We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jefferson Thomas. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jefferson below.

What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on? Tell us the backstory so we understand circumstances/context and why it’s meaningful to you.

It’s actually the one I just finished.  I have a new album that will be out toward the end of the year.  The first single is called “She’s Been Going Through Some Things” and it was released just last week. It’s a song I wrote for my wife, but on a larger, more universal scale, it applies to women everywhere.

SPOTIFY TRACK: https://open.spotify.com/track/16DHv33CUiOSdMDZ8lh0KL?si=91ff50121c7544cb
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ime3SvpChw

I’ve always been fascinated by women.  Maybe that’s why I’ve always had more female friends than male friends.  I am in awe of the inherent strength women have.  There’s a particular fortitude and special kind of toughness in women that us guys will never know.  Hell, even in propagating the species, they do all the hard work and we just hand out cigars to each other when they’re done.

There’s a lot of strange shit out there going on right now for women.  As if their lives weren’t challenging enough, now it seems they’re being besieged by more than the usual inequities coming from familiar quarters.  Now a lot of the communities and resources that had their back in the past are turning on them, or at least not standing up for them.  It seems like women have to justify their existence more than ever, in a whole new light now, with things like Title IX under siege.  As a society, we need to do a better job looking out for our women.  We’re so afraid of who we might be offending this week that we’re dropping the ball.

For folks who may not have read about you before, can you please tell our readers about yourself, how you got into your industry / business / discipline / craft etc, what type of products/services/creative works you provide, what problems you solve for your clients and/or what you think sets you apart from others. What are you most proud of and what are the main things you want potential clients/followers/fans to know about you/your brand/your work/ etc.

Please provide as much detail as you feel relevant as this is one of the core questions where the reader will get to know about you and your brand/organization/etc.

You awaken to headlights shining in your bedroom window in the middle of the night.  You hear the familiar bang of an amp against the screen door, followed by a string of four-letter words.  “Good,” you think to yourself, “he made it home again.”   By the time you hit junior high, you’ve already seen the old man play a thousand gigs, and you’ve chosen to follow in his footsteps.  And your mother is a singer.  Both their triumphs and tragedies beckon you into a world where there’s never enough money, but more wealth than anyone could ever imagine.

By my eleventh birthday, I had already surrendered, sitting in on bass on my parents’ gigs.  At fifteen I was playing guitar and singing professionally all around the US.   With the money I had packed away from playing out as well as a music scholarship, I headed off to college.  While there, I interned in the music school’s recording studio and practically lived there while recording my first release.  I was nineteen when I put out my first CD.  It’s probably still out there somewhere, which makes me feel queasy.  I don’t think I even still own a copy.

My music is quite literally a “melting pot” – of the places I’ve been and the things I’ve seen, heard, and felt.  I listen mostly to new people making new music, and there’s a lot of great stuff out there.  I also love to listen to old music; retro R&B and soul, vintage country, classic rock, whatever, but I don’t just want to parrot that stuff.  Those classic records are classic for a reason – they were good!  If we want to honor them, let’s all try to make good new music.  If we’re lucky, maybe somebody will be listening to us twenty-five or fifty years from now.

My live video my song “Jacksonville” from an NPR broadcast went viral and introduced me to audiences worldwide.  As a result, I embarked on his first European tour, and I’ve subsequently toured overseas every year since, constantly breaking new ground and growing my base.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being an artist or creative?

Learning how it can make you a better citizen; a better person.

When I was in grade school, I took up trombone.  I remember how playing in the orchestra in seventh grade gave me a larger sense of awareness.  One thing you encounter in a school orchestra is that you’re not playing all the time.  And while you’ve got a thirty-two-bar rest, you’re sitting there, looking around the room and thinking, “Hmmm, what’s that instrument that girl’s playing?”  You realize that there’s a lot of stuff going on around you.  As a musician, you learn to listen and you learn to lay out; sometimes NOT playing is the coolest thing you can do.

And as a human being, in a larger sense, you learn coexistence. You learn that sometimes it’s about you, but a lot of time it AIN’T about you.  You learn how to get along with people.  I still remember that realization at that tender age.  It still informs me as a musician and as a citizen.  There are a million reasons we desperately need music education in schools, but I think that subtle sense of civics is the most important one.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I have a great self-deprecating one for you…I was playing on this big stage by the ocean in front of a large audience.  It was a solo show in a setting that was probably better suited to a full-band thing, a real party vibe, but I was holding my own.  I was starting to sweat a little, like maybe I wasn’t going over that well. Then, all of a sudden, the crowd roared to life and started cheering.  I thought to myself “Yeah, that’s right, people, you know I got it goin’ on.”

Then I turned around and saw that this huge yacht was docking behind me. The cast of one of those “Housewives Of Wherever” TV shows, all clad in bikinis with their entourage of rappers and hard-partying hangers-on came down the ramp. One of their handlers yelled in my ear that the star of the show (I don’t remember her name, I’ve never seen those shows) wanted to sing a duet with me.  I said “sure.”

I just went with it.  I don’t even remember what we sang together, but the whole thing was so bizarre and surreal that I couldn’t stop laughing – especially at myself.  I guess the lesson is, every time you start thinking you’re “all that”, life will find a way to suggest otherwise and humble you.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jeffersonthomas.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialjeffersonthomas/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeffersonthomasmusic/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCagdwCeXcS_LIOA8h5njFzw

Image Credits

George Adams, Stageleft Photography