Kenny Thomas
On longevity, legacy and new music
After a thirty-five year career, Kenny Thomas shows no interest in looking backwards. The multi-platinum British soul singer is still writing, recording and performing, with his latest album Unstoppable marking another chapter in a career that has weathered huge changes in the music industry and ever-shifting technology. Ahead of his Edinburgh Fringe performance at La Belle on 29 August, for the anniversary of his debut album Voices, Thomas spoke to Edinburgh Music News about sustaining a decades-long career, the legacy of British soul and why he’s still as excited about music as he was at 18.
What do you think it takes to sustain a career for 35 years like you have?
Drive, confidence, belief, faith. Just being able to withstand the lows. Enjoying the ups, but also being mindful that they are transient and they will not last forever.
Then when the downs come and the rejections come or a few doors slam in your face, to not be deterred by that, and to see even some of the failures or the mini failures, if you like, as indications that there's another direction to go or the path you're on may be not completely right.
Ultimately, it's pointing you in an even newer direction.
That's the way I've approached it. And also, boiling it down to what is the bottom line: what do you love? For me, it's music. I love music. I love songwriting. I love recording music. I love going out doing gigs. And because I love that, the value's not in solely the money.
Of course it has to make money because I have a family and mouths to feed, and bills to pay like everyone else, but the bottom line has to be that I'm still as excited about it as I was when I was 18, all those years ago. And the truth of the matter is, yes, I am.
Did returning to songwriting for Unstoppable feel different because of everything that you have lived through in that time?
Of course, but the truth of the matter is I was always writing and always recording, and I had done a sort of jazzier album in between that time.
The reason why we say 15 is it was the first time I'd put out a standalone studio album with a body of work. But I had released a couple of singles before that, and then before that some other dance record with Dr. Packer, who's a producer.
So yeah, but it was the first standalone, solo album that I've done for a while, and yeah, it was great. I was sitting on a number of songs, so I already had some of those songs lined up just ready to record and produce.
So it wasn't like I was coming back from the wilderness and rediscovering my hidden art. It was just a continuation of it. It was just the only thing that changed was it was now the right time to stick out that particular body of work.
'DRIVE.
CONFIDENCE.
BELIEF.
FAITH.'
A lot of people my age are idolising the '90s — the music, the culture. Is there anything you think they need to know about it as someone who's lived through that time?
It was a wonderful decade, and it was also a crazy decade. It was explosive. The energy was explosive, and the optimism was huge. In the '90s, there was this sense that you could, if you set your mind to it and went for it, you could achieve it and get there. Your world was your oyster, and in terms of the music industry, there was a lot of spend going on.
Enormous amounts being spent on videos, tens of thousands, and enormous budgets spent on albums and stuff like that. You now look back and say, "Well, were they a little bit more frivolous with that and just sort of wasting money, because there was an abundance of it?"
Therefore, people are now a lot more clever and shrewd in the way that they make music and what they do. So I think we've become wiser, and I don't think it'll go back to that. But the '90s was, from a business point of view, good because you could achieve things, and the infrastructure and the machinery was there to enable you to do that.
But from a social point of view, the '90s was great, especially when you was like I was. I was successful and I was in my early 20s, so it was a massive change. I was travelling all over the world, flying here, there, and everywhere.
For a boy that grew up on a council estate, it was a pretty amazing, seismic change of things, of life. For some, it could be overwhelming. For me, I just embraced it and I thought it was great.
Are you finding any younger audiences discovering your music? Whether it's through their parents, through the internet, or even just when you're gigging, do you see younger faces in the crowd?
Yes, we do, and at the festivals we do.
Certainly, that is something that's becoming more obvious as people are accessing the music. Even within the industry itself, people are aware now that there are a lot of younger people in their late 20s and 30s, and even younger than that, who are tapping into older music.
If someone my age, in their 20s, wanted to discover your music and they hadn't heard anything from you before, is there a particular song or album that you think they should start with?
Possibly Voices would be a good introduction to the very young me.
But then, if they go to discover more of the new music I've made, maybe catch some of the clips of the concerts online. Certainly it would be pointing towards the internet now, unless you're lucky to hear one of my records now and then on some mainstream radio. Ultimately, it's going to be going online and checking out the shorts and the little things that are going round on the socials.
Is there anything you can tell me about your new work, or is it under wraps for now?
It's kind of under wraps. There will be something coming out in the coming weeks, I think. We've got one ready to go that we'll pop out there, and then some of the other tracks, we're just finishing them off now, getting them tweaked and mastered.
But it'll be a nice album. A continuation of what we've done with the Unstoppable album, but it'll be... there's some other, not unusual, but very different cuts in there. I like to do things that people don't expect.
Are there any current British soul artists that you're quite excited about?
That's a tricky one. I'd be honest and say it's more the Americans I'm leaning towards at the moment when I hear things. There's some music coming out of America, and there's some voices that, for me as a singer, it's the voice that does it for me.
Someone did play me something new from the UK, a soul album, the other day. It would be unfair for me to say who the artist was, and they'll probably do very, very well, but the voice didn't float my boat.
I grew up listening to some of possibly the greatest singers of all time, like your Stevie Wonder, Bobby Womack and Donny Hathaway. But when I first heard Teddy Swims' voice, I thought, "Wow, this is just kind of special.” It's so deep, got that gospel edge to it, and it's so unbelievably soulful.
You're playing at La Belle. Is there anything that you enjoy or anything that's different about playing these relatively small stages compared to some of the big stadiums you've played at?
Yes. I had this conversation with my manager the other day about wanting to play some of the smaller venues because the big ones are fantastic. It's a great atmosphere, and it's a sight to be seen. It's a great vibe, great energy but the smaller ones where the audience tends to be a bit closer and, you know, they're intimate, for want of a better word, they've got their own vibe about them, and they're quite unique, and they're kind of special.
You can feed off the audience and reactions pretty instantly. When you're looking out at thousands of people, it's hard sometimes to gauge, apart from the fact when they're up and dancing and going wild. It's hard to gauge.
But with a smaller place, it becomes very, very obvious and clear, instant how it's going, and that can become a kind of reciprocating thing where you're all buzzing on that same energy in that smaller room.
Is there anything we can expect to see at your Edinburgh Fringe show, like any particular songs that you're going to play?
No, you'll hear all of your favourite hits and some of the new stuff from the new album, and you're going to hear some great musicians. I've got a great band, and hopefully you'll enjoy that on its own without me. I mean, even if it's instrumental you'd enjoy it. But hopefully I'll be sitting on top of it doing my thing vocally, and that'll make the whole night complete.
By Madison Stevens
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