btnews

Celebrating MotherJudge for 'Best of 2007'

2007-06-28T07:26:00.000-04:00

Photo of BT and MotherJudge at Tess' Lark Tavern by Luanne Ferris appears courtesy the Times Union.

Albany soul rock singer-songwriter Bryan Thomas was one of nearly a dozen musicians selected by the Times Union to take part in the newspaper's challenge for a musical twist to the annual "Best of the Capital Region" issue, which posed the following question:

"What's your favorite thing about your community? And how would you set it to music?"

It didn't take long for Thomas to settle on singer-songwriter Caroline Isachsen, a.k.a. MotherJudge, and the community she's built around her "Best Damn Open Mic Night Ever" at Tess' Lark Tavern.

"For anyone else on the planet, being a singer and songwriter with as much talent and passion as MotherJudge would be enough. But the good mother (a.k.a. Caroline Isachsen) is also a passionate and tireless supporter of arts in the Capital Region, especially with her legendary open mic nights, which have existed in one form or another at practically every venue in Albany. I'm beyond grateful for her support, encouragement and inspiration over the years - and I'm grateful to be included in the community of misfit musicians and poets and artists she's nurtured with her open mics, which are indeed like open arms."

Learn more online - and see the video - at bryanthomas.com/motherjudge.

Thomas rocks Sugar Cookie 'band by proxy'

2006-12-12T07:37:00.000-05:00

What is Sugar Cookie?

Sugar Cookie is a band by proxy; none of the musicians on this recording performed in the same room at the same time. Instead, each phase of the recording was transferred between contributors via the internet and US mail.

Album producer Dan Sorensen conceived of a unique way to make music with artists he admired but whose schedules did not allow for a more traditional collaboration. He recorded complete drum arrangements and passed them on to 4 songwriters: Bryan Thomas, Ben Karis, Martha Kronholm, and Troy Pohl. Each writer applied a unique treatment to their respective pieces and returned them to Sorensen. Olivia Nix then provided supporting vocals to both Karis tunes. From there, the tracks were passed on to Bob Buckley to record bass. Finally, Frank Moscowitz, (in addition to his duties as co-producer, engineer, and mixer) provided guitar, vocal, and keyboard tracks to complete each recording.

The result is a surprisingly cohesive record, and a warm representation of the vibrant Albany, NY music scene.

Soul rock singer-songwriter Thomas contributes two songs: the radio-friendly rocker "Anythang," a lament to the teeny-bopper singer-songwriter of the week, and the soulful "Jealous," which plays on his hesitations in participating in a project with so many talented musicians and songwriters - even calling them out by name.

Learn more at the official site. Stream the full tunes at MySpace. And enjoy.

Fashion Rock: Models, Music, Mayhem

2005-09-24T22:56:00.000-04:00

From Metroland:

Saturday night (Sept. 24) at the Lark Tavern saw the blending of two worlds: the rockers and the fashionistas (we're guessing it made for one hell of an after-party). Local designers presented their clothing lines while Bryan Thomas soul-rocked-out wearing a Liability T-shirt (by local designer Tommy Watkins) in between models strutting their stuff on the catwalk.

For more pictures of this event (and the before-and-after craziness), check out www.thehiddencity.com.

Photo Credit: Chris Shields

New CD 'Spy Love Box' - and new video

2005-07-15T00:26:00.000-04:00

Albany soul rock singer songwriter Bryan Thomas will officially release his new album, SPY LOVE BOX, Saturday, July 30, 2005.

The release will coincide with a party at Tess' Lark Tavern to celebrate the new music video for the song "Babylon," from the 2004 album of the same name.

SPY LOVE BOX is the sequel to the BABYLON record. It began as a short collection of solo-acoustic demos recorded live in Bryan's bedroom July 4, 2004, and grew over the next several months. The album picks up where BABYLON left off with more songs reflecting on bombs over Baghdad and the birth of a baby girl.

The "Babylon" music video was filmed over three days in the fall of 2004 on location at Tess' Lark Tavern on Madison Avenue in Albany. The video was directed by screenwriter and producer Carl W. Liss of Los Angeles in partnership with GoPicture Productions and Bionic Media of New York City.

