A native of Jackson, Mississippi, Spencer Thomas recently relocated to Athens. Since then, he’s focused his efforts on writing and recording his sophomore full length, while also taking on drum duties for Americana darlings Futurebirds. Citing Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever and Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town as inspiration, Thomas’ songwriting seeks out the frayed edges of American hope and discontent. There is yearning for freedom, of course—a restless desire to shed the many snares and entanglements of adulthood. But there’s also a sort of stoic acceptance. Sometimes freedom costs more than we can afford.
Recorded live at Sleeper’s Mountain Studios in Portland, Oregon, “Woman Who Smokes Cigars” is a pining piano ballad, lonesome and direct. The barroom setting is painted in noirish detail, recalling the everyman narratives of prime Billy Joel—all beer-fueled fervor and smoke-streaked regret. “Looking for someone to love / And erase her name,” Thomas sings, revealing the song’s central revelation: the past can be a prison, one in which forgetting is the only means of escape. Or perhaps better put: how long should we cling to an impossible hope before we abandon the fantasy altogether?
“The song is like a dream that I wake from and can’t quite remember all the pieces,” Thomas says. “This character (loosely based on myself) is feeling unsatisfied and lonely in the midst of barhopping the heavily crowded and inebriated streets of New Orleans. We never quite know whether or not the woman he refers to is a fantasy or someone who disappeared from his life. It’s a fulfilling mystery.”
Watch/listen above.
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Web: spencerthomassongs.com
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