In September 1957, Buddy Holly released his hit single “Peggy Sue” along with its B-side track, “Everyday,” and then, a short 18 months later, he plummeted from the skies over Clear Lake, Iowa. He died in that plane crash and, at least according to Don McLean, took the entirety of music along with him. This is precisely why I never listen to Buddy Holly while travelling anywhere. As a wise man once said, “I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.”
That’s not enough to daunt the husband and wife duo of John and Lisa Mclaggan, better known as Tomato/Tomato. While recording their latest album in Nashville, the pair took to singing “Everyday” in their car until it wound up on the album’s tracklist.
“To be honest, it was a song we were singing in the car for a bit,” explains Lisa Mclaggan. “It had become an earworm but John was always messing up the lyrics. It had taken a dark turn! He kept singing, ‘Everyday, seems a little longer…’ and I would laugh.
“I kept correcting him. And then we started harmonizing because that’s what we do. When we were trying to think of potential cover songs to include on the record, it just seemed natural to include that one since it was constantly in our heads and we were already enjoying singing it together. Plus, it was a good fit since this album has a bit of a rock n’ roll vibe.”
It sits comfortably amidst the Americana-vibe of It’ll Come Around, channelling the vibes that seem to be inherent of Nashville’s The Bomb Shelter recording studio and mixing the general adorability of the band with just a tinge of rockabilly.
The fact that there’s a live video of them recording this song at all has simply been a bonus.
“We sort of left that tune for the end of the week and Jon (Estes) was just like, ‘Hey, I got this new camera and want to try doing some videos. Mind if I film? I’ll edit and send it to you later.’ We had forgotten that it happened,” says Lisa. “We were having such a good time together. You know it’s going well when the guitarist and bass player decide to switch instruments just because it would be fun.”
“When we were gathering all of our assets leading up to release time, we realized we had that somewhere sitting in a WeTransfer file! We didn’t release it earlier because it wasn’t one of our ‘focus tracks’ for the album drop.”
While the duo hasn’t been on the road for a while for obvious reasons, Lisa assures us that her local commute times with their daughter haven’t been silent.
“I can tell you that Lucy and I have been jamming to Lauryn Hill and Earth, Wind, and Fire on our drives to and from gymnastics.
We also harmonize in the car,” says Lisa. “Dreams do come true.”