I’ve been a fan of Jeff Thomas for a while now. As a blogger and YouTuber, he’s incredibly generous with his time and effort, and he brings a sense of joy and discovery to everything he posts. As a recording artist, he’s an inspiration, taking the good and bad stuff of life and turning it into beautiful, heartfelt music. So when I heard he was working on a new album, I reached out to learn more…

Evaporate is your second album. What does it have in common with your first album, Denouement, and how is it a departure?

First, thank you again for having me. I’m a big fan of Abominations and I am honored to be talking with you here, again.

Sure thing! The feeling is mutual!

If I am being honest, I think the only thing in common with these two albums is my involvement. Outside of me physically being on both records, it is a complete departure.

With Denouement, I had been out of music for 7 years. I’d barely touched a guitar. Then, my kids started getting into music. Not only did they have artists and styles they liked, but they wanted to make music too. My son bought his very first electric guitar, and started experimenting with recording on his laptop. I started fooling around with Garage Band on my iPhone 12. Programming beats and synths. Then I would record a vocal part on the phone’s mic. I was recycling old songs from back in my playing days and they were laying down quickly. I finished the record in about 5 months. The production value is pretty on par for an album that was recorded on Garage Band using an iPhone 12. Regardless, I’m proud of putting the record together with the limitations I had and having been away from music for so long.

As I was finishing Denouement, I started writing again. I was inspired to play more and more. I just kept writing song after song. I had all these ideas. Initially, I wanted to expand on Denouement and do a better quality album. By 2024, I had written about 10 songs and then I started to get into indie folk. The National. Bon Iver. Brandie Carlisle. Maggie Rogers. I started to get into acoustic sounds. From 2024 to 2025, 10 songs turned into 60. I upgraded my gear, moved over to logic, and I was collaborating. So, Evaporate is all new songs, written in the last two years, all played organically- most on acoustic instruments.

There’s a sense of vulnerability in your new songs. What allowed you to make that leap?

Time. It’s been a while since I’ve written music. If I’m being honest, I had a pretty inflated ego when I was younger. I really wouldn’t classify what I was writing as very good back then though. It wasn’t personal. I really liked writing about movies, books, or plays and finding clever ways to interpret them. For instance, “Fall of the Rat King,” on Denouement is about an animated film version of The Nutcracker Ballet. 

When I started writing these songs, however, it was an approach I had never taken. I was almost journaling. It might be about a conversation my wife and I had, or something I heard that made me react in an emotional way. Then they evolved to taking a dive into my past. In this gap of time between when I was writing songs, I’ve experienced quite a bit of humbling. I think I often think about my past because of that. It’s like I’m going back and trying to fix the parts of my past that went wrong. 

You worked with producer Daniel Grigson of Necco Records this one. What did he bring to the process?

Working with Daniel was crucial for this album. When I had finished tracking the music, I had this product that was imperfect, flawed, and mostly just not what I was hearing in my head. I knew these songs had a greater potential. I was being very guarded on letting anybody listen to the music because I wanted it to be a surprise for everybody. But, I decided that I wanted to get somebody’s opinion because I needed to see if my own personal criticism of the music was all in my head. I knew Dan from Collaborative Artist Network, an amazing community of indie artists. Dan is the founder of this group. I reached out to him and asked him if he’d listen to them and tell me what he thought. I sent him one song and he came back with all of these praises and then he asked, “can I give you some critical feedback?” What he then said were all of these great things I would never think of. So, I sent him more songs and we eventually got to a place where we kind of looked at it together and said he should really produce this record.

Without Dan, Evaporate wouldn’t have been this special thing that it is. He filled the gaps, the holes, and fixed the problems. He knew when to push back, he knew when to expand on something. He knew what to keep and what to change. It’s just as much his album as it is mine.

You’ve mentioned wanting to make a country album that wasn’t a country album. How did you thread that needle with Evaporate?

I’ve always been a rock musician. Electric guitars, synths, amps, pedals. All of it. High, loud vocals. With Evaporate, there was a lot of reflecting on my relationship with my late father, who aspired to be a country music songwriter. I grew up listening to country music. It was one of my first loves, musically. When I grew into adolescence though, I veered hard. In my 20’s, I worked in the Appalachia region of the US and I started getting into Bluegrass and folk music. Then later, discovering Americana and some of my favorite artists there, I started coming back to traditional country music. When I say “a country record that isn’t a country record,” I mean I am a Nashville guy, I want to use roots instruments, and I want to write about what I think of the values of my life are, which stem from my roots. Country music is engrained in my roots. My values are rooted in the things I’ve taken away from growing up in the “southern Bible Belt.” Friendliness, kindness to a fault. Generosity. Love. A call to nature. So, I played acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, and an acoustic 12-string on this album. I brought in a cellist, instead of playing a synth string part. I layered vocals upon vocals. There were a lot of organic percussions: shakers, tambourines, bongos, even snaps and claps. But it is a Jeff Thomas record. It’s music I write and it is how I would write. So, it’s not going to sound like what we think of when we say “country music” today.

The first single from the album is called “Drakes Creek Park,” and the second single is called “Beattyville, Ky.” Based on those two titles, it seems like “place” might be a theme that runs through the album. Is that the case? Or is it more specific than that?

