Exposed Vocals: How did you hear about Exposed Vocals? What made you decide to sign up?
Mike: I found Exposed Vocals through their Twitter page. As soon as I connected with them, I checked out their pages and was really excited about the types of opportunities that Exposed aims to create.
Exposed Vocals: So tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What made you decide to become an artist?
Mike: I’ve lived my whole life in a small farm town in Connecticut. My father is a musician, and he even played bass for a brief stint with The Supremes (think the movie “Dreamgirls”) back in the day. I had classical and jazz piano training from pretty much the time I could walk until my high school years. It was a diverse musical upbringing for me – I was studying classical and jazz music; my father filled our house with the sounds of 70’s classic rock; as an athlete, my high school and college locker rooms bumped hip-hop most of the time; and wherever you were in my town, you could always hear a country song playing. When I started gigging in high school, I was playing mostly instrumentals that were jazz/fusion in genre. By the time I went off to college, however, I felt like I had kind of “maxed out” what could be done on a piano, as well as what could be done instrumentally. As someone who is always seeking a new challenge, I decided to do two things: I brought one of my dad’s old guitars to school with me and taught myself in my dorm room by playing along to Luke Bryan’s “Crash My Party” album. The other thing I did was start working on my vocals, which was another self-teaching venture that luckily seemed to improve pretty naturally over time. The simpler chord structures and melodies of country music seemed like the perfect place to start, and I soon reconnected with my small town country roots.
Exposed Vocals: How did you come up with that name? What was your inspiration behind it?
Mike: I use my own name! My team and I had given some thought to drafting up a different stage name, but the simplicity of my name as it stood seemed to make too much sense to change.
Exposed Vocals: What do you think about online music sharing? Do you ever give your music away for free? Why?
Mike: I feel like my generation has been through the craziest period of music evolution ever. Cassettes and CD’s alike were both big when I was born, Walkman’s were the thing in my early years, and then when I was a teenager the first iPod popped up. Nowadays music is so accessible that songs and albums have little to no direct value. In the world we live in today, the only way for an artist to make any real money is through revenues from performing live shows. All of my music is accessible for free because I understand that concept, and I’m also in a stage where I’m just trying to reach as many people as possible, and I think charging for my music would drive down the online audience.
Exposed Vocals: Since everyone was a start-up once, can you give any smaller or local bands or artists looking to get gigs and airplay some tips?
Mike: I’ll give two pieces of advice. The first is a little less inspiring. If you want to book gigs and get yourself noticed, you have to expect to do mostly covers. Unless you are the 0.001% of the population that is Ed Sheeran, going to a gig and playing a full set of all originals won’t get you very far (and I’d be willing to bet that even Ed had a lot of covers in his early gig setlists). One of my favorite artists, Aaron Lewis (lead singer of Staind and currently a solo country artist) has said that in his early days of gigging, he would play all covers and people would absolutely eat it up. As soon as he would start playing his original song “It’s Been Awhile”, people would get up and go to the bathroom, or start talking loudly amongst themselves. The moral of the story here is that “It’s Been Awhile” went on to become one of the best-selling rock songs of all time.
My second piece of advice is to remember to be yourself. It might seem like a simple idea, but when you are playing covers most of the time, it’s easy to lose your sense of creativity. Take a few of those songs you’re covering and play them in a different style that fits you creatively. Then from there, you have some idea of where you want to go during the songwriting process. Music in general is becoming more and more genre-less. Sam Hunt is breaking down the barriers of country music completely. Vance Joy is being played on the same radio stations that play Justin Beiber and Katy Perry. On the other hand, Sturgill Simpson, Chris Stapleton, and many others are resurfacing the sounds of old country. Point being, stick to whatever sound it is that you’re best at writing, and don’t be afraid if it does or doesn’t sound like anything that’s already out there.
Exposed Vocals: Do you ever make mistakes during performances? How do you handle that?
Mike: I do make mistakes occasionally during performances. Every artist does. The key to handling a mistake is all about composure. If you work well under pressure and are able to keep your composure and stay in time with the song, you’ll be fine and 99% of your audience will have no clue you even made a mistake.
Exposed Vocals: Do you tour? Anything interesting happen on tour that you think our readers would enjoy hearing about?
Mike: I don’t “tour” currently, per say, but I do play as many weekend gigs as I can in the New England area. I had somebody give me a huge tip at one of my last gigs to cover “Material Girl” by Madonna, which was interesting… Of course I had to do it, and my acoustic piano version of “Material Girl” actually turned out to be kind of awesome.
