Interview with Old Lost John: ‘Music has always been with me, even though there wasn’t any music at home growing up’

Malmö, Sweden-based folk singer, Old Lost John, otherwise known as Tomas Thunberg, is working on another album slated for release later this year, which will see him move into the blues space.

‘This album looks towards a darker future,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit political but not in an obvious sense. We’ll record it within the next few weeks. It has a similar theme to ‘Made of Mud’. It will be more improvised, more open. I will try to allow songs to be asymmetrical by adding or dropping a bar. I already have more songs than I need and it may include a song I tried out recently, ‘The Devil Walks Among Us’ (YouTube clip below.)’

‘Made of Mud’ features on his Live in the Gallery album, which came out in May. The song is about climate change and features biblical imagery, which seems fitting for a man who has a degree in the history of religion and theology. ‘I studied that because I wanted to get inside what believers think,’ he explained. ‘There’s something very powerful in that, whether you believe in religion or not (he doesn’t). The song is about the world going wrong and how we harm ourselves in the end.’

As the song goes: ‘A storm will rise and bring the flood, man was always made of mud, fall from grace, there’s no fear of God in this place, dirty water rising high, echoing an ancient cry, fall from grace, there’s no fear of God in this place.’

Although he doesn’t believe in God, he says he understands ‘the notion of what God is’: ‘Some people think of religion as a vulgar alternative to science but they’re totally different things. I like the creativity of religion, the coming up with the stories. For many people, it’s about the need to have something in the place of what you don’t know. Religion can be very public but also very private and intimate.’

He is both thrilled and slightly bemused that some of his songs are open to widely differing interpretations, citing ‘Cool About You’ from his 2013 album, Caving In, which he describes as being ‘at the opposite end of my writing style to ‘Made Of Mud”. ‘I’ve had people say they want it played at their wedding because they think the narrator of the song is about to propose but I don’t see it that way at all.’ He asks me how I see it and I say that, for me, it’s a song about a man having an affair with a married woman (there is a reference to her wedding ring). My interpretation turns out to be not completely correct either: ‘I see it that there’s this guy who’s had something with this woman in the past and he’s trying to move on,’ he said. ‘She shows up somewhere and he notices everything about her that he was attracted to in the first place. When he sees her wedding ring, it becomes difficult for him because he’s cool about everything but her. It’s hard for him to accept she’s married because there’s a part of him that thought they might get back together. As a song, I think it’s intriguing because it leaves it a little bit open.’

‘There was always music in my head’

Interestingly, he didn’t grow up listening to music: ‘Music has always been with me, even though there wasn’t any music at home growing up, there was always music in my head. I’d make up tunes and hum them when we were on car journeys as kids. At the time, I thought it was normal and that everyone did it! I think my parents just got used to it!’

Thunberg works as a newspaper distributor at night and has also worked as a lumberjack. He describes himself as someone who looks more outwards than inwards and says that his songs aren’t necessarily autobiographical: ‘In the part of town where I work at night, there are a lot of pubs and clubs. It’s a bit rough but you get to meet people and talk to them a little bit. It’s about keeping my eyes open for people around me and imagining other characters. Also, when I tour, I tour alone on the train – also in the UK – so I meet people and get to hear their stories.’

He is a fan of local bluegrass band, The Original Five, and says he would have liked to collaborate with American blues legend “Blind Lemon” Jefferson. ‘It would be interesting to collaborate with a blues legend from the 20’s or 30’s, to see what it was like to live in that bit of history. What would you learn?’