Yes and Yes. There are places in my past that have profound meaning to me. Sunny Side is also a place. It’s the name of the neighborhood I grew up in, in New Bern, North Carolina, before my family relocated to Nashville. These places that I referenced are places that represent significant times in my life. Beattyville reflects on my time working in Appalachia and the lessons I learned then; my views on society, religion, and nature. Sunny Side is about social class, learning that I was poor when I was a kid, identifying my father and his demons, and Drakes Creek Park is a literal play on metaphorical thoughts I have about the world.

How do your Southern roots influence your songwriting?

They encompass them now, it seems. I think that what I think it means to be a southerner is different than what many southerners will say it means today with the polarization of politics in America. I will go out on a limb and say that many southerners have lost their way. When I was a kid, I knew people who defined “southern hospitality.” A kid doesn’t get enough to eat at home, there is somebody’s grandmother who is telling them to come to her family’s Sunday supper. When I was in middle school, my mom got breast cancer. We had a casserole dropped off at our house every day for months. We would be playing football in the street and would stop to help an older neighbor bring their groceries in. These things didn’t have exceptions for race, gender, beliefs, or anything else. People from NYC would almost unanimously say the strangest thing about walking in Nashville is how many times a stranger would pass by and say “How you doin’?” I wanted to incorporate that into this record.

In your youth, you performed in your church choir, and you were also in a Christian alternative band called Good Dirt Posse. Do you consider yourself a religious person? If so, how does religion inform your music?

When I was younger, religion was a major part of my life. I wanted to be a youth pastor. I was at church 3-4 days a week. Beattyville actually reflects on when I worked for a non profit that was founded by a Methodist minister. Ironically, it is also the moment in my life all of that began to change. Today, I am an atheist. I have been atheist most of my adult life. It’s funny, the first moment I found myself able to say that out loud was such a cathartic, liberating moment. It felt like taking the chains off. I am grateful for the community I grew up in; they are all good people. But I have grown to discover many disagreements with my upbringing and with religion in general. So, religion is a big part of what I write about. But it is more about learning to step away from it and how I’ve learned to value life so much more because of that departure.

You also curate a music blog called Fifteen Minutes of Fame. What have you learned from that experience?

Fifteen Minutes of Fame is such an immense joy for me. Every week, I get to hear new music, learn about artists I didn’t otherwise know of, and meet new people! 2025, has been a solid year doing FMOF as well. In March, we launched our very own website which has been incredible to have this home-base where this indie music content can just flow together. 

Also in March, I got to do a virtual interview with Nigel Powell and Andy Yorke of Unbelievable Truth. It was incredible. I walked into a Tower Records in 2000 to buy their album, sorrythankyou. I’ve been such a huge fan of Unbelievable Truth and Andy’s brother, Thom’s band, Radiohead, for so long, it was almost like a dream. I got to see Thom play at the Ryman in 2022 with his new band, The Smile, and then actually meeting and talking to Andy, it was just too great. 

FMOF also partnered with this incredible group called Collaborative Artist Network (CAN!), and that has been monumental. It’s a network for independent artists. Through CAN, artists can promote, collaborate, review, and learn! It’s incredible. We are still working to get more traction for FMOF and CAN, but the excitement is still there.

And there’s your YouTube channel as well. I’m a big fan of your blind reaction videos and really appreciate your positive responses to the indie music videos that you feature. Where did you get the idea to start doing that, and has anything you’ve seen given you any ideas for your own videos?

Well, the Blind Reactions and YouTube all stem from FMOF. I got the idea as a way to kind of expand on what FMOF was doing. With the reviews, I want to make sure that the writing is current in what is happening with music. So I have release deadlines for music to be eligible to be reviewed. With the Blind Reactions, I don’t set those limitations. That way, I have a chance to feature more indie artists than just who has released new music. 

I also like being able to show my face and my personality so people can get an idea of the guy that is writing these reviews.

What’s on the horizon for you?

After I get Evaporate out, I am going to pull back on releasing music for a bit. Evaporate will be my last album, most likely altogether. At least for the foreseeable future. It has been an incredible experience but it has really taken a toll. Two years of writing, practicing, recording, and getting the production right. It has caused me to really go down some rabbit holes while I reflected on my past, and analyzed my life. It has been in my brain. Now that it’s out, I can recover a little bit from the process of hashing so much up for sake of authenticity. I’m mulling around the idea of putting a band together to play one release show the weekend the album releases. After that, we’ll see what happens musically.

I’ll still do Fifteen Minutes of Fame, I’ll still be listening to the great stuff everybody is putting out, like your new project, Delcobras, I love you guys! 

Thanks! Again, the feeling is mutual!

My priority though, other than my family, will be to make some headway with my profession in the financial industry. I’m on a road to becoming a financial advisor and it’s a goal I believe I will achieve next year. I am going to be focusing a lot of my efforts into making sure that happens.

I’m not finished with music and I know it’s not finished with me. I have some great songs that didn’t make the album that deserve their own little space somewhere. I will likely release some singles, maybe even an EP, down the line. But I need to be able to step away and assess before getting back into it. 

I wanted to do something big. Something that encompassed my life and my relationship with music. I believe Evaporate has done this in a way I have never been able to get close to before. It is my “ending on a high note,” my “ride off into the sunset.” I know I’m still young and I have a lot of life ahead of me. But this is the only life we have and I don’t want to spend it trying to do just one thing. Or two things. It is a beautiful world. It is an incredible world. And it’s finite. We will be gone before we know it. I want to drink up everything I can before that happens…

THAT is what Evaporate is all about.