Meet Thomas Gallagher

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Thomas Gallagher a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Thomas , thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

To consider myself resilient, I suppose comes from an unrelenting self-competitiveness mixed with a little bit of insecurity. For better or worse, I’m never fully satisfied with whatever accomplishment is behind me, and I’m always looking ahead to how I can improve on my next effort.
I’ll never forget an experience I had when I was very young, showing up to band practice one day to find I had been replaced by another guitar player. Of course I was extremely defensive at the time, but that quickly turned into my being mesmerized by the sound that was coming out of this new guy. He was such a fantastic player, he even made the not-so-nice guys I had been playing with sound pretty darn good. I put my tail between my legs, left without saying goodbye, and knew exactly what I needed to do. I went home, grabbed my sister’s Led Zeppelin records and got down to some serious practicing. Except for the occasional food and water, I don’t think I came out of my bedroom for two years. When I finally did resurface, I knew I had elevated my playing to a level I never thought possible.
To this day, I still measure myself against that kid standing in my spot. Am I as good as him now? I’ll never know. But it seems to keep me driven to stay one step ahead, and to never again feel unprepared for the moment.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I am a graduate of Musicians Institute, a life-long guitar player, and the creator of Raised by Clowns, a 12-song alternative rock project I recently released. The songs were all written during the Covid-19 lockdown, when like most, I found myself with idle time on my hands, and wondering how I would stay sane for the long haul. As the pandemic dragged on, I commenced to record all of the instruments myself rather than wait it out, when I would be able to record with a full band. To handle some of the instruments I don’t personally play, I enlisted musicians from all over the world, whom I found on Fiverr, a web based marketplace where freelance artists can contribute their skills remotely via file sharing. Admittedly, I believe music is best created amongst a band setting, feeding off each other’s ideas and energy, but under the unprecedented circumstances, I embraced the internet for all it had to offer. It’s pretty amazing what you can accomplish these days, all while never taking off your bedroom slippers.
Music genres rotate in cycles, and in my opinion we’re overdue to start hearing again music played with real instruments, some grit and angst. Alternative rock has been a shrinking genre for two decades now, but I personally believe it will have a resurgence soon, and I’m more than happy to have Raised by Clowns play a role in the crusade.
Raised by Clowns is truly my coming out party; music written 100% by me, being played the way I would want to hear it. Now that the record is complete, I am retroactively putting the live band together, and I expect to have a few live dates to announce in early 2025.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I believe all of my music studies and life experiences have in one form or another led me to my ability to write and produce songs. In music school I studied sound engineering, which has given me the useful skills necessary in operating my home studio. Collaborating with other artists has developed my skills in producing different styles of music, and guitar lessons have taught me to execute whatever melodic ideas I hear in my head. But probably the best direction I was ever given was to allow yourself to be not-so-good, before you get good. Try writing 7 bad songs in 7 days. It’s more challenging than at first glance, and you’ll soon learn just how critical your conscious mind can be, holding you back from truly expressing yourself. And chances are, if you can actually complete the task, you’ll probably end up with some good ideas in the process, if not even a great song altogether.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

As I prepare to write new songs, I become a sponge, reading literature and listening to a lot of new music in any and all genres. This tends to open my mind to fresh concepts, melodies and words that I may not have aroused otherwise . Recently I read “How to Write One Song, by Jeff Tweedy (Wilco.) It’s an inspiring read, and brings home the point, songwriting is less about skill, and more about the doing. Do it badly, do it great, but keep doing it everyday. Whether you are a musician or not, everybody has the ability to write a song. The key to progress is to allow yourself to be vulnerable, to say what you want to say in a bold and unapologetic way. The best songs invoke universal emotions we all can relate to as humans. The true art is in telling the story in an original way; a story the listener has never heard before, but knows exactly the experience or emotion you are conveying.
Having a hard time tapping into your vulnerability? Try taking an acting or improv class, you’ll be flush with embarrassment in no time, guaranteed. Or better yet, try being interviewed for a great magazine!

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Thomas Gallagher

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