David Thomas

David Thomas has a reputation for being more than a bit fussy. Musicians, club owners and journalists who failed to meet a certain standard have all incurred the scorn and disapproval of the prickly singer. A look at the list of “Protocals” on the ubuprojex Web site serves as a nice introduction to the fastidiousness of Thomas' control and demands. He's someone who likes things a certain way, holds fast to rigid aesthetic principles he's obviously thought long and hard about and becomes flustered and irritated when people can't understand things that seem so obvious to him.  He's something of a great American crank (though he's lived in Brighton, England, for the past 24 years) in the tradition of demanding, visionary artists such as Don van Vliet, John Fahey and John Cassavetes.

Thomas has always been an uncompromising performer, taking pains to make sure every aspect of his music and performance is presented in the way he deems necessary for each project, concert and song. Even his biology seems to run counter to traditional norms of the rock frontman, and his large girth and high-pitched, erratic voice must have seemed especially odd when he began performing in the early 1970s under the name Crocus Behemoth, singing for Cleveland pre-punk legend Rocket From the Tombs, which mutated into one of the most influential, admired rock bands of eggheads and discerning musicians everywhere: Pere Ubu.

That voice has become one of the most unique narrative instruments in rock, with no less a chanteuse as Linda Thompson having told Thomas, “I wish I could sing like you,” when Thomas was recording a 1981 album with her husband, Richard. In addition to Ubu, Thomas fronts 2 Pale Boys, featuring current Ubu guitarist Keith Moline, and the recently re-formed Rocket From the Tombs. In late March, Ubu will undertake a rare four-date mini-tour of the Southeast, with an Easter Sunday show at Pilot Light. Their new record, Why I Hate Women, is an intense, exciting affair, and though Thomas is the sole original member remaining, the recording harkens back to early Ubu's sound and energy, with inventive, colorful use of synth by Robert Wheeler, and amazingly intuitive guitar playing by Moline.

Intelligent, contrary, verbose and possessing an unyielding vision of his art, Thomas doesn't suffer fools gladly but was open and articulate when he spoke with us on the phone from his Brighton home, taking pains to thoroughly answer every minor question in detail.

Pere Ubu has always been steeped in noirish tendencies, and Why I Hate Women seems especially so. The sort of landscape and setting the songs play out in, and even the music, of early Ubu seems especially informed by Cleveland's industrial landscape, combined with noir films and literature. Has living in England changed how you view or use landscape and setting in songs?

The various albums — you know, my work has always been concerned with landscape, but the landscape isn't always Cleveland. I think from Cloudland onward, there's almost no reference to Cleveland. Cloudland was a conscious documentation of getting out of that landscape. Since then each album has a different particular defined landscape. There's a notion of certain landscapes turning into a ghost town. 2 Pale Boys Erewhon album sort of deals in defining that whole issue of people who live in places that don't exist, which are like ghost town.

What's the defining issue or landscape of Women?

I never dealt terribly much on the landscape in that part of the story. I suppose it takes place somewhere out in Nebraska or something because of the “Flames Over Nebraska” song. The landscape there is more psychological. There's a psychological landscape, but it's set in a particular place, though I don't wanna tell you where. I'm not sure why. Every album has a back-story, and from that back-story there's a psychology — a moment that it all hinges on. The whole story hangs on one moment, and I suppose it's a hotel room in Nebraska, but the rest of it I'd rather not delve into that story in this case.

I guess when you release an album, don't you essentially have to kind of leave it up to the listener, listener interpretation, anyway?