At the end of the road

MICK Thomas’ newest ensemble Roving Commission is on the road with their latest full-length album Coldwater DFU.

The tour winds up at the Cabaret Club in Ballarat on Saturday, 11 May.

Thomas, from 90s folk rock band Weddings Parties Anything, teamed up with Mark Wallace, Ben Franz and Dave Foley as Roving Commission to record the album in Memphis, Tennessee.

Thomas grew up in Geelong, lived in Horsham, and spent time in Colac and for ten years he had a house in Bealiba in the Central Goldfields Shire.

Drive past Lake Learmonth he’d bet on how much water was in the lake.

He wrote the tenth song Lake Learmonth Motel when he heard the motel had become a hospice.

“It made me sad, I thought about how a couple may have gone there on their honeymoon in their 20s and then for the husband to wind up in the hospice 60 years later,” Thomas said.

“I wrote the song about the husband walking through the moonlight in the hospice thinking about his long gone wife.”

He wrote the sixth track Died in Ballarat on a plane in 2017 after reading about the collapse of Edgley Attractions, the promoters of the Moscow Circus.

International circus performers were stranded in Ballarat for a month without money or food.

“I was thinking about how they would deal with this and banged it out on the iPad while I was in the air,” he said.

Music reviewer Tony Hillier describes the track as, “Slavic slanted horn pushes and a chorus that smacks of Leonard Cohen.”

Coldwater DFU was written with the intention of being an album the band could play live.

This was one of the reasons for recording in Memphis as there is an appreciation and understanding of musicians who take and play their music on the road.

“Without saying it’s been a major seller it has been accepted by the people that follow my music,” Thomas said.

“We’ve got people who have stuck around and still come out and see us play after all these years.”

Roving Commission is performing at the Cabaret Club at 4/9367 Western Highway, Warrenheip in the Gold Rush Mini Golf Theme Park on Saturday, 11 May at 8.30pm.

Tickets $30 from ballarattickets.com.au or $35 at the door unless sold out. Doors open at 6.30pm.