance by Jane Monheit

Sung by Carole, Jack, and Jennifer
Music by Tom Toce

Piano: Matthew Martin Ward
Bass: Boots Maleson

Ask for the World

When I was younger, I’d stumble and fall
And always my mother would say
“Setbacks and bruises are part of the deal
You can’t let them ruin your day
You’re gonna lose,
Ah, but you’re gonna win
So here’s my advice every time you begin
Ask for the world
Don’t ever be shy
Just ask for the world
Here’s why
Nobody makes it
Who aims for the trees
So please keep your eye
Sky high
And know that the world can be yours
If you ask for the world.”
Now I am older and now when I fall
It’s my voice within me I hear
“Pick yourself up,” is the first thing I say
Or maybe it’s, “Wait till next year.”
Next year is here, so I wind up on top
But I’ve got a plan for the next time I flop
Ask for the world
Don’t ever be shy
Just ask for the world
Here’s why
Nobody makes it
Who aims for the trees
So please keep your eye
Sky high
And know that the world can be yours
If you ask for the world
All of you judges and all of you friends
And all of you seekers like me
Good luck and hard work
Will take you quite far
But they’re only two out of three
Here is the third thing
I think you should know
As my mother said to me so long ago
“Ask for the world
For worlds can be won
So ask for the world
My son
People may urge you
To aim for the trees
But please keep your eye
Sky high
And know that the world can be yours
If you ask for the world
Good night
And sleep tight
And I love you
But ask for the world!”

Listen

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Listen appears on

Hopelessly In Love: The Lyrics Of Tom Toce
Featuring Carole J. Bufford, Jack Donahue, And Jennifer Sheehan
with a guest appearance by Jane Monheit

Sung by Carole, Jack, and Jennifer
Music by Zina Goldrich

Piano: Matthew Martin Ward
Bass: Boots Maleson

 

Listen

Listen
Won’t you listen
Don’t you feel the way I feel
About the morning
Every morning
Colors
Are abounding
I saw yellows I have never seen before
And reds. And lilac. And hemlock
I am opening my senses to the world
I am reveling in taste and touch and sound
I am shedding my defenses to the world
And I can show you how to find
What I have found
Follow
Won’t you follow
Won’t you come with me
And be within the moment
Every moment of the morning
It’s amazing
Just amazing
So be amazed

Hopelessly In Love Review in Cabaret Scenes

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Hopelessly In Love Review

Cabaret Scenes
October 29, 2012
 www.cabaretscenes.org

Carole J. Bufford and Jennifer Sheehan, two of the brightest lights in a youthful wave of cabaret, joined the excellent Jack Donahue and special guest star Andrea Marcovicci (Shelly Markham on piano) to perform Hopelessly in Love: The Lyrics of Tom Toce. A wide variety of material ranged from ballads to comic turns, from a duet that sounded, both lyrically and musically, like classic Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme (“Glad We Got Away”; music, Kim Oler), to a swing number with contemporary lyrics (“Bye-bye, Aloha, Yo!”;  music: Jeff Lazarus) in a nifty arrangement by Musical Director/pianist Matthew Martin Ward. (Boots Maleson on bass.)

Highlights were: “Michael’s Song” (music: David K. Israel), a gorgeous, melancholy ballad with deft lyrics phrased like halting thought, with a nuanced vocal by Donahue; the very clever “Shalom, Santa” (music: Douglas J. Cohen)—“My daddy is a lapsed Catholic and my mama is a cultural Jew”—ostensibly sung by “Margaret Koogleman Kelly,” here enacted by Bufford with just the right irony; “You Believe in Me” (music: Zina Goldrich), a sweet “thank you” which would be timeless but for the use of—ouch—“Bloomingdale’s”—-sung with ingénue credibility and lovely restraint by Sheehan; and “Ask for the World” (music: Toce), a mother’s advice embodied somewhere between a lullaby and an anthem, performed by the company.

If anyone could sell “The Night I Fell in Love with Paris” it would be Marcovicci, who put her whole heart and soul into it, but instead of describing the poetic City of Light, the “character” sings “it has museums, it has parks.” By the time we got to the payoff, there had been no romance at all to substantiate emotion.

Vocals were all first rate. The talented singers were expressive and lyrically aware. Between many numbers, Ward sang short phrases from earlier songs. The attempt at bridging was unnecessary and made no sense.

(Editor’s Note: During several performances of this revue, there were different guests stars and Marissa Mulder replaced Jennifer Sheehan inthe final perforamnces, which had to be rescheduled.)

