Today we’d like to introduce you to John Thomas.
Hi John, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Most people who know me call me a renaissance man, which is a great compliment but also a bit of an overestimation. I’ve always loved learning and creativity; I invest my time and skillset in anything that piques my interest. Music and writing were always my first passions, so many of my afternoons as a latchkey kid were spent playing air guitar to Nirvana, Dire Straits, and Matthew Sweet or writing stories. Both were ways of dreaming. My first guitar was given to me when I was 14, and I began teaching myself immediately. I played with a few bands in high school but mostly stuck to athletics and theatre. Then at the beginning of college, I was introduced to EDM through the music of Mark Farina (the 2nd Mushroom Jazz album changed my life) and soon ended up living in Chicago and playing house parties and nightclubs as a DJ. Of course, this was before everyone, and their mom wanted to DJ. I became so enamored with the underground music scene and what it provided people (including myself) that I wrote my Master’s Thesis under my mentor, Anthropologist, Paul Hiebert focusing on the urban underground dance scene as a new religious movement. I pulled much of my work from critics and sociologists like Ethan Watters (Urban Tribes) and Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone). I focused on understanding the intersection of music, community, and ritual.
I found that much of the music I played didn’t reflect the ideas lyrically or musically I wanted to convey. It was hard to find songs that took me to where I wanted to develop as I played in clubs. This was during the CDJ revolution, but most DJ music was still printed on vinyl. It was expensive and hard to find and develop a massive vinyl collection, especially for a broke graduate student. In my second year of graduate school, my grandparents gave me a sum of money to help pay for college. I instead invested it in DJ gear and my first copy of Ableton to begin making music.
When I began making music, I realized after talking to several musicians that I had synesthesia, a rare ability to connect color and sound in my head. So I asked questions to any producer I played with, probably to an annoying level, but I developed some friendships with DJs and producers I still talk to today.
But dance music wasn’t the only genre I wanted to create. I was very interested in ambient, post-rock, and shoegaze style of music. I kept asking myself how to bring electronic and digital music into this realm. So I experimented and then moved to Austin in 2005, taking a high school English teaching position while I worked on my craft and traveled on weekends and during the summer to DJ. At the time, Austin had three places that did any sore of house music- Sky Lounge, Barcelona, and Plush. Not many other venues felt the music was authentic enough for Austin. Now it’s rampant all over Austin, which is a beautiful thing. But at the time, I decided to start a band, Panacea, that was a convergence of Portishead’s trip-hop with more digital house music. We had no idea what we were doing or creating but tried things out and didn’t budge on the electronic roots. Eventually, we played all up and down 5th street, Red River district, and South Congress- but it wasn’t until we found a new frontwoman and changed our name to the Echoes that we started playing two to three times weekly. I was working full-time as an English teacher, going to grad school for my second master’s degree, writing remixes, and experimenting with other styles of music on my own as well. So I decided to write a book as well. I would get 50,000 words in, which felt too cliché, so I kept working on an album with the band and a solo electronic post-rock album. That album “Cinema Electronique” was released in 2013, and no one bought it. But it got into several music executives’ hands, and I started getting a lot of work for TV and Film. In 2017, I scored my first full-length movie for the independent film Luke and Jo, directed by Josh Overbay, a genius in the field. It took almost nine months, but I’m still very proud of the work, a minimal ambient soundtrack, and it was nominated for “best full-length indie movie soundtrack.” I didn’t win, but I was the only nominee without a Grammy. I still laugh about it.
I kept teaching and took adjunct and professor positions with a few universities. I wrote several short stories but couldn’t finish writing a book. It’s just an area where I don’t have enough discipline. But getting contract work with Amazon Studios, Netflix, NPR, several video game companies, and doing remix work for various bands is a dream. So, learning, Reading, and Creating- I will continue this dual path. Today I don’t use turntables but recreate songs using Ableton Live and several pieces of hardware. This is called controllerism. I’m also on the pathway toward my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and want to specialize in Religious Trauma and Abuse, LGBTQA communities, and the intersection of ecopsychology and incarceration rehabilitation. I write Haikus daily on Instagram to continue my writing process and for my mental health, trying to catch a snapshot daily of the here and now. I also have a podcast, Grape Juice Shot Glass, for those that come from religious backgrounds but are deconstructing their faith recognizing that religions have done damage. Yet, spirituality and religion are also beautiful expressions of living. And the past couple of years, as COVID started, I’ve been learning about permacultures and sustainable living through growing and keeping chickens and making a backyard farm.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a reasonably smooth road?
When I first started playing music, I was dirt poor. I was never homeless, but there were weeks I ate beans and corn only. Then, in the summers, when school wasn’t in session, I would somehow get to California and work out there while trying to do shows with music and a lot of surfing.
At 19, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, had trouble with certain foods, and was in pain a lot of the time. There is no sign of Crohn’s though it is considered a chronic, incurable disease. However, I was also diagnosed with Chronic migraines and have lived with them my entire adult life. They are the most debilitating illness, and a lot of the darker music work and writing I do is trying to engage the pain, clutch in my hands, move through it, and accept it.
The most difficult health-related condition happened seven years ago when one of my students took his own life in the middle of a semester, two weeks before a close friend in Chicago did the same thing. A week after my grandfather died. I repressed and suppressed my emotions to get through the semester and try to be vital to my other students. It was the most idiotic decision in my life and almost killed me. Also, that says something because I make a lot of bad choices. The loss of these people, mixed with the repression in my body and the steroid shots I was getting in my head, creating the perfect storm. It developed into Cushing’s, and within three months, I gained 97 pounds, and my adrenal glands failed. I was utterly immune compromised, all while eating the same food and still exercising, but without cortisol or adrenaline, I could barely do anything. I couldn’t leave my bed for two weeks due to a significant anxiety disorder; I couldn’t drive and contemplated existential dread every moment. When I went to an endocrinologist after a few tests, they were surprised I was still alive. An average person’s cortisol level is between 30-100, and mine was .04, NOT 4 but .04. In the past seven years, I have brought my adrenal glands back online and minimized my anxiety through medicine, exercise, and diet. I started with walks to the mailbox and back to doing several-mile runs.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Composer for TV Film, writer, Educator, Farmer, Remixer, Artist, Producer, Performer
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
Many educators judge student success by the jobs they get after college. I think that is the furthest thing from true. Yes, finances help- though I wouldn’t know. But dreaming big and doing whatever you are passionate about is vital to a balanced life. Enjoy the complex parts the best you can, and grab onto what Jaques Lacan, the famous French philosopher and psychoanalyst, called the Lack, or what Kierkegaard called the dread. Embrace it. Enjoy the act of not having something. It eventually becomes an avenue of insatiable creativity. Paradoxically, be grateful for what you have, and yes, we inevitably compare ourselves to others but don’t stop spending this lifetime figuring out who you are individually and collectively. Help others. Yes, volunteer and help some non-profits you care about, but don’t forget to “be with” people. Sitting with them and listening to their stories without an agenda. Appreciate who they are. Especially in this time of division throughout American culture, where people value their belief in causes so highly, I can’t help but think we are commodifying ideologies rather than loving others.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: here_and_now_haikus
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmOns5w0J9YUg91Xh0UDiyg, https://www.youtube.com/@TheEchoesAustin
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/djjohnthomas
Image Credits:
Whitley Stratton for the multicolored Djing long exposure (2 pictures)
