Reme Thomas

Posted by admin on Nov 3, 2005 in Arts & Culture | 0 comments

In the sprawling concrete basement of an isolated farmhouse I sit across from Rene Thomas, musician and humble poet. Surrounded by hanging paper lanterns, smoking incense and walls covered in lyrics (felt marker from ceiling to floor), Rene sits down on a 70’s throwaway orange couch and begins to flick a lighter on and off. To my right is an encased display of Karis’ demo, Please. The majority of my questions revolve around the bands status. Are they on or are they off? After drawing attention to themselves to the point of fending off pursuing management teams, why is Rene, the band’s front man headlong into a solo endeavor?

SENSE: Do you see yourself as a pop-artist?
RENE THOMAS: I don’t sing about or write about things that are popular. What I do is write about my deepest and darkest secrets. I write about my struggles and real life issues.

S: Like Britney Spears did with Toxic?
RT: Yes exactly.

S: Where do you find your spiritual life comes into your music?
RT: I write about everyday issues so it comes in everyday. You encounter situations where you’re forced to realize things about God or you come to a place with him, and that definitely plays into my music, and you can see the hope from situations which are pretty rough, like in traffic. My good friend got in a really bad car accident, the second verse of the song says, “It’s funny how days like these are the ones that make me whole again”, which is about how on days where you have absolutely nothing, you are closer to God than normal. So though I don’t really try to talk about God di-rectly in my music, it comes through because it plays a huge part in my life and my emotional life.

S: Is Karis dead?
RT: No. We were all 14 or 15 when we got into the band. I think we put our whole lives into it and we had to see what else was out there. We kind of excluded ourselves from other opportunities and other options by putting everything into Karis. Brian and I have talked and I definitely think that Karis is going to happen again and I think there is a future for Karis. But right now I believe that we have to spread our wings a little bit and look in different areas, expand our views and experiment with different styles of music and careers in music.

S: So regardless of who the drummer and bass player are, as long as you and Bryan are together, that’s Karis?
RT: It’s sad, but I think that’s a pretty true statement. I mean, everyone did put their own parts into it musically. Whether it was by our own fault or it just worked out that way through leadership, I’m not sure. I do think Bryan and I played leading roles. I think idealistically before Karis can happen again, there has to be four different entities in the group. It can’t just be Bryan or myself, or both of us, dragging two other people. It has to be everyone having equal opinion and equal share in it.

S: Where do you see yourself in ten years?
RT: Hopefully making money doing this and taking my girlfriend to Wendy’s. I like to set my goals high (laughs). Hopefully in ten years I’ll have the freedom to write and record my stuff on my own.

S: Do you feel the need, as a Christian, to save people through your music?
RT: No. Not at all. I don’t want to preach to people and force my beliefs or anything on them. Because I know that would piss the hell out of me. My goal in my music is to try to be entirely honest and explain what I’m going through, that’s all. My music is for everyone and it’s not by any means only for Christians. Ithink the last thing the world needs right now is to be preached at. As Christians, I don’t think we’re called to love people riding on the fact that they might become Christians, they might do this, they might do that. I think we’re called to love unconditionally. Whether or not people ever get saved should not even be a factor. We should love because we have God’s love.

http://www.myspace.com/renethomas