Details on the release of SPY LOVE BOX and the party for the "Babylon" music video are forthcoming.

Thomas' vox on Davis' rock opera

2005-02-12T00:16:00.000-05:00

Overcoming a lethal cocktail of the common cold and cat allergies, Albany soul rocker Bryan Thomas recently completed vocal duties on nineteen songs being recorded for Rise and Shine, an epic new musical by New York City's Jed Davis and Arturo Vega. Contributors to the project include CJ Ramone, Kitty Kowalski of the Kowalskis, Maryann Fennimore of Crescent and Frost, and Dicky Barrett of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones - with more to be announced.

On one track, a "drunk" Thomas in character as "Jonah" accosts a yuppie played by Ramone, only to have Barrett's "Tank" character save his ass from a serious beatdown.

Updates on the progress of Rise and Shine are available online at jeddavis.net - as is Jed's must-read, tell-all memoir documenting the Albany music scene of the late nineties.

Metroland to songwriters: 'Why words?'

2005-01-03T00:42:00.000-05:00

Here's the full version of what I sent to the folks at Metroland for the discussion of lyrics in the 2006 Local Music Issue - featuring the responses of Sara Ayers, Brian Bassett, John Brodeur, Stephen Gaylord, Erin Harkes, Meg Hutchinson and Gaven Richard. The stuff that wound up on the cutting room floor is in red. - BT.

2. Do you wait for "the muse" or follow a disciplined writing schedule, or somewhere in between?

Sometimes there's a challenge - my brother needs a song for a short film, for instance - and I like the idea of pulling together something I never would have written otherwise. But I can't force it on my own. So 99 percent of the time, I just have to wait for it to hit me. Every song feels like it's going to be the very last.

3. Which comes first, the lyrics or the music?

First, I'll make a mistake on guitar. If the mistake sounds interesting enough, I'll chant a melody on top of it, something I could hum or whistle on its own and it would still make sense as a melody. Then I'll free-associate some nonsense words. From the nonsense comes the lyrics. I wish I was kidding.

4. Do you worry about clichés? How do you avoid them?

It's a fine line between universal and same old, same old. I'll do anything to avoid a cliché, whether it's a lyric on the micro level or a sentiment on the macro level. Universality, however, is the first casualty. And I've got the (lack of) album sales to prove it.

7. Are you more Randy Newman (narratives from the perspective of other people) or Joni Mitchell (first person/confessional), early Michael Stipe (words as sounds, not stories) or something else entirely?

I guess I come from more of the Joni school. But Joni knows that it's not enough just to feel it, because it's so easy to fall into the trap of bringing just one more navel-gazing-woe-is-me song into the world. (Who was it that said the worst poets mean it the most?) So I try to go so deep inside myself that I come out the other end. So to speak. Then I can write from a safe distance, so that it sounds more like a Newman-school song - or at least it feels that way to me while I'm singing it. More confrontational than confessional. A la Richard Pryor. Sprinkle some Newmanesque dark, bitter, old-school irony and humor, a dash of Stipean/Dylanesque word-painting for further subterfuge, and a splash of Princely nobody-else-would-say-or-do-that, and ya got yourself a Bryan Thomas song. For better or for worse. The rough, real-life metaphor for this: instead of getting a model to pose as the "Jennifer" character on the cover of my last three records, I put on the short skirt and pumps and posed myself. Yet of the six or seven people who actually purchased those records, most don't know that the hot mama with the big behind is really me. (Um, until now.)

8. Topical or timeless?

Even as my songs have become more quasi-political in recent years, it's hard for me to point the finger accusingly at others in the lyrics. My hand knows me too well, so it tends to turn around and flip me the bird. I touch on topical issues of the day - the nonsense coming out of the White House lately, for instance - by visiting the larger, historical context of American hypocrisies, which, if done right, should be not only timeless but also apolitical. And inclusive of my own human failings, too. With that said: on the last record, sure, I did a little topical finger pointing on a song or two. Some American hypocrisies are more hypocritical than others.

9. Is rhyming important?

For a certain type of song, sure. But the, um, African-American in me feels like rhythm is just as important, if not more. There's just too many ways you can invert or re-word a phrase or tweak the melody itself for a songwriter to have to force a syllable to the point where it sounds unnatural. At least not without a sense of irony.

