Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jason Thomas. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jason, appreciate you joining us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

There are times where I think it would have been great to start earlier. Growing up, it would be fair to say that I didn’t have much confidence in my ability, so although I have had an interest in music, be it singing, guitar, or just listening, the idea that I could pursue music as a career just never seemed like something that could be real for me. As a result, I even stepped away from music for a number of years and didn’t play the guitar at all. Having said that, I really think things like this are difficult to truly gauge, because even though I might have wished that I had gotten an earlier start, it doesn’t necessarily mean that things would have turned out “better”. It’s easy to be here, now, as the person I am today(who was very different from who I was), with my life as it currently is, and having the awesome guys that I do in the band and think “I wish I started earlier”. But, as cliche as it sounds, everything in my life brought me to the point where LastTimeDown was able to happen, and happen in a way that allows for the possibility of success. More than that, who I am today is much more capable of handling the difficulties that are inherent in managing a band or any creative enterprise.

In addition to all those things that are kind of more personal aspects of timing, there is also the technological developments that have happened in recent years that make the music industry FAR more accessible than if I had tried to jump in even just a few years ago. Music marketing and distribution used to be a high dollar enterprise, even on the “low” end of the price scale. Now, anyone who wants to learn how has access. That’s not to say it’s easy or doesn’t require skill, but the doors have been opened, or at the very least unlocked, for the rest of us and it no longer costs thousands of dollars to run an effective campaign or distribute your music to a worldwide audience. It’s incredible and I’m grateful to live in a time where that’s the norm.

In my case with the way LastTimeDown came together, the timing was really fortuitous and I can’t honestly say that I could have timed it any better, given the opportunity. I’m glad that everything worked out the way that it did, there really isn’t anything I’d change. I love having the opportunity to write/perform music with 2 of my best friends and explore the music community as an artist and peer. But for the future, now that LastTimeDown IS here, we’re gonna keep going until the wheels fall off! We love embracing that creative quality in ourselves and other musicians, and we don’t take it for granted. We’re going to make the most of the chance that we have to share great music with the world.

Jason, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Again, I have always had an interest in music and writing, though not necessarily writing music. Growing up, I was generally in advanced english or writing classes. That’s not to say that I was smarter than anyone, I just really liked writing. It always felt like such a great way to share part of your internal reality with the external world. In stories, you can build entire cites, worlds, and lives. In really great stories, no matter the genre, there always seems to be some greater underlying theme that addresses some strange universal truth that, in the everyday, seems to hide in plain sight. When you read these stories there’s a feeling of deep connection and recognition on a pretty personal level. Great music does the same thing. Whereas words set the context and are the medium of written works, melody and sound set the context and create the metaphorical tone, or vibe, for music. By bringing these things together via creativity in a harmonious way, years of imagination and experience can be distilled down into just a few minutes, to great effect. You can tell a story, create a world, share the deepest parts of life in a matter of minutes. Not only that but the person will actually be able to feel it. That to me is pretty remarkable. Have you ever heard a song that made your hair stand up or give you goosebumps? Or have you in tears? Or just resound on such a deep level that inside your just like “YEAH!”. I think that’s really the greatest draw of being in a creative career. If you do it sincerely, you get to touch and interact with the deepest part of what it means to be human in all of us. Now that doesn’t mean you’re going to write hit song after hit song. It just means you’re being as honest and sincere in your art as you can be. And even though I can’t say there is a direct correlation, I find that the more honest I am in my songwriting, the more I like the end result and the more other people seem to be able to connect with it.

The cool thing is that lyrics aren’t even necessary to tell that story or convey that message and in some cases can even get in the way. Classical music and jazz are great examples. There are no words, but it can somehow create this emotional domain of the composer and draw you into it. Great music can change the world. Now, I don’t know that we’ll be changing the world any time soon, but that experience of the power inherent in music is real and is really intriguing to me, and to be able to be a part of that, or to, at the very least, strive toward that ideal of excellence in my own creative expression, is very attractive to me on a basic level. That is one of the cornerstones of why I write music and love writing music so much. I want people to enjoy the music that we make, but even supposing no one listened to the music we’re making, I’d still continue to make music regardless. Of course, money needs to be considered practically as a matter of strategy/logistics and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having financial goals and aspirations, but if the sole focus and primary end of the people involved is “let’s make money” vs “let’s make great music”, that will reflect in the music that is ultimately produced. I’m not an expert, but I think that’s part of the trick to being successful in any endeavor.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One lesson I had to unlearn was one that I never even realized that I had learned to begin with, and if I had to sum it up that lesson is this: “Follow the money to the goal”