Alix Cohen
 for cabaretscenes.org

Review of Hopelessly In Love on Bistroawards.com

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Hopelessly In Love: The Lyrics of Tom Toce

Metropolitan Room

October 10 and 28; November 10, 2012

By Robert Windeler – BistroAwards.com Reviews (source)

“Hopelessly in Love” is a triple pun. It can mean, roughly, “besotted with the right person,” or “inevitably involved with the wrong one,” or “determined to be in love no matter what.” The touching and witty lyrics of Tom Toce deal with all sides of this tri-partite title concept, as virtually all of the numbers in this 19-song set make very clear. The music to each of these songs is by 12 different composers, including two each by Toce himself, Kim Oler, and Jeff Lazarus, and three each by Douglas J. Cohen and Zina Goldrich. Thus the variety is greater in the music than in the words. Three stalwart singers, nicely backed by musical director Matthew Martin Ward on piano and Boots Maleson on bass, also contribute their inimitable styles toward mostly avoiding any sense of sameness to the presentation.

Vocalists Carol J. Bufford, Jack Donahue and Jennifer Sheehan open the show promisingly with two trios: “Listen” (composed by Goldrich) and “Hopelessly in Love” (Cohen). Sheehan, who continues to dazzle with the range and variety of her vocals and lyric interpretations beyond her years, goes on to deliver four memorable solos. The first is a haunting number with music by Peter Millrose, “Say You’ll Remember.”  Lamenting one more lost love, Toce’s beautiful lyrics implore, “Please don’t let me be the one you regret/ Say that you’ll remember so that I can forget.” Sheehan also drew the second-best song in the show, “You Make Me Laugh” (Shelly Markham), extolling this too-often- overlooked key element of a successful lasting relationship. In “The Wrong Man” (Cohen), the singer’s life and romance are based on the movies, but she dreams of Cary Grant and ends up with Peter Lorre. “You Believe in Me” (Goldrich) could have been just another song about a life view based on fairy tales, but Sheehan infuses it with something more.

On the other hand, Bufford and Donahue, in their solos at least, often seem more concerned with big delivery than in exploring lyrics, even playing to a non-existent balcony in this intimate venue. On satirical numbers this overblown approach can be effective. Bufford scores with “Bye-Bye, Aloha, Yo!” (Lazarus), celebrating a woman’s cutting and running after a bad romance instead of staying in it “to keep the friggin’ score,” as she used to do. She also elicited the laughs in “Shalom, Santa” (Cohen), a ditty about the dilemma of a daughter of a “lapsed Catholic and a cultural Jew” leading to Toce’s droll conclusion: “I wish I had a faith I could have faith in.” Donahue dances and sings the calypso “Got to Learn to Emote” (Lazarus) with great panache. But seeing his somewhat strident delivery of “That’s What I Like About the Rain” (Alan Wolpert), a sad ballad about sky water purging “till none of the memories remain,” I kept thinking to myself, “Why is this man smiling?” On “After All” (Oler), which he otherwise sang straight, in a deep baritone, he couldn’t resist a jarring Barry Manilow-style big finish.

Donahue offers the added distraction of moving around too much on a small stage. I doubt that director Peter Napolitano had anything to do with this since he sensibly has those performers who are not singing the current number sit quietly at a table right beside the stage and moving nimbly onto and off the stage as needed. Also, the order of songs and the interspersing of ballads and uptempo numbers makes perfect sense and a fluid presentation. Napolitano may be complicit, however, in pianist Ward’s singing one-line introductions to many of the songs; these are often unintelligible, always raspy, and seem unrelated to the song we’re about to hear. In any event they are wildly unnecessary.

Unquestionably, highlight of the performance I saw was guest artist Andrea Marcovicci singing “The Night I Fell in Love with Paris,” also composed by Toce, which is the best song in the show. (The guest artist at each performance is kept secret until show time, but she or he always sings this song.) In it, Toce pays deserved tribute to the multitude of I Love You/I Love Paris songs of the past, setting it under “a croissant moon” on June 21, the longest day of he year. But he also updates those chestnuts with modern references to American British and Irish rock (Nirvana, U2). Sitting still on a stool, Marcovicci, accompanied by Markham, ignored none of the number’s nuances and understatedly offered a master class in selling a song.

Toce himself appears only at the end of the set to offer thanks and introduce his collaborators on stage, his director, guest artist and those composers who happen to be in the audience.