IAN THOMAS - SINGER, SONGWRITER, ACTOR, PRODUCER

Ian Thomas

Singer - Songwriter - Actor - Producer

Canadian Gold

By Jay Cooper

Ian Thomas is known for his many talents - hit songs and albums, Juno winner, SCTV, The Red Green Show, Snap the Rice Krispie, The Boomers, Lunch at Allen’s and so much more. This Canadian icon graced me with his time to run down the successes, history and his continuing journey to entertain his huge fan base. At some points, the conversation had me laughing so hard that I couldn’t speak! Ian Thomas is Canadian Gold!

JAY COOPER (ATOTK): You are a musician/singer/songwriter/producer/actor/Juno award win ner and husband … probably the wrong order (laughs). You have a very strong love for the Kawartha area.

IAN THOMAS (IT): It’s just so beautiful and we are so very fortunate to have the Kawarthas. I constantly say we are the winners of the lucky bugger awards being Canadians. It’s just such a gift. I often thanked my parents and remain eternally grateful to them for emigrating from the UK to Canada, my home and native land.

ATOTK: Karen, our Editor, is a huge fan of yours and saw you perform as often as possible. She recalls that at every gig you would start playing ‘Long Long Way’ and you would stop the band and say, “This is Canadian Gold!” And the audi ence would start cheering.

IT: (laughs) True story. The Canadian Gold thing was a sort of a humorous point of contention. I think it was Dave Broadfoot who put me away one day with the comment; “The difference between Canada and the USA is, with only one hit in the United States you need an entourage and security guards for life. With a dozen hits in Canada, you need a name tag” (laughs). It kept you in a fairly humble position, which I think was probably the design of Canada’s sort of indifferent attitude towards its own. I remember the Second City cast experienced that as well. When they went to the US, they got “you sold out man” and when they came back they heard, “couldn’t make it in the States, eh?” (laughs).

ATOTK: Was it difficult to get airplay here as well?

IT: All of your music was judged and now program ming is so monotonic unless it’s on the billboard chart. I remember being told that they should get extra points for playing a Canadian song on the radio that wasn’t on billboard and I just thought, well there it is.

ATOTK: As a multi-instrumentalist, what was your first instrument?

IT: My mother was a piano teacher so of course piano was first. There was always music in the house and when you’re the kid of a musician, you hear it all the time and it just becomes a part of who you are. From piano, I was really attracted to the social purpose of folk music and you needed a guitar for that. And then the Beatles hit so of course electric guitars became mandatory (laughs).

ATOTK: What was your recollection of the first song you wrote?

IT: That would have been at the age of 15 and it was a very traditional sounding folk song. But the doing of it was like my sub-conscience had been chewing on a whole pile of things and it spat out in this song. It was a song about being directionless, which I certainly was at that age. It was revealing that writing was good for me. It allowed stuff to come out of myself that otherwise wouldn’t have. My brother Dave thinks that cre ative writing is as much an affliction as it is a talent

and I believe there is an element of truth to that. Some of my greatest creative joy has been in the demo stage of songs where something emotionally resonant oc curs.

ATOTK: My knowledge of you was from SCTV play ing ‘Pilot’ and ‘Hold On’, but you got into the fun with your brother Dave with the Doug & Bob char acters. My all time favorite show!

IT: They are all amazingly talented people. When my son broke his spine and became a paraplegic five years ago, all of those folks came together to do a fundraiser for my boy. Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dan Aykroyd, Catherine Ohara etc. The generosity and love from my brother Dave’s colleague’s was incredible. It was more like family. I have known them all from theatre days and SCTV or bumping into each other at parties.

ATOTK: Does your brother Dave play an instrument?

IT: Well, he played a 5-string banjo a little bit and noodled some on piano but he was never all that in terested in it. He learned a classic jazz piece on piano called ‘That’s All’, a lovely little piece of music, but that’s all he wanted to learn. Once he did that, he went back to writing comedy (Laughs). He’s an amazing creative soul. I really admire my brother. He’s a constant source of inspiration to me.

ATOTK: Most musicians want to be actors/comedi ans and vise versa, but you do it all.

IT: Well, it was all part and parcel, basically stretching out, as I did not want to move my family to LA. Mak ing a living at music in Canada was difficult, but for tunately for me international artists like Santana cov ered my songs. Around 1974 I started singing on jingles and then character voiceovers. It was all something I had fun with but when I did ‘The Red Green Show’ for 6 years, I realized I had no business doing it because it bored me to tears. Just the process of being around all day, on call, for maybe 5 minutes of work time and it just made me mental. So I just lost interest in it. It was fun initially for me but then I realized I was actually de priving some real actors from work.

