How I Got Here

What follows is the opening of the Collaborhythm Collabtunes business plan — the story of how Tom Jensen arrives at nearly forty-eight years old with a catalog nobody has heard and thirty years of work waiting to be used. The clean text is the pitch. The brackets are what Tom is actually thinking as he writes it.

The Beginning

Every business plan starts somewhere, and this one starts in a bathroom when I was sixteen years old. Not writing a business plan—writing a poem on the wall about a Spanish teacher I didn't like. Don't tell anybody. It was probably pretty bad and pretty good at the same time. But it was the first thing. Before the system, before the catalog, before any of it—that was the origin.

I had written a poem on a bathroom wall about a Spanish teacher I didn't like — don't tell anybody. It was probably pretty bad and pretty good at the same time.

Around the same time, my father drove me to a laundromat in Danversport and Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" came on the radio. I heard that and thought: that's what I want to do. I came home, found the album upstairs in a stack of cassette tapes, and started listening to everything—Dylan, the Beatles, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. At the same time, I was a rap kid: N.W.A, Tupac, Ice Cube, Ice-T. Those two worlds—the literary side of rock and the raw directness of hip-hop—became the DNA of everything I would write.

I was going to the laundromat with my father in Danversport. And we heard Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone." I heard that and I was like, holy shit. This is like the greatest thing I've ever heard. That moment I'm like, dude, I want to do that. That's what I want to do. I can't sing — I got my mother's voice, which I'm perpetually sad about.

Then there was a girl heading to the University of Maine, and I had just lost my license for drinking. Sitting there thinking, how the hell am I going to see her? That kind of urgency does something to you. It forces you to create. So I started writing more seriously. From seventeen to twenty-five, I just kept going—working construction during the day, going to night school at Salem State, filling notebooks in the back of landscaping trucks, studying between jobs. I failed out more than once. Still graduated at twenty-five, nights only, working days the entire time. Made the Dean's List every semester I was actually in it. Finished with a 3.555 GPA, closer to 3.8–3.9 in English and History. I kept writing through all of it.

I didn't have a car at the time because I lost my license for drinking and driving. So I was like, how am I going to go see this girl? I just started to write some poem about it, something inspired by love. From 17, 18 up to about 25, I just kept collecting writing and not doing anything with it. Just fine-tuning it and building on it. I was working Joe jobs fixing houses during the day and going to night school at Salem State College. I'd go cut grass and in the landscaping truck I'd have my book of poetry and an empty notebook and fill it up, and study for my quizzes and tests. I graduated college at 25 going nights and working days, after failing out a few times.

The Shift

By nineteen and twenty, things started to move differently. By twenty-one, twenty-two, I was a rocket. Not clean, not balanced, not sustainable—but explosive. Drinking, smoking, using, writing constantly, then writing about hating it. That contradiction became fuel. I was living it and documenting it at the same time, building a catalog without realizing it.

By nineteen and twenty things started to take off in a different way, and by twenty-one, twenty-two, I was a rocket. Not clean, not balanced, not sustainable—but explosive. Drinking, smoking, using, writing constantly, and then writing about hating all of it. That contradiction became fuel.

Then I met a girl—a twenty-year-old Belarusian who was a ten, ten, ten, and I was still a five, five, six, five, five. She was on a work-travel visa. Our second date lasted three and a half years. I asked, how do you stay? We got married. She graduated from my college. We were completely different—we both knew it—but we made it work long enough for her to finish school. On weekends, I'd send her out clubbing with her friends, and I stayed home making songs over the internet with Justin Justice and Tyler Thompson. That's where the first real arsenal got built. By thirty, I had a catalog, direction, and a marriage that had run its course. We split. No drama. Just done.

Then I ended up meeting this amazing girl — a 20-year-old Belarusian chick who was a 10, 10, 10. And I was still a five, five, six, five, five. So I ended up going on a second date that lasted three and a half years. She was on a work-travel visa. I said, hey, how can you stay? We could get married. So we got married. So I was married but basically my plan was to make sure my wife graduated from college and then we'd split up. I would send her out at night on the weekends with her hot Asian girlfriend — not sexual girlfriend, but girlfriend — to go out clubbing and stuff. And I stayed home and made fucking songs with Justin Justice and Tyler Thompson over the internet and basically built my arsenal of songs.

Lady Weaver

Then YouTube changed everything. Back then, it was human. You could message anyone. I used it to find the best musicians I could reach. I was building. Over ten thousand subscribers. That should have been the launch.

At one point I had 10,000 subscribers on YouTube and a bunch of fans and was making music and was well on my way.

Instead, I found her. Someone told me to check her out. I did, and immediately I knew—this is the female John Lennon. She had a song called "May We" that was the best thing I'd heard in decades, followed by three or four more just as strong. I wrote to her: you're the one. I don't know what that means, but you're the one.

I found her channel and somebody I made a song with says, hey, you got to check this person out. So I check it out and right away I was like, that's the female John Lennon. She came up with the greatest song in the last 50 years, probably without a doubt. She came up with the best song I'd heard in like 40 years called "May We." And then three of the other best songs I've ever heard in my life. And so I started typing to her — I'm like, you're the one. I don't know what this means, but you're the one.

We typed, emailed, Skyped, talked. After a few years, I flew to Denmark and stayed three months. I was naive. A five or six trying to build something with an eleven. But I had big dreams, and sometimes that's enough to fool yourself. It wasn't.

At that point, I kind of dedicated my life to it. A little stalkery to start, but I called my shot. Then we started emailing, then Skyping, talking on the phone. And then after two or three years, I went there and lived there for three months. It didn't work out and I'm driven by passion. So I came back at 31, 32 maybe, and I was crushed. And basically, I was never the same again. I lost my passion for most of the next 15 years.

