There are too many bands Fred Thomas has touched in his 30 years of touring. Ask him for a count on projects, and he'll tell you he doesn't keep track. The end of 2023 saw Fred's departure from Tyvek, a focus on pop ensemble Idle Ray, reissues from old solo projects, and a foray into drum and bass on his solo release, ECOATM. If this is not ringing a bell, you may know Fred from Saturday Looks Good To Me and as a member of His Name Is Alive. We caught Fred on the phone during a snowy Ypsilanti, Michigan, week of duplicating tapes for friends, organizing archives, and working on art for an upcoming release. A perpetual DIYer, we talked about his small label Life Like, how much gear one really needs, and the occasional emergency tooth extraction at the hands of a Portland drummer.
You quietly released some synth music over the pandemic on a small label called Good Glass. I feel like everyone grows up in bands, then goes solo, and gets a synth in middle-age. Why synths right now?
Yeah, that's a great question. I had a band called Hydropark in 2013. My friend, Chuck Sipperley, and I started getting into the Berlin School/kosmische music. That was when it became a thing, and I was learning the parameters of these cool instruments. They make sounds that seem unattainable. Klaus Schulze has always been somebody I liked. In my late teens, I was getting into Neu!, Tangerine Dream, and Can. I was listening to those records and then going to see Shellac and The Jesus Lizard. I never thought I would be making music with keyboards. I didn't think 15 years later I'd be in a band with two keyboards, a drummer, and a bass player. I had a friend growing up that had a bunch of synths, and it was sort of nerdy. Around 1994, there was a split where people in punk bands in Michigan started going to raves and listening to only drum and bass. These were people I lived with and was friends with, and I watched that transformation. There was always a back of my mind fascination with that. The first time somebody played a note on their synth with a cutoff sweep, I thought that something you could only do if you were in Funkadelic. They unlocked a sound only accessible to aliens and spirit beings, and now it's right here in my basement. It's an endless well of cool sounds, and trying to figure out how to have a voice of your own with those sounds is a huge challenge.
In your work you focus a lot on finances. On ECOATM, there's the track "Stimulus Check." On Changer, you sing about student loan feelings. It seems like finances are often at the front of your mind.
I didn't go to college, so I do not have student loans. I have all the financial stress of being someone who could not afford to go to college and couldn't afford the medical things I needed to get done. For most people, myself included, money is a constant stressor. There's an element of escapism in music where some people are like, "Let's forget about student loan feelings for a minute and talk about how fun it is to party and dance." My songs are more about processing events, even if it is not my lived feelings. I don't need to necessarily have gone through something that someone I care about went through to relate to it or understand. Maybe they're not my student loan feelings, but they might be my unpaid bill feelings. I definitely have them!
I was talking with a friend who would buy synth gear in college and then be out of grocery money for the month. What instruments will you starve for?
[laughter] I'm the opposite of a gear person. I sent you a photo of three synthesizers, amp, and a $100 acoustic with nylon strings. That's all I have. I always borrow people's gear. I love going to studios [with nothing], showing up, using whatever is there, and seeing what can come of it. I do have a [Roland] SH-101. I've had and sold a bunch of synthesizers and guitars. I'll probably hang on to the SH-101 in perpetuity, because it's such an amazing all breads, all butters, all in that one box. I don't know if there's anything I would put a lien on the house for. There's so much gear out there and it's amazing that people own it. It's like it's in mini libraries, because most of the time the gear is not being used. That's a weird part of consumerism; You have this thing, but it's not being utilized to its fullest because you're the only person who has it.
I'm from modular synth culture, and that is not the MO of the world I inhabit. It's like train collecting.
[laughter] I don't think that's a bad thing. I don't have a moralistic judgment on that. Whatever people are into; that's cool. For me it makes me a little bit dizzy. I can't tell you how many times I've been like, "I'm going to get this pedal and then I'm going to be a good musician." Then I buy it, I still suck, and I sell it two weeks later. "Like this was going to answer all my questions and unlock all my potential. The potential is already unlocked. It's just a matter of working with it and figuring myself out a little more.
You did send me that picture of your minimal studio. What hardware have you got in there?
