“I’m doing a wedding,” laughs Thomas. “The gig is on the first couple of days, then I just hang around.”
After the island stint, the former Weddings Parties Anything leader will be joined by long-time friend and music cohort Mark ‘Squeezebox Wally’ Wallace for a lap around the country, stopping in at the eighth annual Australasian World Music Expo.
“You know I look at that lineup and go, ‘Well, it’s Archer and Jess Ribeiro on the night that I’m playing’,” says Thomas. “That’s a really good couple of people for me to be associated with. Sometimes when you’re putting together a show you can’t afford the people that you want. So this is a great way for me to get in front of some people, as well as for the associations you make.”
For any singer/songwriter, filling the setlist with the right mix of songs is always of the upmost importance. “It’s a quandary that most performers find themselves in. Sooner or later the people always want the sense of the familiar,” says Thomas. “You know, sometimes someone will yell out a request and I’ll go, ‘Yep, your request has been registered and we are processing it now.’ There’s really no perfect way to handle requests, unless you say ‘All requests via email.’ But occasionally you get someone that just yells out a song, and I think to myself, ‘What a fucking great idea’.”
Balancing time on the road and time at home has become an art form for many musicians, and it’s a practice Thomas has all but mastered. “I just love spending time at home now days, and having a young family, I obviously don’t tour as much as I used to. But as a performer I have to keep generating income. Sadly I can’t live off some big fat bank account or royalty cheque. But guess what? That’s where everybody else is at.”
Having a few irons in the fire is the perfect way to keep the income flowing. From playing solo, duo and band gigs to producing albums for other artists, Thomas always has a project on the horizon.
“We did some music for an ABC documentary that my brother did called Death or Liberty about radicalised prisoners coming to Australia, and Billy Bragg, Lisa O’Neil, and myself wrote a few songs. And we did a show at the Theatre Royal in Hobart. That’ll be coming out as an album and a concert DVD, as well as the film that’ll be shown on ABC.”
As well as spearheading an assignment involving the Darebin Film Archive, Thomas is working on a best of (post-Weddings) project, archiving stories from many years of touring. “It’ll put a nice little hyphen in my career after the Weddos. I’ve just hit that point where it’s been longer out of the band than in it. I can’t judge everything on the success of the Weddings, I have to just keep on going.”
BY JOHN KENDALL