I came home and, over time, deleted everything. The YouTube channels, the subscribers—gone. I withdrew. Not completely, but enough. The movement stopped.

But then the thing with Lady Weaver — I just lost all my passion and ended up deleting my channels and just going down the drain.

Then, about two and a half years ago, I got an email. Not from her—from her mother. She had died of cancer. That hit hard. But when I finally stepped back and looked at everything—the silence, the lost time—I saw something different. It wasn't wasted. It was compression. And the system I eventually built—the free-lyric, open-access model—I built it in her honor.

Then I get an email — this was maybe two and a half years ago, 2022, 2023. And the email wasn't from Lady Weaver. It was from her mom saying that she had died of cancer. She left a boy and three young babies behind — she had a fiance and some children with him. So that's that. That kind of messed me up for a while. But now I'm at a point where I have healed emotionally from that and I don't have any hindrances and hang-ups on that now. Lady Weaver dying is the biggest travesty in my lifetime, anyone's lifetime. Because she was the greatest person I've ever met in my entire life and it's not even close.

The Lost Years

For almost ten years, there were no new songs. Just lyrics. Hundreds of them. And they got darker. More isolated. More numb. Without output, without collaboration, tone shifts whether you want it to or not. The system didn't exist yet, so the material just stacked.

I had periods where I would be artistic and write and stuff and capture my ideas. But basically everything in my life went to shit for a good 10 years where I really didn't hang out with a lot of people and just kind of hung out with my cats and smoked weed all the time. I probably drank too a little bit. So yeah, I was really a loser for a long time.

Time smoothed some edges. I got back in shape, started rebuilding structure. The world changed—apps, access, dynamics. I learned what I had, what I didn't, what mattered. I got good at three things: women, words, and men. Not resume material—but real. There was even a stretch recently—nine months, friends with benefits, lived together for a month. Not the endgame. But a signal. Tom was back.

I've really only had one friend the last 15 years, and even that's only the last three or four years. So I've basically been a lone wolf forever and she was the only girl I ever loved. And I've pretty much actively avoided females for the better part of the last 15 years. But that's about to change.

The Turn

And here's the truth: I hadn't connected emotionally with a woman in years. Not really. But underneath all of that, something else was building—the project. About twenty-five months ago, I started designing it consciously. Before that, it was instinct. After that, it was structure. I had something ready ten months ago. Then my mother got sick for the last time, and everything paused. A full year gone. But I didn't stop. I built three more albums—Set Lists 22, 23, 24—material that can be split, recombined, sharpened into something even stronger. The catalog kept growing.

Just in the last two years, I've made three albums worth of stuff — Set List 22, Set List 23, Set List 24. Two of my definitive works. So what I'm stepping back and seeing is that with things working out the way they did, it gives me a chance to actually have a much greater impact and legacy than I would have had if I'd just done things straight normally like everybody else. Because what that allows me to do is say, okay, I'm 47, 48 years old and nobody knows who the fuck I am. But I have this amazing catalog of stuff that covers everything and their mother.

The problem was never the writing. The problem was the lack of a system. So instead of protecting it, I'm opening it. Let people use it. Build with it. Turn it into songs. Improve it. Perform it. Repeat. That's the shift. And now it becomes real.

I'm not saying everything I've ever written is amazing and great. But I'm saying that if I have 34 albums worth of material, 20 of those fucking albums are fucking insanely good. Like, holy shit, this is really good. I have the potential for somebody out there to put this with that and put this with that, get somebody to play this and sing that, and we can be up there with anybody. Because some of my stuff is as good as anybody.

What This Needs

For fifteen years, I was a lone wolf. Me and a cat, sometimes cats. Now it's an army of two. My roommate—twenty-five years in the U.S., same job, trying to get citizenship. We don't hook up. We don't pretend to be something we're not. But we keep each other from collapsing. I keep him steady, he makes sure I go outside and talk to something without a tail. He calls me out too. Says I only talk to people for sex. He's not wrong. Until now.

I've basically been a lone wolf forever. But that's about to change.

We need a venue. A real place. Four nights a week making songs—building, fixing, creating. Three nights playing them. Showing what came out of it. Letting people hear the results. Maybe I'm not there every single night—but the system keeps going. That's the point. But to do this, we need someone serious. Not talk. Proof. Someone willing to back it, pay what's needed to make this a full commitment.

Tom is a dude who has been writing lyrics for 29 years — that is all he does. He does not sing, does not play instruments, and does not make music himself, other than giving his opinion on how to improve a piece. Think of it this way: 434 lottery tickets. Every single one of them is a song waiting to be scratched. Most have never been recorded. They are sitting there waiting for the right musician, the right voice, the right moment. If one hits, everybody who helped make it wins. Who wants to scratch a ticket?

We need infrastructure. An app. A CEO. Someone who can run operations while I run the creative engine. We need someone next to me in public—someone who can filter, translate, sing or read what I write. Because I'm not that guy. I can lead. I can direct. But not alone on a mic trying to carry everything. This isn't one voice. It's a system. A group effort. I'm part of it. Part of a committee of mics.

I always tried to write somewhat timeless. I always tried to put myself in a bigger perspective than I actually am. I always tried to take more responsibility as a kind of documentary of humanity. I took a big responsibility to make sure that I covered some serious fucking shit and made sure that it's not all just puppies and bunnies — and it's not all fart jokes and fucking erections and orgasms either. You take any random 100 people: 20 people are going to make it no matter what, 20 people are going to fall by the wayside no matter what. But the 60 percent in the middle — I've tried to bring them up. Sometimes I bring them down first.