CHEAP TRICK Bassist TOM PETERSSON Creates Songs To Help Autistic Children

When Tom Petersson and his Cheap Trick bandmates take the stage in Hulman Center on Sunday night, several dozen audience members will share a bond, reports Mark Bennett for Tribune-Star.

No, there won’t be 45 people in the crowd who also play bass for a classic rock band with 20 million albums sold, as does Petersson. Instead, if statistics bear out, those folks and Petersson will have something more personal in common: They’re parents of an autistic child. Petersson is trying to help their kids and others around the world, just as he did his own 8-year-old son, Liam.

The tool Petersson uses is, not surprisingly, music. He and his wife, Alison, discovered one of that art form’s powers almost accidentally.

As a toddler, still not attempting speech, Liam heard the Elton John song, “Blue Eyes,” playing on the family’s home stereo. He started saying “eye” and pointing to his own eye. He had a similar reaction to other songs’ most simple lyrics. They kept track of those words, and Tom took their list and began writing simple, catchy rock songs as a way to encourage basic speech by their son. It helped.

That led the Peterssons to create Rock Your Speech, a project to deliver songs, videos, chord charts and speech therapy components to parents, teachers and therapy professionals through phone apps and CDs. The apps are in progress, but a new “Rock Your Speech” CD by Petersson just got released and is available through the project website, RockYourSpeech.com.

After more than four decades with the band formed in Rockford, Ill., and a batch of ‘70s and ‘80s car-radio classics such as “I Want You to Want Me,” “Surrender” and “Dream Police,” Petersson feels new energy with this mission. “The response we’ve gotten is just incredible,” he said in a phone interview this month, in advance of Sunday night’s concert.

“It’s really inspiring,” Petersson added.