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Articles: St. Thomas: "If this doesn't work out, I'm lost."
(3VOOR12 - March 15th 2002) WHAT, WHEN, WHERE: St. Thomas & The Magic Club; Thomas Hansen backstage at Paradiso, it's five o'clock, six hours before the performance on London Calling, 15th of March 2002 MUSIC: Thomas: "I make sweet little songs. I see then as some kind of toys. Perfect near a campfire, or in a hut. Our music may sound melancholy, but we try to keep it pretty." MAIN INFLUENCES? It's difficult not mentioning names like Ellioth Smith, Will Oldham and, I am afraid of saying it, Bod Dylan, Neil Young. Cliché, but true. Also the Norwegian bands Ring and Pasan. They have somewhat the same approach to music making as I have; do what you like, switch on the tape-recorder and record it. STRONGEST POINT? Thomas scratches his ankle. Surely a weak point. Then the proceeds, in his own reserved way: "We have the potency to give the audience a great night. On a good day, we can make people cry with our music." WEAKEST POINT? A good day isn't always guaranteed, as it seems. Thomas: "I'm way to sensitive and get distracted very quickly. When there are 200 people listening and one person is, in whatever way, annoying, I get nervous and don't feel so great anymore. It happened even yesterday. In between the songs I always try to make some contact with the audience. And suddenly some girl screamed: 'Stop talking, start playing!' Not funny! I can’t stand that." GOALS AND CHANCES? "Mwoah, making thirty, forty albums," jokes Thomas, but secretly he does mean it. Nothing more preferable: just making music and making enough money with that to make a living. At the moment it works out fine. Once he was a postman, but in Norway he and his band, in spite of a not so mainstream sound, a true media hype at the moment. Thomas: "Total madness. The press picks everything I do up, as it seems. Recently we were playing in Glasgow and I was wearing a Celtic t-shirt. That was enough to make the papers in Norway. Strange, isn't it? I can't judge about the future. I'm a pessimist. I can only hope that everything keeps on going as it is now. I haven't got enough discipline to do anything else right. If this doesn't work out, I'm lost." RON VAN DER STERREN - (English translation by MARC VERHEES). |