I am huge into 4-tracks, of course and I've got my Tascam 424 fixed by Jack Saturn at Recursive Delete [Audio/Visual]. I can't recommend him enough. I have a Peavey Valverb reverb unit; it's something I had to hunt down. It's what we used on all the Saturday Looks Good To Me recordings years ago. Warren Defever [Tape Op #9] from His Name Is Alive was the producer on a lot of that, and that was his in-house, cheap, rack-mounted reverb. Nothing else sounds like it at all. What I have been doing recently is recording drum samples with super reverbed-out snares and hi-hats. I'll record a single microphone drum track through the reverb unit, which sounds crusty and lo-fi. I can program drums in Ableton and it isn't anything like a drum machine. I also have a Fender Princeton reverb amp from 1968 or 1978. I have a Sequential Prophet-5 that was reissued a few years ago. Those are the hardware items I use.
How many projects are you on right now? Or is that even worth asking?
[laughter] I'm not paying super close attention to that, just because it's a little bit "as needed." I've been playing drums for Tyvek since 2017, but Friday is going to be the record release show for the record we just finished and probably my last show with the band as their regular drummer. I don't have a lot of time; I have a family and I have things I need to do. I can't necessarily be in 17 bands anymore. I love Tyvek, and I'm sad to be stepping away. I play guitar for my friend [Dr.] Pete Larson whenever he calls me. He has this interesting style of, "Hey, what's going on? The gig is tonight. Can you do it?" That's the way he's always been. I used to babysit his child in the 1990s. We go way back. Idle Ray is my main pop music band. I'm still doing projects under my own name. ECOATM is a continuation of the ambient work I did.
Do you ever feel pressure to be on social media and do things like dance on a TikTok?
[laughter] No, I don't have a TikTok. I have Instagram, and that is demoralizing enough because I'm not on there a lot. I'm there as an artist trying to get the word out, but I have friends who are on there as people living their lives in that public arena. That's how people communicate these days. That's how political ideas are shared. But it's also how fiction gets written off as reality. I try to keep grounded as possible.
One commonality you have with Tape Op founder/editor Larry Crane is interning at his Jackpot! Recording Studio in Portland.
I lived in Portland in 2006 and 2007. I was finishing a record for Saturday Looks Good To Me, so I went to Jackpot! and worked with [manager/engineer] Kendra [Lynn] on a couple of songs. After we finished up my music, she said, "You're really nice. I know you don't have a job right now. Do you want to come help out with some sessions?" It wasn't even a proper internship. One of the bands I remember most had won a raffle where they got five hours of recording time to come in and cut a demo. I can't remember what the band's name was, but I ran their cables, got them coffee, and was hanging out during their session. Fast forward a few months, and I had this dental emergency where one of my teeth snapped off in my mouth. It was insane, life-ending pain. I didn't have any money, I didn't have any insurance, and I went to this free dental emergency clinic. I got in the chair, and the dentist comes out and says, "Hey Fred, what's going on? It's me, the drummer in that band from Jackpot!" [laughter] So, this person that I met by chance at my Jackpot! internship turned out to be the person who comforted me through this weird, stressful dental emergency. I put a note or two about that in a song I made called "Bad Blood."
That is quite a coincidence. I really love your spoken word piece, "House Show, Late December," on Aftering. You touch on noise culture in Michigan. You cross many genres. Is it the nature of where you're from?
It's a matter of growing up in the time and place that I did. I got lucky to be equal parts held by a community and alienated by a community when I was really young. In Michigan, in the early '90s Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti where I was growing up, my friends and I were on similar paths and trying everything together. People I'm still in touch with. It built from nothing – from making these tapes and giving them to each other. Then having something that has national attention, curiosity, and befuddlement about it. The ethic of Michigan noise is, "It's going to be this way. It's not for sale. It's not up for discussion. If you like it, that's great. We're here for you. If you don't like it, keep that to yourself because we don't care." That's a great thing to apply to any art form and any musical output. It's a militaristic reminder that it has to be for you, and if you're worried about anything besides that you're in the wrong.
You've put out a lot of tapes on your label Life Like. I still love cassettes, I think they're important. Why did you choose that medium?
It's another part of the backbone of what I was talking about – you don't need to have the blessings of anybody to make a tape. If you want to start a tape label, and you have a little bit of ingenuity and 30 bucks – even in 2024 – it's one of the most "punk" things you can do. I've got something to say. I'm not going to wait around for somebody else with money to decide what's good enough to say. The culture that stems from that spirit is beautiful. I like the idea that maybe only ten people hear it, but the right ten people hear it. These tapes are part of a web of artistry that includes all the people who actually pay attention to it. Yesterday, I spent the day intentionally making mixtapes for people; friends and otherwise. It was a beautiful way to spend the day. It slowed me down and gave me something that felt like it was feeding my art; not something I had to meet my quota for. Like, "If I don't hit this streaming number my record doesn't break even and I am in debt." This is all outside of commerce, and it feels great.