10. Are lyrics poetry?

Poetic, if not poetry. I don't pretend that my lyric writing can really compare to the art and craft of pure poetry. There are other songwriters and rappers out there making what I consider to be poetry, but I don't think I'm coming at it that way. Still, if I do it right, the lyrics should at least be able to stand on their own. The music, too. The whole is usually greater than the sum of the parts, I suppose, but each should be able to stand on its own.

And here's the questions I didn't respond to.

Don't read too much into that.

1. Where do you write lyrics?

6. Do you every worry that your lyrics sound like someone else?

11. What is it like to write lyrics-fun? Painful? Cathartic? Etc.

12. All-time favorite lyricist?

13. All-time favorite lyric?

14. Favorite lyric of your own?

15. Anything else you'd like to say about writing lyrics?

'Babylon' is Thomas' love song to America

2004-02-05T00:19:00.000-05:00

Soul rocker Bryan Thomas will release his third album BABYLON on Leap Day – February 29, 2004 – making it available online via indie Internet retailer CDBaby.com. Recorded live to tape in a single day, the album features a backing band of Bob Buckley and Matthew Loiacono, on loan from Albany punk bluegrass quartet Kamikaze Hearts. More info about the album is online at bryanthomas.com/babylon, including audio clips, photos from the recording session, and Thomas' lyrics and journal entries for each song.

ABOUT THE ALBUM

"Sure, I'd call it a love song to America," says Thomas of BABYLON. "But not the blind love that's been going around of late. This is something deeper. This is seven songs of tough love."

Tough love, indeed. Most of the songs on the album were written in early 2003, in the weeks before and after the launch of the Iraq War. Thomas and his wife were awaiting the birth of their first child at the time, which intensified and complicated the songwriter's emotional response to front page headlines and images on the TV news. "It was a scary time," he says. "In lots of ways."

BABYLON is more organic and stripped-down than its predecessor, the dense soul rock epic Ones and Zeros. That record - Metroland Magazine's "Album of the Year" in 2002 - was recorded over the course of a year in Thomas' bedroom studio with big beats, overdriven guitars and layered vocals. BABYLON, in contrast, is nearly all-acoustic, recorded live to tape (analog!) in a single day in August 2003 at Silvertone Studios in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Thomas recruited Bob Buckley to play the bass and Matthew Loiacono to play a brushed snare and kick drum on the record. Buckley and Loiacono are members of Albany punk bluegrass quartet Kamikaze Hearts, well known in the Northeast and beyond for their own brand of organic, deftly crafted, heartfelt porch songs. It was a good fit.

"I did wind up adding guitar solos to a couple songs after the initial session," says Thomas. "But most of what you're hearing - vocals, drums, bass, and 90 percent of the guitar - all happened live in that room. Often on the first take. So it's got some rough edges here and there, but that's part of the charm. It's just three guys sitting in a room, playing some songs. In the raw, out in the open - that's the feel of the record, and I think it serves those songs well."

And that it does, from the bluesy album opener "Around1" - where Thomas calls out America as a cheating lover who "swings her behind like she knows it's too big for the Planet Earth" - to its reprise on the album closer "Around2," a spoken word descent into Hell that finds Thomas channeling Saul Williams, Richard Pryor, T.S. Eliot and Thomas' own father, the late Rev. Willis Thomas III. "Yes, I'm the son of a preacher man," he says. "Which probably explains a lot of where I'm coming from with these songs." He laughs. "And all of the songs that came before them."

Perhaps the spiritual nature of the album is most apparent on the title track "Babylon." Here Thomas testifies with lyrics stolen from the Book of Revelation, his fire-and-brimstone melody grafted over a driving acoustic-rock, country-gospel groove. "And the woman thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth," he chants. So it's a spiritual record, certainly. But knowing the climate in which most of these songs were written - and reading between the lines to see both Baghdad and Washington in his vision of Babylon - would he also call it a political record?

"Not in the traditional sense," he says, "These aren't protest songs. Hell, I have more questions than answers these days. One moment in history inspired it, but it's more about how that moment fits the pattern established throughout our history, as a nation, as a planet. How we've come to make the same mistakes, again and again and again. And how our children will pay for it. Same old story."

