Tom Spicer provides the highest-quality local produce to Dallas area fine restaurants and top gourmet chefs.

For Tom "Spiceman" Spicer, food and music have always been intertwined. They are ripe, delicious, and sexy like homegrown, Creole tomatoes.

The Spiceman grew up in the Crescent City, New Orleans, Louisiana into a family of five sisters, Doris, Diana, Bettina, Alice and Susan, and one, macho brother, Hank. Tom was raised by his right-brained mother, Alice, and his left-brained father, Captain Henry C. Spicer, Jr. Somehow his Danish mother managed to meet and marry his Dad, from Waycross, Georgia in Venezuela. Now that's a spicy melting pot!

Tom entered at the tail end of the family and of his father's naval tour of duty. Born in New Port, RI in 1956, he traveled with his family to Holland where they resided for 3 years. When Tom was 4 years old, Capt. Spicer and family were transferred to New Orleans where the Captain became Commandant of the 8th Naval District in 1960.

The two major influences and loves in Tom's life are music and the land. The love of music comes via his dad. The love of the land comes via his mom. They are uniquely combined in The Spiceman.

As a young man Tom's dad was a Jazz violinist and played gigs on the east coast that helped feed his family during the depression. One of the bands he was part of was called "The Georgia Jazz Babies". His dad also entertained his large family by playing the piano at home.

Tom Spicer formalized his love of music by studying and playing bass at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. He then worked for many great musicians such as Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Robert Ely, Tracy Nelson, and Zachary Richard. He toured with Zachary Richard through France and Canada where he was introduced to the best food and freshest markets he'd ever experienced.

As a child Tom gardened with his mother in the lush, fertile soil near the Mississippi River. He frequented the French Market near Jackson Square as a child with his parents and later as a produce merchant. At the French Market he procured fresh Creole tomatoes, bay leaves, peppers and satsumas to sell to his Crescent City clients. One special client was his sister, Susan Spicer, chef/owner of Bayona restaurant in New Orleans.

Arthur Griffin, Tom's great-grandfather, was a horticulturalist extraordinaire imported from England to New England in the early 1900's by the Vanderbilts. Arthur grew hothouse melons and strawberries in the dead of winter for the Vanderbilts. However, he was more noted for his flowers winning trophies like the "Gardeners Chronicle" for his breed of "Gloriossa Rothchildsianna".

In 1979 Tom's connection to the land was enhanced when he was recruited by an oil and gas lease acquisition firm in Lafayette, LA. He trained to become a Louisiana, Oil & Gas Landman, which enabled Tom to rightfully say... "I'm a Looziana landman....dat's de lease I can do".

Upon returning to New Orleans after the oil crunch, Tom's long time friend and peer, Jim Bremer, recruited him to work for a specialty produce company where Spiceman truly began to blossom.

Tom moved to Dallas, Texas in 1984 to expand his field of dreams. He was recruited by a failing hothouse tomato operation. Tom turned it into one of the most successful fresh herb and specialty greens operations in the state. At the same time he continued to play bass guitar and join the Dennis Cavalier Band every Mardi Gras where his bass playing was like file to gumbo.

When Tom's imaginative bass playing styles and creative, New Orleans musicality got a hold of the flea market kalimba his sons, Erik and Maxwell, brought home, the Seque Kalimbass was born. Tom was able to join his bass with the African thumb piano and some great music has come alive.

The people who have had the delight of experiencing Tom "Spiceman" Spicer's food and music keep coming back for more.

Here, at tomspicer.com you too may experience "Spiceman's" food and music.