ATOTK: Other people we have featured make a nice living doing jingles and voiceovers.

IT: The commercial business supported my family for 20+ years. I had no agent, no cattle call; the phone would ring from a producer and ask if I wanted to do a couple of spots the next day. My god, I was Snap the Rice Krispie for 25 years, voice of the Corporation and the Firkin Pub ads, and it was all just great fun.

ATOTK: With all the success, there is a side of the music business that exists - to hold the music back

from climbing to the top of billboard?

IT: Fredric Dannen wrote a book called ‘Hit Men’, and he said that you wouldn’t break the top 20 without $250K changing hands. I talked with Billy Joel about this when we were playing together at Massey Hall around 1975. His Piano Man stalled at 27 on Billboard chart, just like Painted Ladies did. We both scratched our heads, but it was the same thing - his label also didn’t put the money down. Fortunately for him he was associated with very good concert agents and did huge gigs. Unfortunately I was stuck in the clubs of Ontario (laughs).

ATOTK: In the glory days of record stores, I remember all the top of the charts albums were the first things you would see.

IT: Painted Ladies was in heavy top 10 rotation in ma jor markets and to see it stall at 27 was fascinating to me. So you are correct. If you broke the top 20, the re cord stores would open up with better product place ment and albums would start to move through.

ATOTK: Ian Thomas Band, then solo and then the next phase is The Boomers success?

IT: In typical fashion, the band wasn’t a hit in Canada. To my good fortune a really organic thing just ….hap pened. A guy in a record store in Germany played the

album in-store and sold out the 50 copies he imported within a couple of hours. He kept re-ordering new cop ies until 7 thousand went out the door. A reviewer said, “If the president of Warner’s Germany doesn’t see fit to release this in Germany, he should be selling socks” at which point they picked it up and it took off over there. I was on vacation licking my wounds over the supposed failure of the album, but when I got home there were all these messages of “You need to get to Germany for press - now”.

“I have nothing but gratitude for people ... for music I’ve created that means something to them.”

ATOTK: Your music is available through streaming but are record companies still on top of it?

IT: Anthem is just now releasing my back catalogue, so I’m getting out there. Record companies own a whack of Spotify, so they’re just paying themselves again. Honestly, the record industry to me generally speaking has always been a farce. You now have 360 deals where they want a piece of your T-Shirt sales and squeeze everyone who’s trying to eke out a living. The bodies they leave in their wake with artists who are penniless or in debt just keep piling up, while they fly in corporate jets. It’s true to the Capitalist credo, maxi mizing profits.

ATOTK: You opened for great acts and the next gig would be in a bar?

IT: We played to standing ovations every night open ing for Al Stewart on ‘Year of the Cat’ tour. We left Tex as with all this respect and the next gig was the Knob Hill bar in Toronto after the strippers (laughs).

ATOTK: You are currently on tour doing Lunch at Allen’s with your best friend Murray MacLauchlan?

IT: Yes, Murray, Cindy Church and Marc Jordan are indeed some of my best friends. Murray and I would hang out from time to time at Allen’s on the Danforth. He was asked to put a song-circle together to do some theatres,. He called me first and said he didn’t want it to be the usual song-circle approach, where one per son plays a song while the others try to look interested and pick their noses. He wanted to make it like a band where everyone backs each other up. Right off the bat

the vocal blend of the 4 of us was stupid good, which surprised me, as we are all very different singers. We did those 8 dates and 20 years later we still travel across the country once a year.

ATOTK: Best gig for you?

IT: I’d have to say it was with The Boomers. After our first Germany tour we still weren’t thought much of here. But we played Ontario Place and that was a tran scendent date. I heard from many people that said that was one of their favorite shows and it was one of mine also.

ATOTK: Worst gig ever?

IT: Oh that would have to be some clubs where you’re sharing the dressing room with strippers. Then you start playing and some guy is yelling ‘Judas Priest, play some god-damn Judas Priest’ (laughs). Another one, we played a place called The Norwegian Wood in the basement of a hotel in Jarvis. We fin ished the first set and this guy says to me ‘What is this shit your playing and when are you gonna play Four Strong Winds!’ He thought I was Ian Tyson and had turned into this egghead that just played shit (laughs).

ATOTK: Final thoughts?

IT: At this point in my life, I have nothing but gratitude for people that give this old man a sense of validation for the music I’ve created that means something to them.