News Page December 2002: News from the St. Thomas world, and updates to this page in December 2002. This page is not an official source of information, if in doubt of accuracy of info please get in touch with webmaster of this page or the info source.

December 1st 2002 - I talked to Thomas on the phone on Friday, was nice to talk to him again and he seemed to be in good spirits. He had just seen the finished version of the St. Thomas documentary "The Cool Song" by Erik Hannemann, and liked it very much. There will be two versions of the documentary, one will be half an hour long and the other, that Thomas saw, will be an hour long. The short version is scheduled to be aired on the Norwegian television channel NRK in January, while the long version will hopefully be put up in selected independent cinemas in Norway.

The recordings in America went very well, and Norwegians can have a listen to the results when "A Long, Long Time" has radio premiere on the program "Kaliber" on the radio channel NRK P3 next Friday. An EP with "A Long, Long Time" as the title track is scheduled for release on January 20th 2003.

A video for "A Long, Long Time" is scheduled to be recorded in Oslo on December 21st. More information about who will be the director and the storyline will probably be posted some time soon. I will almost surely travel to Oslo to witness the recording of the video, so behind-the-scenes information will be made available in due time.

The tracklisting for the new album, entitled "Hey, Harmony," has been finalized. Thomas did not want it to be revealed at this time, but it will be posted on this page some time before the scheduled release date of the album, March 24th 2003. The artwork for the album will be done by some people in London recommended by Erik Hannemann. The original plan was for Thomas to draw a very simplistic cover himself, but this did not turn out good enough.

The St. Thomas American tour was cut short after only three performances, the American record label Misra Records issued this statement on the situation: "Unfortunately St. Thomas has canceled their U.S. tour due to a medical emergency that required bandleader Thomas Hansen to return to his native Norway. Thomas is going to be fine, but there was no way to anticipate this problem and we are very sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused by these unexpected cancellations."

Thomas has had a hard time after this, but seems to be doing a lot better now, having moved from from Berlin to Oslo. He has not been able to update the messages section on this page for quite some time, as he does not have Internet access at the moment.