Interview with Shem Thomas: ‘My next single is about a longing to reconnect with your roots’

Following hot on the heels of his fantastically uplifting single last month ‘Do It’, Ibach, Switzerland-based singer Shem Thomas is gearing up to release his next single ‘Old Ferry Boat’ before Christmas.

”Old Ferry Boat’ is about losing your roots inside, which is something that can happen over decades, it’s a very touching song,’ he said. ‘It’s about a longing to reconnect with your roots. It’s a folk song but also something modern. It has a reduced beat, it’s not like my old acoustic songs (he’s referring to his acoustic album from 2015, You’re (Not) The Only One). It’s about me trying to reconnect with my own roots. Everyone can identify with that. For the last 10 years, I felt really lost, so it’s an autobiographical song for me. If it helps other people, that makes me happy.’

Thomas has what he describes as two qualities to his voice – a ‘wilder’ one, which is evident in ‘Do It’ and a much softer one, as evidenced by his acoustic songs.

‘Do It’ marks a change of pace for him. It’s the last song he wrote before lockdown but the first one he’s released. ‘It’s really uplifting. I have a small home studio, so I produced it myself this time. I knew it was a good song, it’s like a bang! It’s a comeback for me. I had the melody first and then thought about what the feeling of the song should be. It’s about looking forward and not looking back. It’s powerful, it inspires you to do things.’

It does. As the song goes: ‘This time I’m going to do it because I can do it, run with the wolves to the sound of the music, I can feel it in my blood, nothing’s gonna bring me down.’

‘It’s beautiful to make a difficult situation into a precious song’

He admits that song writing is therapeutic for him: ‘One thing is for sure, it’s beautiful to make a difficult situation into a precious song, it makes that experience very positive in the end. The story in ‘Old Ferry Boat’ is sometimes hard and not pleasant. In retrospect, I have kind of overcome it, I think about it a lot. It’s a kind of closure. It definitely helps to write songs like that, it’s a type of self-therapy but way more creative than actual therapy. I really like that.’

Thomas burst onto the Swiss scene in 2014 when he made it to the final of The Voice, where he sang his number one hit ‘Crossroads’ for the first time. The single achieved gold status and went on to rack up more than 7 million streams on Spotify. He describes his sound as ‘a mixture of pop and urban trap’ and he has a real knack for producing big songs that nevertheless have a real intimacy. Shem is an Arabic name, meaning ‘light’, that he gave himself in 2013.

Another song that’s very memorable is ‘We Just Need A Little’ from his You’re (Not) The Only One, which is basically about a relationship that has stalled. ‘I know from my own experience that you have to water a relationship like you would a plant,’ he laughed. ‘It might just need a drop to be fresh again. Or it could just be about doing something spontaneous together, maybe getting out of your comfort zone.’

As the song goes: ‘I’m breaking my bones, shedding my skin, baring my soul
and breathing you in, hit me with your true-born heart, girl we could have a brand new start.’

Thomas actually trained to be a primary school teacher, although he has worked on his music full-time since 2014. As part of his teacher training, he had to do work experience with a foreign language component, so he worked on an ostrich farm in Tasmania for a couple of months, despite his dislike of flying.

He intends to release an album in the autumn of 2021, with a view to releasing four singles from it, including ‘Old Ferry Boat’ and ‘Do It’ prior to the album launch.

His frustration at the Swiss music industry is evident. ‘Switzerland is too small, it doesn’t matter to people,’ he said. ‘People think the music here is just folk and yodelling but that’s not true. There’s a good pop culture.’ He’s a fan of Pablo Nouvelle, a Swiss DJ, filmmaker and producer and a former architecture student who makes songs from a combination of new and old samples. ‘I like him a lot, he has a nice, intentional approach,’ he said. He also likes Lo & Leduc, a Swiss rap group from Bern.

If he could tour with anyone, he picks Imagine Dragon, an American pop rock band from Las Vegas and Irish singer-songwriter Dermot Kennedy. ‘I would love to tour with both of them!’