He smiles that smile, and you know he's about to turn it all around.

"Of course, you could just as easily argue the opposite: that it's smaller than politics, that it's just one guy's attempt to work the knots out of his stomach in strange, strange times."

The smile fades. "Although believe me, most of those knots are still there."

ABOUT BRYAN THOMAS

Soul rocker Bryan Thomas is a punk clown fool hailing from New York's capital city of Albany. BABYLON is his new, live, acoustic album. The Albany Times Union named him "Best Male Singer-Songwriter" shortly after he released his acoustic hip-hop debut Radio Plastic Jennifer in 1999. The follow-up soul rock epic Ones and Zeros was Metroland Magazine's "Album of the Year" in 2002. In addition to these records, Thomas' music can be heard on the opening track of the Black Rock Coalition's Bronze Buckaroo Rides Again (which also includes a track by BRC founder/ Living Colour guitar wizard Vernon Reid). Thomas also has three tracks on the double-live Pazfest: A New Orleans Tribute to Joni Mitchell, recorded on a steamy Louisiana night at the Howlin' Wolf in the summer of 2000. He was recently in the studio with punk legend Tommy Ramone, making a special guest appearance on a track produced by Ramone for New York City's genre-smashing neo-punksters Collider. Samples of Thomas' music, video and poetry can be found online at his award-winning web site bryanthomas.com, and at TheHiddenCity.com, a webzine for underground arts in Albany, New York. Thomas is a founding member of the Hidden City collective.

A web developer by day, he lives in Albany with his wife Cindy and daughter Zoe. He is the son of Deloris Griffin Thomas and the late Rev. Willis Thomas III, who moved from Louisiana to New York in the late sixties to pursue careers in education. Thomas' younger brothers Jason and Justyn are also artists, expressing themselves in film and poetry. He is a graduate of Niskayuna High School in Schenectady, New York, and Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont.

More information about BABYLON is online at bryanthomas.com/babylon.

BABYLON will be available for purchase online at CDBaby.com beginning February 29, 2004.

CONTACT

D.C. Damseph
Publicity/Management, WT3 Records
bryanthomas.com/contact

Metroland's Best Solo Rock Performer

2003-07-17T09:00:00.000-04:00

From Metroland's Best of the Capital Region 2003:

Best Solo Rock Performer

Bryan Thomas

One voice, one guitar: It's the cornerstone of most folk shows, and (admit it) it often gets pretty tedious pretty quickly. Never, though, when Bryan Thomas is the one supplying the singing and the stringing. A frighteningly charismatic stage presence, Thomas writes, sings, picks and strums with such aplomb, energy, vitality and heart that you can't help but be entranced by the solo rock wonderment unfolding before you.

Best Vocalist (Male)

Bryan Thomas

It's sweet, it's sultry, it's horny, it's spiritual, it soars, it rumbles, it whispers, shouts, swoops, veers, emotes, evokes and devotes—all without ever missing a note. It's Bryan Thomas' voice, and it's one of the natural wonders of the musical universe, wielded by a performer who's able to use it in all the ways it needs to be used. Mmmm.

Metroland Profile: 'The Thoughtful One'

2003-02-20T10:00:00.000-05:00

The following article by John Rodat appeared in Metroland Magazine Feb. 20, 2003.

The Thoughtful One

The stylistic diversity and lyrical flights of Bryan Thomas' genre-blending music reveal an intellect at play and an instinct to question

In repose, Bryan Thomas looks suspiciously like an ordinary guy.

Kicking back in an overstuffed shabby-chic chair, feet up on the ottoman, he exudes an air of unwind. He's thoughtful while answering questions - almost spacey, in an after-work kind of way. He's got more style than your dad - who could not have gotten away with the Franzen glasses or the Basquiat 'do - but aside from sartorial panache, he's got a loose-tie-and-slippers demeanor perfectly suited to the den.

This is a rock star?

