Coming to YOU...but YOU decide where!
Los Angeles, Charleston, Atlanta, etc - cities I haven't played since the last national run after Western Front. We're putting together another long slog to work the new release, and as we select venues, I want YOU to tell me which place in your town you'd prefer to hang! FOr example, all our LA peeps have seemed to gravitate slightly westward since I last played there, from downtown and NoHo to West Hollywood, Santa Monica, and even Venice and Redondo, so we wanna do the LA date over that way.
"Jefferson Thomas...we gig, YOU decide"... Gee, imagine that...
Rappin' with my mom this morning, who is an Adele fan. We both laughed at an entertainment industry that wastes years and untold millions trying to market anorexic, talentless, lip-synching, pitch-corrected skanks, then pushes a plus-size gal with class who can actually, um, SING - and is then surprised when she goes over with a public that wasn't nearly as stupid as they were banking on.
JT at WNYC's Greene Space, NYC - Friday March 2nd WNYC has selected me to do battle with several other city musicmakers on Friday, March 2nd in a live show reminiscent of the old "battle of the bands" things we all did back in high school. I haven't done a battle-of-the-anything since the eleventh grade, so I had my reservations about this, but the folks at WNYC and NPR really have their stuff together and are doing this thing right, so I have to say I'm having fun with it. Whoever's left standing after this whole shootin' match gets a slot on Summerstage in Central Park this season, which is good, because I'd love to take a break from the annual logistics nightmare of staging Central Park concerts MYSELF. We'll be doing "Jacksonville" from the Western Front record and I'll be joined by Greg Barbone on piano and Lorenza Ponce on violin. The evening gets underway at 7pm and tickets for the whole show are $15 (open bar included!). If you can't make it out, you can VOTE for us online HERE. That's the Greene Space's website; they'll have a specific page for this event as it draws nearer. See ya at the show - and meet me out behind the gym for a puff before we blow off history class to head for the mall! Stop - I mean START the presses....FOR A REVIEW OF THE NEW JEFFERSON THOMAS DOUBLE-RELEASE,
  NEW YEAR, NEW MUSIC!Early in the evening of December 31st, we finalized all the dotting of the I's and crossing of the T's for the first of two new records I'm dropping on you in 2012. Generally, I'm not one of those folks who cuts loose on New Year's Eve. However, secure in the knowledge that SIDE ONE had been officially delivered and would be unveiled the first week of the new year, I headed out into the big bad city and dutifully partied my ass off.
The best way to ring in a new year is to hit the ground running, and we're already finshing off SIDE TWO for a Spring release, and setting about outdoing last year's non-stop traveling roadshow. I met SO MANY new folks last year at the shows, and I'm looking forward to hanging with you again. In the meantime...go GET SIDE ONE and be sure to LEARN THE WORDS so you don't look foolish!  Keep it up all year 'round, folks!
A great musician once told me, "If you're any good at all, you know you can be better." We are now in the heart of that thing called "the holiday season". So I'll suspend my ambivalence about our culture and its annual perfunctory "be kind to your fellow man" binge for the last month of the year if YOU promise to be kind to your fellow man in March, June, and September as well.
some new video fer y'all CLICK HERE
...to see Janet Robin tearin' it up with me on the last song of my last show in 2011. Have a great holiday, folks, and we'll see ya next year! When the music means a little more...
I was humbled and honored to be asked to play two benefits this fall. The first was an annual affair for Tuesdays Children, which raises funds for families who lost members in the 9/11 attacks. Fittingly, “Glory Bound” always finds its way back into the setlist in September, but this was the first time I felt like I was singing it directly TO somebody.
The second show was an October motorcycle rally and fundraiser for Wounded Warriors and Rolling Thunder. Bikers are the greatest, warmest people in the world. They’re also the greatest songwriting barometer. If you’ve got a new song, play it for them. If the bikers love it, it’s a keeper; if it doesn’t move them, throw it out! We had the young (active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan) and old (Korea and Viet Nam) folks in attendance, and we always toss out a few fitting cover tunes. If you’ve never done old Bob Seger and Creedence songs for Nam vets in Harley jackets and wheelchairs, I recommend it as a major dose of reality.  (photo by Michelle Mixter) Hair Of The Dog
The first call of the day today took the cake. I have reluctantly agreed to go on a HAIR MODEL audition. There are apparently some really desperate casting directors out there.
Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. Hate me for...all those other reasons. Been away...So in response to the "Well, are the new records done?" inquiries, the answer is yes. And I even managed to finish both of them while dealing with the sudden influx of summer LIVE DATES, a feat I'm actually quite proud of. A lot of the final tweaks and edits were done in hotels and motels, and in some cases actually in the van. The van is simply a force to be reckoned with at this point; I'm no longer in control anymore. IT tells US where we're going and what's on the agenda. It was modified with complete audio and AC power connections, and there's actually a healthy portion of the recording that was done at 4am parked on a beach somewhere.
So yes, the new records are done - have been for a month now - but I'm pretty worn out, and haven't had time to really address what I'm going to do with them. So I'm gonna do something I've never done before - I'm gonna sit on 'em. Everything I've ever done was always racing the clock for some pre-determined release date, and, you know what...why? The tracks are done, and film and TV licensing is still moving forward, so why rush? I actually learned this valuable lesson from MATHEW FOSTER-MOORE; I produced his record and we finished it last November, and he decided to just wait and live with it a little instead of rushing it out. In March he put out something he was comfortable with and proud of, and the widsom of that decision wasn't lost on me. In the meantime, we managed to finally get a healthy start on something lots of folks have been yelling about for a while now - the LYRICS page. Most of my tunes are up on there now; the rest will be coming online soon. And the first of the two new records is on there, too. So while you can't HEAR it yet, you can at least READ it for now. We'll also be giving you little weekly sneak peeks on the FREE MUSIC FRIDAYS page in the meantime. It's been a fantastic summer of live dates, great audiences, and bringing the new music to them. House concerts were the new thing for me this year - never done those before. We even managed to get in a live video shoot on one of the dates in mid-July, so there'll be some new VIDEO for you soon. But the one lesson I learned this year is that when the calendar starts filling up, you can't just go on autopilot. If you want audiences to get off on you, you have to really prepare and put some serious work into your set, and I'm gonna remain focused on that while I finish out this string of dates in the next few weeks. And then (I haven't unpacked or bought food for my refrigerator since Memorial Day), I'm gonna GO HOME and STAY there for a while, tend to some family business, overdose on football, and rest up a bit. I think a couple of weeks of living like other human beings probably won't be all that bad. 
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