Exposed Vocals: Where do you usually gather songwriting inspiration? What is your usual songwriting process?
Mike: I gather inspiration for songwriting on a day to day basis. It could be that an event that happened to me that day triggered an idea, or even just how I felt emotionally that day could have led to a song concept to pop into my head. Sometimes it’s nothing at all (at least nothing consciously) and a song will just hit me. The songwriting process itself goes in big waves for me. I’ve learned over time that you have to understand that there will be periods when you will be full of creativity and the songs will be pouring out, and then there will be periods where you’re trying to force it and you know that you’re trying to force it.
Exposed Vocals: Do you have a band website? What online platforms do you use to share your music?
Mike: I have a few websites. I have a Soundcloud that houses all of my music to date. I also have a Facebook page, Twitter, and I just gave in to making an Instagram account as well, something I tried to rebel against for a while, but it’s growing on me!
Exposed Vocals: What are some really embarrassing songs that we might find on your mp3 player?
Mike: Oh man… I have some old Akon that we would bust out every once in a while in college. There might be a T-Pain song or two in there as well…
Exposed Vocals: If you were given half a million dollars and a year off, what would you do? How would you spend it?
Mike: I would make music and live in Nashville for that year. I’d put it towards creating a full-length professionally-recorded and mastered album, and then I’d immerse myself in the music scene in Nashville and try to both play as much music as I could and listen to as much music as I could. There’s so much talent down there.
Exposed Vocals: Any planned studio upgrades? What are you working with now?
Mike: I’m looking at loop pedals right now as the next potential upgrade. I’m currently working with a Casio keyboard, a bunch of Ovation guitars, a small percussion setup with a cajon that has been one of my favorite purchases, a condenser mic, and some Tascam recording equipment.
Exposed Vocals: How do you find ways to promote your music? What works best for you?
Mike: I’m a firm believer that the best way to promote music is organically. I want to let people know that my music is out there, but I don’t want to force it down anyone’s throat either. I have a great team who are really focused on getting my music out to as many different outlets as possible right now and just getting me heard. If everyone could hear one of my songs just once, I’d be a very happy man.
Exposed Vocals: If you could perform anywhere and with any artists (Dead or Alive) where and who would it be with? Why?
Mike: This is the toughest question yet… Present day I would say Eric Paslay or Ed Sheeran would be incredible to perform with. Eric is potentially the best country music songwriter of my generation, and he’s got such a great demeanor. Ed is so creative it’s ridiculous. He creates such a big sound off of basically nothing. He played a whole show at Wembley with literally just one mic, one guitar, and a loop pedal. Who does that? He’s the only one in the world that could make an acoustic sound become that full.
Exposed Vocals: So, what’s next? Any new upcoming projects that you want to talk about?
Mike: Right now the focus is definitely on booking as many gigs as possible. We’re taking it a day at a time and seeing how things go. It seems that every day there is something new on the horizon for us, another potential path to venture down. We’re really in a period of big decisions to be made, and it’s going to make for an interesting journey.
Exposed Vocals: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?
Mike: If I wasn’t the one making music, I would probably be on the other end of things. I’ve always thought that I might be interested in working for a talent agency. There’s a lot of talented musicians out there today that haven’t had their chance yet. There’s also a lot of famous people who aren’t as talented out there today; they just got lucky breaks at the right times. Not to take anything away from having good luck, but it’s nice when you get to see the most talented and hardworking people in the biggest spotlights.
Exposed Vocals: Do you remember buying your first album? Who was it? What was going through your head?
Mike: I think the first album I ever bought was Away from the Sun by 3 Doors Down. I absolutely loved that late ‘90’s, early 2000’s genre of rock/alternative, and I think I must have played it on repeat for the better part of a year.
Exposed Vocals: How do you juggle the rest of your responsibilities while trying to stay ahead in your music life?
Mike: It’s difficult. I do work a full time job because I’m not at a point yet where I can financially make a go at the musician lifestyle. To be honest it hinders creativity because it’s tough to switch your mind constantly between work mode and music mode. It’s something I’m getting better at though.
Exposed Vocals: What should fans look forward to in 2015?
Mike: More gigs and more music! To stay up to date, check out Facebook.com/MikeThomasMusicPage and Soundcloud.com/mike-thomas-music