What's happening for you coming up? Are you mining archived projects and scheduling reissues, or on to new projects?
More than anything, I want to be more intentional. I'm one of the only people in my circle who still has a little bit of Covid hesitancy. I took it seriously, and was one of the last people to venture back out. My mentality was still stuck in that housebound, time to organize the archives, time to reissue the records, and time to do all the projects I'd wanted to do forever. I was a little bit late on that, because everyone had moved on and gotten sick of yet another archival release on Bandcamp. The world had been flooded with those. I am going to try and focus on only new music in the next year, and not that much of it. Idle Ray has a record we have been working on forever. When the band started, I was the only songwriter and it was a four-track solo thing. Now, Frances Ma and Devon Clausen have been in the band for a couple of years and have been writing songs. It's way more of a group, and takes a lot more time because we all live in different places and are taking more time to finish that collectively. I have a record, Window in the Rhythm, coming out on Polyvinyl. It's the next chapter in the solo work of Aftering, Changer, and All Are Saved. That heavy, depressing, lots of words music.
Those are typically referred to as your trilogy.
[laughter] No, they are not related at all. There was one huge thing I realized right after the record Aftering came out. Pitchfork ran a positive review written by Ian Cohen, a writer I respect a lot. He zeroed in on all the references to alcohol, partying, and the price paid for drinking – and I was like, "Wow." He was right; I'd only write about shows, being hungover and drunk, and things experienced in a state of drunken clarity. For the last three years, I have been alcohol free, and before that I wasn't even someone who was a big drinker. It was strange that alcohol found its way into my music so much. There are a lot of things I consciously left behind for these new songs, and one of them is there are zero references to alcohol. Well, there's one song that references wine-stained lips, but there are zero references to me being drunk, or anybody drinking. I had wanted to steer clear of these references that I had made into placeholder or default settings. As confessional or vulnerable as that music can sometimes pretend to be, it wasn't at a certain point. Or it wasn't as honest as it could have been. So, this is brand new thing is very different. I am excited about it.
There's a scene you depict in your lyrics for "Echolocation," where you are sleeping on the train and moving your "pile of trash from town to town."
Oh that actually happened. I remember the outfit I was wearing when I was trying to sleep on the L train in 2008. Maybe the better way to say it is it's less about 2008 memories, and more about right now and how the past becomes part of the future, and how are you going to keep living as you keep changing? It's good to remember that you're still living and not just the person you remember – like your image of yourself.
It's not like we stop being people because we grow older.
I have been spending a little more time with people who are not just middle-aged, but are getting on in years. My friend Bill is doing the artwork for my new record – he's in his early 70s, and I have known him since we worked at a record store together in 1995. There are ways he's still his former self, which is also his present self. It's great to have peers who are going through the same thing, but I have also gotten energy from people who are past where I am at. They might have felt this way a little while ago – and I might feel the way they feel soon.
You and Mary Lattimore [Tape Op #158] both worked in record stores. You've also worked together with Mary for one of your Life Like releases.
I put out the first Mary Lattimore solo tape, which became The Withdrawing Room. I saw Mary play a couple of weeks ago, and she plays on my new record. She's wonderful and has such an interesting and distinctive voice. I think part of that is her time spent in Philadelphia record stores – Philadelphia is tough. I have worked in record stores in New York, Michigan, and Portland –early on I was like, "The best thing to do is to realize that everyone is here because we like music and we have that in common." I would see that other people I worked with would be snotty, shitty, and outwardly hostile to customers or to people who had questions. My energy at the record store is, "I love that you're excited about the Tyler, the Creator record; that record is so good! I can't believe he did so much with synthesizers on that one. Did you like Call Me If You Get Lost as much as you liked Igor?" There are times people come in on the defensive, because they're ready for someone to make fun of their purchase or try to make them feel stupid. I try to do the opposite. It's great, because I get to learn about a bunch of new records and very rarely do I have the snotty banter and the barbershop quarreling about what's micro house and what's progressive house. I don't fucking care about any of that shit. I want people to like what they like. 
