MICK Thomas\u2019 newest ensemble Roving Commission is on the road with their latest full-length album Coldwater DFU.<\/p>\n
The tour winds up at the Cabaret Club in Ballarat on Saturday, 11 May.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Drive past Lake Learmonth he\u2019d bet on how much water was in the lake.<\/p>\n
He wrote the tenth song Lake Learmonth Motel when he heard the motel had become a hospice.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt 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,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wrote the song about the husband walking through the moonlight in the hospice thinking about his long gone wife.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
International circus performers were stranded in Ballarat for a month without money or food.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was thinking about how they would deal with this and banged it out on the iPad while I was in the air,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Music reviewer Tony Hillier describes the track as, \u201cSlavic slanted horn pushes and a chorus that smacks of Leonard Cohen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coldwater DFU was written with the intention of being an album the band could play live.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout saying it\u2019s been a major seller it has been accepted by the people that follow my music,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got people who have stuck around and still come out and see us play after all these years.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n