All throughout my childhood life, like millions of other children around the world, I was told to follow my dreams, but also that I’d need to make money, with “make money” being at the top of that short list. So I thought, like many others, “if I could just make money following my dream, I might have this life thing figured out.” The problem was, I didn’t necessarily have a dream I wanted to follow, or rather, my dream was to make as much money as possible. The REAL dreams or aspirations that I had seemed like just that: dreams. Something impractical that I couldn’t do because I wasn’t good enough, so instead I would have to find a “normal” career to settle in. With that in mind, it didn’t matter how, I just wanted to make a bunch of money so I could live how I really wanted to live.

So I would try to find a “dream” to follow as an ends of making money, but it wouldn’t work (fast enough) or it wasn’t a good fit and I would move on to something else. At which point I would find some other reason to move on to something else. All the while being no closer to my goal of “making lots of money”. One day I was watching a video on YouTube and the guy that was talking said something I’ll never forget “Excellence is a mindset”. I don’t know if I had heard that before or not, but it was the first time it ever made sense to me. All at once, I had this sort of epiphany that excellence isn’t something that’s just done in the moment in a particular situation as part of a particular action, it’s a way of being. What happens in the moment is just a result of striving for excellence in anything that you do. This understanding really opened the door. Over time I begun to realize that if one strives for excellence in general, then whatever they do, given enough time and focus, will be excellent as well. And in the real world, excellence is very valuable. The best, most in demand in any field are generally a paragon of excellence in that field.

Now how does ANY of that connect to what I said starting out…

I realized that people PAY FOR EXCELLENCE. The mental orientation to become as knowledgable, useful and relevant as possible in whatever given field you are trying to get into. That orientation is a natural catalyst for growth and improvement, and the more familiar you get with a subject, the more comfortable you become, until you get to a point where you are so familiar that excellence in that field becomes second nature, like breathing. You develop a “feel” for it that goes above what you can learn in a book, and it is reflected in peak performance. I won’t say that it’s impossible if the sole focus is money, but it becomes much more difficult to maintain motivation when you’re chasing something for reasons that aren’t your own with no benefits that are presently tangible. If you are following the goal, then everything you learn feels like a small victory and it spurs you on to learn even more, and again, the positive cycle is self reinforcing. Don’t give up, follow the goal and become excellent at whatever endeavor you are undertaking, and the money will come eventually. Excellence is a rare and very valuable commodity.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I’m not sure that there is such a thing as a “non-creative”. I think that there are some people who are more capable of expressing certain tendencies that are considered creative than others. Everyone has things that they enjoy and creativity tends to arise naturally when doing something that one enjoys, so any differences would just be a matter of subject. Whereas my creativity lies in music, another person may not have a musical bone in their body, but can build a car from their imagination from the ground up with parts they found from a junkyard. Or the mathematician who writes a new mathematical formula that elegantly brings together several seemingly disparate parts through symbols and numbers. The world, at least in part, is built on creativity.

If someone is having a hard time expressing their latent creativity through a different medium than they naturally feel comfortable doing, something that I have found useful is to get myself in the headspace of doing something that I love and really enjoy. So I’m feeling confident, with a sense of positive anticipation and an eagerness to learn and put in to practice everything that I can. Once I’m there in my mind, I bring in mind that, if it’s something new, I’m probably going to be not great at it for a while at first, so I need to be willing to cut myself a lot of slack and literally just have fun with it, without expectation. Once you feel you’re in that place in your mind, then you begin on whatever it is you want to try and express your creativity in. It helps if you do it without judgement of whatever results. Most times the creative ideas are there, they are just being blocked out or drowned out by insecurity and self doubt. Once you accept that the initial feeling of self doubt is just a natural part of the process and not an indicator that you’re incapable, you can move beyond it and find your creative space is always available for anything.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lasttimedown.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lasttimedownband/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LastTimeDownMusic/
• Youtube: Youtube.com/@lasttimedownband
• Other: https://artists.spotify.com/c/artist/0u1Hxj5aXgWTFH6rutnPjd/song/7kPlBTXz7qaT1cUtWZRV48