He laughs. "My wife says, 'Why haven't you written a song about us?' And I'm like, 'Well, a good song needs conflict, and we get along pretty well.' "

Thomas' easygoing and genial air, his comfortable digs and his self-described marital contentment contribute to the picture of an enviably secure individual, a guy keeping up on the mortgage payments and receiving high marks on his annual reviews. But don't be fooled by the domestic tranquility: As evidenced on Thomas' latest release, Ones and Zeroes, he's got access to conflict, and he's pulling from a deep well.

The song "Shine," for example: Fans of Thomas who have not yet heard Ones and Zeroes, and are familiar with his soulful-magpie take on the singer-songwriter idiom, will not be shocked to hear that he has incorporated a variety of styles and influences; nonetheless, this song is a standout, and they may be surprised at its tone. It opens with a quavering organ, churchlike but more ominous than celebratory. A simple bass-drum-and-bongo rhythm pokes out from underneath, giving the impression of something dragging its feet down the center aisle between the pews. And then Thomas' voice comes in:

"The boy just wants to end the hurt/So he takes his mama's hand and steps inside the church/He marches right up to the front where his daddy used to preach/Peek inside the casket, daddy's fast asleep/Say goodbye, bye-bye."

Joined by clanking percussion like rattling chains or an untrustworthy engine, Thomas puts the song's central character beneath portraits of smiling white saints, whose beatific grins seem mocking to the black boy at his father's funeral. "Boy, we got your daddy," they gibe in cartoonishly layered vocals, reminiscent of some exaggeratedly dramatic Parliament/Funkadelic tracks.

Sonically, the whole thing comes across like an outtake from Tom Waits' Mule Variations performed on the Mothership. Lyrically, it works as a very short story, with a dramatic arc and the symbolic promise of a redeeming force at its close - but for all its sure technique, "Shine" is personal and affecting.

"There's the school of songwriting and performing that says, 'This is me. This is who I am and this is the sum of everything I am,' " Thomas says, "and there's the other school that says, 'It's theater and performance, too. It's adopting character and personalities.' I think I fall somewhere in the middle of that. It's all ultimately me, or it's all aspects of me, but it's not necessarily me."

"Shine" is, Thomas says, one of the more directly autobiographical songs he's written, and the boy in the song is Thomas relating his experience of his own father's funeral (though Thomas, at 25, was more young man than boy at the time of his father's death). And as much as the subject matter, the deliberate craft behind the song is revealing.

"Just being at the funeral, I experienced this huge, giant emptiness and disconnect from what people were saying during the actual service," Thomas explains. "They were saying nice things, all the right things, but I just felt like it was less about him, and who he actually was and what I knew of him, than it could have been."

He adds after a pause, "Maybe some of that is my own fault, for being too emotionally junked to get up and say something myself."

So, the approach to the song, its almost sculpted nature, is at once a relation of the immediacy of the overwhelming feeling of that moment and an example of an analytical streak that Thomas says has always been present in him.

"I would say that's how I am with hugely emotional events," he acknowledges. "There's always been this crazy detachment and analysis, whereas I see people who are crying and talking about how emotional they are - 'Oh, isn't this sad?' And I always have this distance that's analyzing the situation - and also analyzing myself and how I'm feeling and how I should feel or what I should be thinking about."

Thomas lets the statement hang for a moment, then sums up laughingly, "It's nuts, basically."

Thomas speculates that the "hyper-awareness" of himself in context may be a by-product of growing up black in "not an extremely diverse community." As a child in Niskayuna, he says he lived on what seemed to be the one integrated block in the area: "I don't know if it was zoned differently, or what," he jokes.

So, he knew the Argentinean family next door, and his best friend's Taiwanese family, but he grew up with a knowledge that full and unself-conscious integration was not the norm. (His years at Vermont's Middlebury College must only have reiterated that point.) And the example of his father, who was both a Baptist minister and a onetime president of the Schenectady chapter of the NAACP, provided an early vocabulary for that awareness.

"It's been so ingrained in me - social activism, and notions of what's right and wrong - it's like second nature," he says.

And though Thomas says his own activism is less direct-action than it is contemplative and spiritual, it is never dormant.

"It's the little stuff," he explains. "As I always say, it's never the guys wearing the robes and burning the crosses who worry me, because I know where they stand and where they're coming from. It's the people who don't necessarily know that what they're doing or saying or thinking is somehow imposing on who I am.

