Born on This Day in 1968, the Renowned Musician Who Has Played on Over 1,200 Albums and Toured With Vince Gill, Tom Petty, and John Fogerty

While singers get the glory, most would admit they’d be nothing without session musicians. Highly sought-after session guitarist Tom Bukovac, who has backed up Willie Nelson, Kenny Loggins, Stevie Nicks, and more, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on this day in 1968.

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Tom Bukovac Has Played on Over 1,200 Albums

Raised in Willowick, Ohio, Bukovac first picked up a guitar at age 8. Five years later, he began performing at his mother’s bar, The Surfside Lounge, in Eastlake. Gaining a reputation as the “Boy Wonder” around the local bar scene, he decided to move to Nashville in 1992 “because everyone I knew who moved there had been able to find work.”

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Bukovac was not the exception. He found work in the road bands of country artists like Lionel Cartwright and Tanya Tucker. In 1995, he auditioned for a position playing guitar with Wynonna Judd. He got it, and played with the legendary country singer for four years before opting to pursue session work full time.

 “I stayed up all night making a list of pros and cons and made the decision to turn in my notice,” Bukovac recalled in a 2005 interview.

After touring Europe with John Fogerty in 2000, he received a call from producer Dann Huff about an opportunity to play on Keith Urban’s album Golden Road. It was Urban’s first time working with Huff, and after scoring three No. 1 hits and a three-time Platinum certification from the RIAA, Huff has produced every single record for the Australian hitmaker ever since.

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His Strength Is His Versatility

After the success of Golden Road, released in 2002, ” things really opened up for me,” recalled Tom Bukovac. He has since played on more than 1,200 albums by artists like Faith Hill, Sheryl Crow, Rascal Flatts, Vince Gill, Tom Petty—the latter two of which, he also toured with.

“The sessions I get called for are so wide-ranging. In a two-day period, I could go from playing heavy rock to ’70s L.A. studio jazz,” Bukovac told Music Radar in 2022. “I love the variety of music that’s coming out of this town. One minute I’m playing some nasty gut-bucket blues, and then I’m doing something crazy and spacey. For a guy like me who loves to play lots of different genres of music, it’s a never-ending source of inspiration.” 

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