We recently connected with Heather Thomas and have shared our conversation below.

Heather, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I started playing drums when I was 10 years old and I knew right away that I wanted to make playing music a big focus in my life. I remember showing up to career day in elementary school with a pair of drumsticks and tap shoes (I was a tap dancer back then!) saying I wanted to grow up to be a tap dancing drummer. I don’t tap dance much anymore, although I did recently record some tap dancing on an album.

I feel fortunate that I found something I was so passionate about at such a young age, because it’s allowed me to live a creative life and commit myself to making music even when things are tough or gigs are lean.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I got into drumming in 5th grade band and took drum lessons through high school, then I studied and earned a degree in Percussion Performance from Central Washington University. I moved to Seattle and started freelancing, playing in almost any band that asked for a few years until I got a gig with 2x Grammy nominated artist Mary Lambert. We got to tour, record, and be on TV, and performing with Mary was one of the experiences that led me to becoming a songwriter. I wanted to connect with an audience the way she did, by telling stories, being vulnerable, and writing beautiful songs.

I started writing songs and performing solo on ukulele, which I had picked up to write (and so that not every single gig would involve moving an entire drumset!) I put a band together and released my first album People in Places at the Tractor Tavern in Seattle, followed by a 3 song EP called Open Up, and am currently working on releasing a full length record titled Dig On Down.

As an independent musician, I’m able to provide products like original music, video content and merch, services such as drum lessons, studio drums & vocals, touring drummer, and co-writing.

When I’m working on an album I do my best to match the overall vibe of the song and stay open to suggestions and feedback. I have a lot of experience working with a click, so I’m very relaxed and confident in the studio, which goes a long way towards getting the best sound for a track, even when the track isn’t “on the grid”.

When I’m working with a student in a lessons setting I help to slow things down and take a look at the technical work that needs to be done to gain fluidity on the kit, and I also try to help folks work through limiting beliefs. I work with them on basic stick control, learning how to count and read, how to transcribe a drum part from a recording by ear, how to effectively practice, how to lock in to a metronome, and whatever else they want to work on.

The feedback I’ve gotten over the years both in studio and live settings is that I’ve got a very sturdy sense of time and groove, the ability to play very sensitively and subtly or very loud and aggressively, and I’m dedicated to listening to the singer as well as all of the other musicians so that I am able to be supportive and solid without getting in the way of the message of the song. I have a friend who calls me his “psychic drummer” because he says I always play exactly what he was imagining.

I think I’m most proud of the work I do with all the bands I play with. It’s a joy to make music, and I’m fortunate to work with so many great musicians. I’m also really proud of the way my new album turned out, so I can’t wait to share it!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

On January 1st of 2020 I left Seattle with whatever I could fit in my van with the goal of spending each month living in a different city. I wanted to explore other music scenes, get more connected around the country, and possibly find a new place to base my music career. My plan was to spend a month each in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, New Orleans, Atlanta, Memphis, Nashville, Chicago, New York, Pennsylvania, and then a month-long tour back through the US to spend the last month back in Seattle.

The first couple of months were amazing, I had a blast meeting people and making music in LA and the Bay Area, and was busy in Austin preparing for several SXSW shows, both official and unofficial, when we got the news that the festival was cancelled. The response in Austin was wild, everyone going around town like “did you hear??” and the immediate attitude was “oh well, no corporate SXSW this year, it’ll be all local and we’ll throw our own shows”. So after all the official gigs got cancelled, a bunch of replacement gigs started popping up, until a week or so later when everything totally closed down.

I was far from home by myself in Texas, and was lucky enough that a friend I was playing music with offered me a house to stay in that had been abandoned by the Airbnb guests who were obviously not coming anymore. I stayed there for a total of 6 weeks. When the time came to decide if I should stay in Austin or try to move on to New Orleans, the decision seemed obvious as the news headlines were saying “New Orleans is the new epicenter of the virus”, and things like that. So I stayed that extra month in Austin until I had to leave when the homeowners found a long-term renter.

I had to go somewhere, but Seattle seemed like it was getting hit pretty hard and I didn’t want to go home just to not see any of my friends, so I decided to drive towards Santa Fe hoping I’d find a place to stay. I ended up in Albuquerque with a house to myself (another empty Airbnb) for a month where I wrote a song and filmed a music video.

Over and over again I was faced with the decision of what to do next, as anywhere I was able to stay was a temporary solution at best. It was a bizarre time to be traveling, and I had to take all kinds of precautions and weigh a lot of risks at every step. I had decided early on that I wasn’t going to judge anyone for how they made it through this time and I was going to make my own decisions based on what I felt was the best option regardless of how it appeared to people or what they might think or say.

Aside from that extra month in Austin and diverting to Albuquerque and Denver instead of Atlanta and Memphis, I did pretty much manage to accomplish my goal of traveling the country all year spending each month in a different city. My original plan to play as much music as possible in those cities became an opportunity to write and practice and start to learn a little about recording instead.

As a result of that year of travel I got a really interesting perspective on how different places responded to the crisis and learned that things were very different depending on where you spent those years. In places where my friends haven’t left their city since the pandemic, they are sometimes surprised to hear how different things were at that time in other states/cities/countries.

After I got back to Seattle I wanted to see if there was a way within the current landscape to make music with my friends, and since I’d been traveling and working on music all year I had an album’s worth of material to lay down. I booked a studio that was big enough that everyone would be far apart, and rehearsed a band in a way that the members were comfortable with. Unfortunately, even with all the efforts to do things “by the book”, we weren’t able to go into the studio as planned and I realized that it wasn’t quite time for me to come back and make music in Seattle.

So I left again, put everything back in the van and went to California with the aim of recording the album. I linked up with Sheldon Gomberg, who I had met back in January of 2020 in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, and we managed to record the album in that little window between when things opened up before they closed down again due to a new variant.

After the album was recorded I had to raise enough money to cover the studio fees, so I did a GoFundMe which raised $8k in the first day and landed somewhere around $17k, which took the album up through mixing and mastering.

Since then I’ve been doing my best to come up with the resources to finish it, I’m still working on the album design and need to plan a release for later this year. It’s taken a lot longer than I expected and cost a lot more than I was prepared for, but I know I need to keep pushing forward if I want to finally get this record out. It’s a challenge when you’re an independent artist without a team because everything that needs to get done has to be done by you or paid for by you, and the cost plus the amount of work required can be disheartening at times. But I did manage to put out the first two singles from the album last year and I have a tour coming up that should help me fund the rest of the release.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I love getting to connect with folks who are touched or inspired by the music and I really love getting to play music with other musicians. I love the feeling after a show when folks will tell you what parts of it spoke to them, or when they confess that they’ve always wanted to play the drums and that maybe they’ll start after seeing someone else have so much fun at it.

I also love the first time you hear a finished track that you and a bunch of other people worked really hard on. It’s so fun when your own music gets you excited, when the sound everyone made together is even better than you hoped. It feels like magic.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.heatherthomasmusic.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/heatherondrums
• Facebook: facebook.com/heatherdrummer
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/@heatherondrums
• Other: Drum Lessons: www.heatherthomasmusic.as.me

Image Credits
Josh Loney Cody Orrell Chris Daniels