Tom McClung has gigged professionally since he was 15-years-old when he played at the 31 Blue Spot in Ardmore, Tennessee.

“That’s an old school honky tonk, a lot of big names flew through there. At the last minute, their drummer cancelled, so my dad told the owner said ‘Lou, I can’t help the drummer left on me but my son can play and he’s good, but he’s only 15,’” McClung reminisced.

He went on to play the gig for another month or so and was “paid decently” for 1981.

“That’s when I learned that you can use the music as a love and also as a part time job,” McClung said.

Since the 31 Blue Spot, McClung has went on to play at the Nashville Palace, Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, and other notable venues.

“[In 2010] I went to a place called the Nashville Palace over there by Gaylord and I walked up about four o’clock in the afternoon and nobody was on stage, but I knew they had music,” McClung said.

The manager asked McClung “what do you need?”

“I said ‘I need a microphone,’ so I got my guitar, and she said ‘I will set you up if you want to play,’” McClung said.

He went on to say, “so from four to five that afternoon, I sang up there at the Nashville Palace and I didn’t make a dime, but I sang at the Nashville Palace.”

He continued to go up on the weekend and got to know everybody at the Nashville Palace, including the manager who first allowed him to play.

“She introduced me to to a gentleman who was having a New Year’s Eve show and just looking for people to play at the show,” McClung said, going on to explain that the gig was unpaid.

“I got up and sang and I hit a note on a couple of songs, and I saw his head poke around the corner,” McClung said. “I hit another couple of notes and he poked his head around the corner again.”

The gentleman approached McClung and asked if he’d like to play New Years Eve night.

He explained that Daryle Singletary would be playing in the backroom and that he [McClung] would play up on the stage he had been playing on that night.

McClung agreed and asked his friend Mad Dog to do a duet with him.

“So we get up there and we basically opened out front for Daryle Singletary,” he said.

McClung and Mad Dog played again at the Nashville Palace in 2011.

Mad Dog asked McClung to join his band Bark the Dog and they became Tom Cat and Bark the Dog.

“I was out front with a guitar and our drummer Jerry he could sing so we’d swing him out front and I’d go back and play the drums and he’d be out front and sing and we done that probably at least five years just straight up band gigs and it was a hoot,” McClung said.

Since the Nashville Palace, McClung has played at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge in 2016 and 2022.

One night McClung drove through a tornado warning to get to a Friday night gig at PJs with Tom Cat and Bark the Dog in Muscle Shoals.

“By along this time you’re getting to know more people in the biz,” McClung said. “If people like you and like what you play, you’ll get work.”

He explained that if you want to get gigs, you play songs that entertain people.

“You take that attitude, I’ll take the gigs,” McClung said of musicians who stubbornly won’t play crowd pleasers. “Every picker hates Rocky Top but we got to play it because that’s what they want to hear.”

“We play to our customers, which is the fans,” he said. “You got to work for them that’s been my attitude all along.”

McClung and Mad Dog had been playing together off and on for 30 years.

“We had a we had a little band when my kids were in their formative years earlier years. We would just practice it at his house,” McClung said. “We played together and we had fun.”

“You can get caught up in the famousness of it if you want, but in the end, you’re just a picker,” he said, explaining that not everyone is going to be George Straight or Taylor Swift. “But if you can be good and work hard enough and earn the respect of your fellow musicians, then the times you play with your partners, brothers, and friends that’s really what it’s all about.”

The moment on stage where you get on stage and hit that three part harmony and everything just comes together is what it’s all about, he explained.

For beginners, “start early, but if you don’t start early don’t ever give up because learning how to play guitar is not easy. Your fingers will hurt.”

Don’t be afraid to be bad at it, just get started, and get better.

“If you want to do it and it’s in your soul, you’ll do it,” McClung said.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with different instruments.

“Guitar is not for everybody, drums are not for everybody, I learned how to play harmonica, I’m not a proficient harmonica player but give me a blues song and I’ll play it and it’ll sound good” McClung said.

During a Christmas service in recent years the music pastor at First Baptist Church wanted to do “Go tell it on a Mountain” in a blues lick and McClung played harmonica.

“All kids don’t play sports. Some want to be a guitar player. If you can afford it, get them lessons. Some want to play piano, if you can afford it get them lessons. That’s the biggest thing with children, whatever your child wants to do, do it with them and support them,” McClung said of young musicians and their parents. “If they’re wanting to do something like that for their life for betterment, you know, get a kid in the marching band. He’s in the marching band, and he’ll come out of marching band knowing music already, and that’s gonna be a big help.”

“You will never lay on your deathbed and regret spending too much time with your children,” he said.

His career in music has led him to playing in the praise band at the First Baptist Church and also using his music to be a witness in a non-church environment.

“I’m not going to lie, what I’ve got is a gift. It’s got to be worked on but it’s a gift, and I’m grateful to God every day for what he’s given me,” McClung said. “Jesus didn’t go to the rich folks, church folks, he went to the poor folks. Those folks that need it, so that is a part of it, getting to be witness.”

“That alone is worth all of the years of calluses on your fingers, learning how to play the instruments, the practice, to be able to play there at church for the Lord, that’s the ultimate for me,” McClung said.

At the end of the day, music is a bridge across the aisle, whether you are playing it or listening to it.

“One of the things that I have learned very recently [playing at the Holiday Inn as Miss Kitty and Tom Cat] is that music bridges races,” McClung said. “Music can bring peace to a lot of places where there has been anger, but we’ve got to open our eyes and understand and not let people far far away tell us how we’ve got to feel about a certain group of individuals.”