Earl Thomas

Dream your life, live your dreams!
For a blues singer, Earl Thomas sounds suspiciously content. People sometimes fret about how the singer never gets the credit he deserves, but these ideas do not come from Thomas. “I’m on top,” the northern California resident said in a recent interview. “I live as I always wanted to live. I live in the town where I always wanted to live, I have the perfect house, good friends, a sense of community, and I can run in the woods everyday. Actually, I’m blessed.”
What kind of bluesman says things like that? What happened to bar fights, bitter breakups and whiskey-drenched years on the road? And to aging delta blues legends falling off their stools in midsong and unknowingly repeating songs for drinks? Some people “won’t let the blues evolve,” Thomas said. “I think that the blues has been trying to evolve since the beginning.”
He leaves the long van tours to his peers though. “I'm a Bluesman but I am an upscale bluesman who prefers to stay at the Marriott or Hilton,” he said, sounding apologetic. “I don’t want to get in the van with the three or four guys and drive for several hundred miles to the next bar gig and stay at Motel 6.”
The closest Thomas comes to a lament is a quick mention of how, as a touring musician, the six-hour haul to San Francisco International can be exhausting. And Thomas likes his rest and solitude.
On first impression, it’s easy to write off Thomas as pampered — to assume the singer, whose buttery soul vocals are seasoned with just the right amount of traditional-blues grit, was blessed with enough natural talent that he didn’t have to bother selling his soul to the devil. One might even wonder if he’s qualified to sing the blues. “I get that a lot,” he adds, “but believe me, I am so qualified, I’m overqualified!” So it’s a surprise to learn that this fit, polished man started his path to the blues from the bottom of a ravine, where he lay, in a pile of debris, after a long fall.
“I know I died and I know I came back to life,” Thomas recalled. “I stood in the face of God, and she said, ‘Sing.’” It was his version of the crossroads. Don’t expect him to go into too much detail about the incident though. What matters is he had his epiphany; he “just didn’t know how to do it.”
At the time, the Pikeville, Tenn., native was living in San Diego. Upon recovering, the first thing Thomas did was pull out a map of California. He wanted to get as far from San Diego as he could without leaving the state college school system. He found a little dot in the top left corner that looked good, and it even had a school: Humboldt State University. This is where he found his music — in a girl’s Sunset Hall dorm room in ’83. “She was the poster child of the Humboldt honey hippie chick,” said Thomas, laughing. “Birks, leggings, and Patchouli oil.”
Someone was playing a guitar and Thomas started singing along. Soon heads were peeking around the door. “One guy was 5 feet away, another 4 feet, another 3,” said Thomas, recalling his first real taste of an audience. Then came the open mike at Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant in the Jacoby Storehouse. Thomas “blames” an old friend for the incident. It was just buddies having beers until my friend issued a challenge: “Hey, you guys, Earl can sing! Earl you should go up there and sing with that guy.” Reluctant, Thomas gave in to blues tradition and sang for a beer — and received a standing ovation. From there, Thomas formed a local band, Wild Night, which played parties and bars, building a local following and allowing the singer to work through his blues apprenticeship.
At HSU, Thomas found mentors — notably voice teacher Harley Muilenburg, a “great singer himself.” While Thomas acknowledges being a “natural singer,” it was Muilenburg who “got me in touch with my voice,” Thomas said. His mentor helped him shed some “bad habits” and utilize the diaphragm.
Nine years had passed since his epiphany at the bottom of the ravine when Thomas got his break. His debut, “Blue...not Blues” — an HSU project with songwriting partner and producer Philip Contee Wootton — caught the attention of blues legend Etta James, who covered Thomas’ “I Sing the Blues,” a hit that was even featured on the television show “ER.” From there, it was the world stage at the Montreaux Jazz Festival; shared bills with B.B. King, Elvis Costello, Ray Charles, Taj Mahal; awards; critical acclaim; and nine solid albums.
Thomas’ fondness for the Stax sound of the ’60s is obvious in his recordings, but he also cites such diverse influences as Rod Stewart, Black Sabbath and Silly Goose, a street-performing clown on the “territorial” corners of San Diego. Silly Goose’s credo, “Sometimes you go home with your pockets heavy with change, sometimes you go home with memories of smiling faces, but you always go home with something,” helped sustain Thomas through leaner times.
And with managers, booking agents, recording contracts, tours and interviewers complicating the life of a successful modern-day musician, Thomas frequently harks back to what he learned in the early Humboldt days. “What I have to do is put myself in the head space of that dorm room,” he said.
Thomas recently sold his San Diego condo, making northern California his full-time home. He lives alone without TV or music, preferring books. He’s open to meeting a special someone, but he’s not counting on it. Thomas said that as a child, he always envisioned growing old alone — and it didn’t bother him. “Ok,” he admits, “I wouldn’t mind someone to 'visit' occasionally.”
Responding to a final appeal for a lament, a content Thomas — the beneficiary of good old-fashioned blues healing — admitted he’d eventually like to move to “the west side of the road.”
Then, he was off to the library.
For more insight into Earl Thomas, please visit:
EarlThomasMusic.com
MemphisInternationalRecords.com