News Page July 2004: News from the St. Thomas world, and updates to this page in July 2004. 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.

July 20th 2004 - Concert updates
The concerts list has been updated with information from TrubadurFestivalen 2004. Setlists from all three concerts in Stavanger will be added shortly. Below is an image of Alex and Thomas taken at Newsman after the concert on Friday the 9th by Magne Hansen:



Also, a concert at Øyafestivalen 2004 Nachspiel at Cosmopolite in Oslo, Norway has been added to the concert list. The concert takes place on August 12th, and St. Thomas is playing together with Ricochets.

Unfortunately, St. Thomas will not visit America for a tour this Autumn, as originally planned. Instead there are now plans for an American tour some time early next year, hopefully everything will work out then.

July 20th 2004 - News on new St. Thomas album
The next St. Thomas album will be recorded at Athletic Sound in Halden, Norway starting on September 20th. The recordings will be done with producer Kai Andersen, and are scheduled to last for ten days.

Demos for the album were recorded earlier this year, and three songs have already been recorded at Athletic Sound with Kai Andersen, in a short session the band undertook to confirm that everything would sound the way Thomas wants it to for the next album. "The Mexican Father," "Last Word" and "La Man" were recorded at that session, and those songs are very likely to end up on the finished album.

When it comes to the rest of the material that will make up the fifth St. Thomas album, Thomas has rented a house in Toscany, Italy for two weeks from August 16th, and will spend his time to there to make new songs. Knowing Thomas' producitivty during these holidays, there will probably be a large amount of new songs, so the album will probably consist of a healthy mix of these new songs and the best material from the earlier demo sessions.

A re-recording of "Winter Sprinter" is also being considered.

July 12th 2004 - Last day of TrubadurFestivalen in Stavanger
On Saturday St. Thomas played the last out of three concerts at TrubadurFestivalen in Stavanger. Unlike the first two concerts which were performed entirely acoustically, this last one at Cementen was a proper rock concert with a guest guitarist and a full drum kit. Thomas Dybdahl from Stavanger was very kind and let our Thomas borrow an electric guitar, an amp and cymbals for the drums, all on very short notice - he got a phone call from our Thomas earlier the same day. Alex also borrowed an old used and discarded bass drum that Kaizers Orchestra had left behind in the backstage area of Cementen.

Most people in the cramped and sold-out venue seemed to have a very good time - except for Thomas and Alex on stage. They were both a bit worn out by the time the concert started, played a bit sloppily in the beginning and generally seemed to have a hard time getting into the right mood. The previous two concerts had been near-religious experiences when it came to contact between the artist and the audience, so compared to that, the concert on Saturday was a slight bit of a let-down. After a few songs, Alex took off his shirt and played the rest of the concert bare-chested, this seemed to ease the mood quite a bit, and received quite an amount of whistling from the crowd when he had to step out from behind the drum kit to run around half-naked on stage trying to find a capo that Thomas thought he had lost and needed for the song.

Marius Larsen from Karen Jo Fields and Elvin Friendly ended up on stage at Cementen to play guitar on "Last Word," "A Long Long Time" and "Cornerman." He did a very impressive job, especially when considering the fact that he heard "Last Word" for the first time just mere hours before playing it live, and that they only rehearsed together for about twenty-five minutes in Thomas' hotel room right before the concert and that in-between the very short rehearsal and the St. Thomas concert Marius also performed a concert with Karen Jo Fields.

TrubadurFestivalen continues in Haugesund next weekend.

July 10th 2004 - First two days of TrubadurFestivalen in Stavanger
The first two out of three performances at TrubadurFestivalen in Stavanger are over with, and have been great successes. On Thursday Thomas and Alex played at Pakkhuset Tollboden to 52 people, an extremely well-performed concert in acoustic format with Thomas on guitar, banjo and vocals and Alex on a drum, guitar, banjo, percussion and vocals. They were supposed to play around eighty minutes, and filled it with a bit over twenty songs and long talks between Thomas and a very responsive audience. There was even a request from the audience for them to play the Herman Düne song "Show Me The Roof," but unfortunately Thomas does not know how to play that one.

Last night the concert at Arkivet at Newsman's started a bit later than the other concerts at the festival, so a rather full venue got totally packed towards the end of the concert when everyone had finished seeing other artists and came to see the end of St. Thomas' set. Musically the concert was not as good as the night before, there were quite a few mistakes and Thomas forgot the lyrics to a few songs, BBut it did not matter since the audience was great. Both Thomas and Alex seemed more like stand-up comedians on stage rather than musicians, sitting with a table filled with glasses, water, a bottle of wine and a candle-light between them, talking directly to the audience and getting a great response. They even had to go back on stage after having played for seventy-five minutes to do an encore, doing the most hilarious version of "A Nice Bottle Of Wine" that anyone has ever heard. A big St. Thomas fan from Stavanger, Sunniva, was invited up on stage to sing on "People In The Forest" and "Cornerman."

Today St. Thomas plays at Cementen, which was the first place Thomas ever played outside of Oslo a few years ago. The first two concerts have been played with just one small drum, but tonight they will play with a full drum kit, and Thomas wanted to borrow some amps and an electric guitar and do a rockier show than the first two nights, wanting to give the audience a slightly different experience than just three identical shows in a row.

July 6th 2004 - Troubadour Festival
St. Thomas is in the middle of the travelling Norwegian troubadour festival TrubadurFestivalen 2004, having played twice in Trondheim two weekends ago, and playing three times in Stavanger this weekend and twice in Haugesund next weekend. Originally Thomas was only supposed to be backed up on stage by Petter Pogo on various instruments, but the concerts in Stavanger will feature Magic Club member Alexander Lindbäck instead, since scheduling conflicts sees Petter Pogo playing twice in Egersund with Valentourettes the same weekend.

Last weekend St. Thomas played at Kulturkvartalet in Sarpsborg. After TrubadurFestivalen 2004 finishes, there will be festival appearances at Lost Weekend in Norway and Emmaboda in Sweden in the beginning of August, and a huge European tour has been booked from the beginning of October. In-between the festival appearances and the European tour there might be an American tour, but this is uncertain, if not then Thomas is planning on spending time writing even more new songs for a forthcoming album, thirteen songs were already demoed earlier this year.