It's with a heavy heart that I announce Tom Van Dyke, a long time contributor here, passed away in November of this year, 2025. He also blogged at The New Reform Club.
On a personal note, even though we sometimes/often disagreed (we probably agreed more than disagreed), we became and remained close friends. He certainly had a passion for intellectual jousting. And I think we operated on a similar plane.
He lived in LA but was originally from Levittown, PA, which is a "sister township" in Bucks County from where I grew up and still live (Yardley/Lower Makefield). Though, we both also had a passion for music -- we are both musicians. I haven't been blogging as much as I used to; for years I stopped playing guitar/music. Tom got me back into it and revived my interest in making further progress as a middle aged man. He taught me a lot in the past few years where I got to play with him.
This was part of our ongoing friendship. He would visit his hometown and we would do music together. It's ironic that I'm the one with the music degree from Berklee College of Music, because my "talents" are somewhat "modest" compared to what's out there.
He reminded me, on the other hand, that he was "world class good" (in his last band in LA, he played with Glenn Campbell's former band leader). Yeah, unfortunately most musicians who are "that good" (and he was) don't get rich from it. The Berklee professors tended to be "that good" and the vast majority of them weren't rich.
This clip embedded below is from the Summer of 25 when he last visited. It's an old Christian blues song (familiar to "Sons of Anarchy" fans). Below that is our version of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released" from February 2025, which has a mood that fits for this somber moment of remembrance.
He was 69.
