Birds in the Airport ends first tour here on Saturday - Sept. 13

photo Tom Breyfogle will perform as both the opening act and as drummer for headliners Relient K at Photo Track 29.

IF YOU GO

• What: Relient K featuring Birds in the Airport and Golden Youth.• When: 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 13.• Where: Track 29, 1400 Market St.• Admission: $18 in advance, $20 day of show.• Phone: 423-521-2929.• Venue website: track29.co.• Artist website: birdsintheairport.com."I like playing other people's music, but I'd rather represent myself with something I made on my own than a song I had nothing to do with." - Tom Breyfogle

Somewhere along the road to producing his debut EP, Tom Breyfogle realized that maybe, just maybe, he was creating a concept album.

As he composed the five-track project, "How's It Going To End?" Breyfogle took stock of the songs he'd written - including "Under the Mushroom Cloud" and "The Sky Is Falling Down" - and concluded that, inadvertently, he was creating a kind of soundtrack to the apocalypse.

So he ran with it.

"I guess it is, in the end, a concept, in the sense that there's an overtone of the world ending," Breyfogle says in a phone interview from his home in California. "That wasn't planned, [but] I guess I realized, 'I'm using this theme throughout the whole thing, so I guess I'm going to go for it.'"

"How's It Going To End," released in May, was the world's first chance to lay ears on material that Breyfogle had long been creating during downtime while touring with other bands.

The music brings together carefully crafted pop hooks with complex, layered orchestration that reflects the Hollywood-based musician's dual inspiration from artists such as The Beatles and Elvis Costello as well as composers such as Danny Elfman and Gustav Holst.

Even though creating these songs was an individual, closeted process, Breyfogle is sharing his music with audiences for the first time on a three-date debut tour of the Southeast that begins today in Knoxville and will conclude on Saturday, Sept. 13, with a show at Track 29. In addition to performing as Birds in the Airport, he'll take the stage as the drummer with the evening's headliner, Ohio-based rockers Relient K, with whom he often tours.

The creation of the EP was a purely solo affair, but Breyfogle will be joined onstage Saturday by a group of musicians from Nashville. Although he has maintained complete creative control over his music to this point - a role he says he plans to reprise with his future recordings - Breyfogle says he's excited to see how his songs are transformed by other artists in a live setting.

"I think it'll be great," he says. "I definitely see the live show and the recording as two different things. It's good for musicians to put their own touch on everything, so I'm just hoping all of us have a good time and it feels good and sounds good."

Contact Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @PhillipsCTFP.

Upcoming Events