Thomas Brenneck

Thomas "Tommy" Brenneck is an American guitarist, record producer, and engineer, best known as the leader of the Menahan Street Band and member of The Budos Band, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, and El Michels Affair. He is the founder of Dunham Records, a subsidiary of seminal retro-soul label Daptone Records, and was the producer of soul singer Charles Bradley. As a producer session musician, he frequently works with Daptone and Big Crown Records artists.

Brenneck was born and raised in Staten Island, New York. He is a self-taught guitarist who joined the original Daptone band The Dap-Kings at the age of 20. Brenneck quickly became one of the essential members of the Daptone family, working closely with the label founder and producer Gabe Roth aka Bosco Mann, and playing and touring with Sharon Jones, the label matriarch. Sharon gave Brenneck his nickname, Tommy "TNT" Brenneck.

Since then, Brenneck founded Dunham Records and Studio, cultivated the music and career of the late Charles Bradley (also his son's godfather), performed and recorded with Amy Winehouse and is a principal in his other Daptone project the Menahan Street Band.

Brenneck has been a session guitarist, writer and producer on projects with Lady Gaga, CeeLo Green, Dan Auerbach, Beyoncé & Jay-Z, Josh Tillman AKA Father John Misty, Rufus Wainwright and Miley Cyrus, among others. Additionally, he has played guitar for Amy Winehouse and he is one of the musicians featured on "Telepathy" by Christina Aguilera featuring Nile Rodgers.

As an engineer on Yebba's Dawn, he was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards.

Brenneck is the founder of Dunham Records, a subsidiary of Daptone Records. The record label originally operated out of Brenneck's bedroom in Bushwick, Brooklyn and produced iconic hits from artists including Charles Bradley before eventually moving to a larger space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Brenneck ran a small recording studio out of his home in Bushwick, Brooklyn before opening Dunham Sound Studios with Homer Steinwiess in Williamsburg in 2008. The all-analog studio operated with Menahan Street Band as the in-house band and recorded artists including Mark Ronson, Rufus Wainwright, Cee-lo Green, Theophilus London and Diane Birch, among others. In 2014, the studio was succeeded by The Diamond Mine, a recording studio in Long Island City founded with Steinweiss, Nick Movshon, and Leon Michels.

In 2017, Brenneck moved to Los Angeles with his wife and two children. He now works out of Los Angeles' The Sound Factory studio with Mark Ronson, whom he got to know well during his time with Winehouse.