"The simple act of walking into a store means I have to think about these things," he continues. "Like trying on clothes in the dressing room and thinking, 'Now, am I wearing anything that I bought in this store before? And are they going to think that I'm stealing it if I walk up to the counter?' There are little things like that all the time."

The self-examination therefore often centers on issues of race, and those issues provide frequent grist for Thomas' artistic mill; but his music is more diverse and less explicitly political than, say, Public Enemy's. As the motto goes, the personal is political, and Thomas' personal life can't be limited to a single social issue, any more than anyone's can. He's a married man (and he credits his wife, Cindy, as a prime source of his artistic confidence), he's a working man (he's got a Web-design day gig with the New York State Union of Teachers), he's a family man (his brothers, Jason and Justyn, are both artists as well, and Thomas proudly features their work along with his own at his Web site, bryanthomas.com), he's involved with the local arts community (he's got a hand in the online mag thehiddencity.com), and so on. The source material for Thomas' songs, accordingly, runs the gamut.

"A lot of what I do starts with stream of consciousness - sometimes starts and ends," he says. "A lot of it is disparate and disconnected, somewhat, because I'm pulling from different sources. Whether it's stream of consciousness while I'm actually playing and composing on the spot, or pulling it from things I've jotted down. Sometimes, the chorus from one song becomes the chorus for another and the rest of the first song just goes away. And lately, I tend to borrow from other songs I've written, to help them connect a little bit, in some way."

Thomas says that walking that line between the confessional, autobiographical approach to songwriting and the more theatrical or novelistic approach of crafting musical fictions is really a form of introspective play, similar to the prolific short-story writing he did as a child. He claims convincingly that while his deep-thought technique may be more demanding than ripping off boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl or driving-fast-cars-is-cool rock songs, it's still a whole lot of fun.

"Everyone just assumed I'd grow up to write novels or screenplays," he says. "So, a lot of what I do now goes back to the stories I wrote as a little kid - which is basically playtime. You can go out and play with your little Legos or your dolls, or you can run around the house and play Star Wars or shoot 'em up, or whatever, or you can play it out by writing it down.

"Some people come home and turn on the TV and watch Survivor," he says simply, "and some people go downtown and play the open mike or play a gig or go upstairs and write a song."

Thomas shrugs, as if saying, "Hey, it's just what I do." But there is a difference between flicking on the tube and going upstairs to write a song, then to write another, to write an album's worth of self-examination and poetic experimentation, to commit it to disc and drag it out into the world to compete for attention with the likes of Survivor. Isn't there? Doesn't that kind of intellectual and artistic motivation - however playful - to pore over the raw materials of life for creative fuel indicate a peculiar temperament?

Shifting in his chair, Thomas is silent for a long moment.

"You know what I'm doing now?" he asks with a kind of self-deprecating amazement. "I'm reading in my head, like, five different answers. That's what all these gaping silences are. I'm evaluating all these potential responses."

This is an ordinary guy?

"I definitely think too much," he laughs, shaking his head. "But I try not to. I think about not thinking too much. I think a lot about what it would be like not to think so much."

Bryan Thomas will play Changing Spaces (306 Hudson Ave., Albany), with Matt Loiacono, on Friday (Feb. 21). Admission for the 8 PM show is $5.

Huge rock: Collider and Tommy Ramone

2002-12-08T23:37:00.000-05:00

Today I ventured to Loho Studios in NYC with Collider (the masters of genre-smashing rock and roll cold-fusion fronted by the one and only Jed Davis ) with T. Erdelyi handling production duties. You may know Mr. Erdelyi better as the legendary Tommy Ramone, who just happened to have kicked the shit out of the drums on the Ramones first three albums. Yes, those Ramones (Tommy is seated in the picture above cuz he's cool like that). So what the hell did I do in the presence of such greatness? Well, basically I tried not to screw up a Six / Jennifer -esque flow on the MF of a tune "Mock Cheer" for Collider's forthcoming and as yet unnamed EP. Start to finish all six tracks for the EP were cut in just three days and the sound is HUGE. I've listened to the rough mixes about 1,000 times since getting on the train back to Albany early Monday morning. Props to genius Jed and the Collider crew for having me. An honor and a pleasure. Keep it pointed to collider.com for updates on the giant new music.

