Ian Thomas played Halifax on the weekend.
Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, I always thought it was cool this singer on the radio had the same name as me, my second name is Thomas, from my Dad Tom and his Father Tom. One of our son’s middle names is Thomas.
In the 80’s a lot of radio announcers changed their names to shorten them up by a syllable or two.
As a teenager starting out in radio in 1984, I thought of going by “Ian Thomas” On-Air, but there’s only ONE Ian Thomas, plus my parents would’ve kicked my butt if I didn’t use Robinson On-Air…
So to finally see Ian Thomas in concert for the first time after playing his music on radio stations over the years was awesome!
Ian played all his big hits like Coming Home, Hold On covered by Santana (that he said paid for his kids university), Right Before Your Eyes inspired by his wife of 54 years Catherine, covered by America, Runner inspired by Terry Fox covered by Manfred Mann (that paid for a new pool in their backyard ), plus Pilot, Time Is The Keeper, Long Long Way and his signature song from 1973 Painted Ladies that was his last tune before the encore.
Ian even has new music he wrote during Covid in his basement that comes out next month, and sounds great!
The Hamilton, Ontario born is 73 now and sounds the same as the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s with The Boomers.
He’s very funny too, as he’s the brother of Dave Thomas of Bob and Doug McKenzie and SCTV fame.
For more on his Maritime tour click HERE.
Thanks for the soundtrack to our lives in Canada and keep on rockin’, Ian! Love your name by the way…
-The “other” Ian Thomas.
(Credits: Ian Robinson Photos.)