Celebrating Joni Mitchell in New Orleans

2000-05-28T23:33:00.000-04:00

First the Big Easy. Now the Big Apple.

Albany singer-songwriter Bryan Thomas and his new band bring acoustic punk soul to the stage of New York City's legendary CBGB's to kick off the Black Rock Coalition's Black Music Month celebration Saturday, June 10, 2000 at 9 p.m.

The New York event comes on the heels of a headlining slot at a New Orleans tribute to singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell on Memorial Day weekend - a rowdy, rockin' performance with Thomas' band that brought the house down in the wee hours of the morning. [See below for reviews.]

"We were pretty scared when we found out that [show producer Michael] Paz wanted us to close the show," says Thomas. "Following so many great artists, world class musicians. A Marsalis? A Funky Meter? David Lahm? We were terrified. After all, it was only our second gig."

Normally acoustic, Thomas plugged in a Strat for this one and delivered the overdrive, bringing a new, punk energy to his interpretations of Mitchell's "Black Crow" and "All I Want" - with the help of Matt Loiacono on the drums and T. Malachi Price on the bass. (Both Matt and T. Malachi were moonlighting from their gig with Albany punk bluegrass quartet the Kamikaze Hearts.) The electric sound also added depth to Thomas' soulful read of "Little Green," which he dedicated to the memory of JoniMitchell.com founder Wally Breese. (Breese was responsible for reuniting Mitchell with her long lost daughter in 1996; until recently, very few were aware that the story Mitchell tells in the song "Little Green" was her true account of giving up daughter Kilauren for adoption in 1966.)

Billed as "Joni Mitchell Fest 2000," the event at The Howlin' Wolf included more than 30 acts from New Orleans and around the world, including the Jason Marsalis Quintet, New York jazz pianist David Lahm, New Orleans blues legend "Little Queenie," guitarist Brian Stoltz of the Funky Meters, and singer Susan Cowsill (The Cowsills, Continental Drifters). The party was a fundraiser for the Ruth Paz Foundation, established in 1996 by show producer Michael Paz in memory of his mother (and thanks in part to a generous grant from Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan) to support children burn victims in Honduras. The event also served as a memorial service for Breese.

Thomas, Loiacono and Price will kick off the party at CBGB's this Saturday night with a set of Thomas' originals, including favorites from his critically acclaimed debut CD "Radio Plastic Jennifer," and several new songs written in the past year. Also on the bill: Bandroid, the Steve Clarke Band, Jared Booty, Shoshanna, and other special guests to be announced.

Thomas performs next in the Capital Region in a solo-acoustic setting as part of the City of Albany's Alive at Five series Thursday, June 29; he's on the bill that night with several "Capital Songwriters," including Amy Abdou, Michael Eck, Mary K. (of MK4), Paddy Kilrain, George Muscatello, Rob Skane, and Maria Zemantauski. Local legend Mother Judge hosts.

The Black Rock Coalition (BRC) was founded in the fall of 1985 in New York City by Vernon Reid (of Living Colour) with the purpose of creating an atmosphere conducive to the maximum development, exposure and acceptance of Black alternative music; CBGB is one of the birthplaces of punk rock - a movement owner Hilly Kristal helped foster when he began booking "fringe" acts like Television, Blondie, Talking Heads, and the Ramones.

Closing out the evening with a rocking version of "Black Crow." Bry-Bry, T. Malachi and Matt rock on.

Show producer Michael Paz.

He comes for "Conversation;" Claud comforts him sometimes.

Pianist David Lahm offers jazz takes on Joni.

A funny moment for Susan Cowsill during her heartfelt read of "The Last Time I Saw Richard." (Drink up now, it's gettin' on time to close!)

Drummer Jason Marsalis leads his band through a dreamy, New Orleans take on Joni's "Dreamland."

"By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong..."

Lahm leads the way.

Denise Marie's shoes, guitar and dress are the perfect color complement to her motel room.

Lahm and Leslie Mixon say goodbye to porkpie hat.

"I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, traveling, traveling..."

The Marsalis Quintet hisses like summer lawns. Coooool.