Andy Thomas (Photo by Jenna Kinney)
A lot has changed for musician Andrew Thomas Trongone since he traded Richmond for the Sunshine State. He left Trongone — both the surname and the eponymously titled band — behind. He became a father. And he’s four years sober. Now performing as Andy Thomas, he is poised for a restart with a new album and a release party at The Broadberry on April 3.
With his curly auburn mane, he still looks like the central casting ideal of a rock guitar hero. But while The Trongone Band specialized in covers and off-the-cuff originals, Thomas’ debut solo album, “Highway Junkie,” is more introspective and comprised of carefully crafted songs. The record is a honky-tonk swamp rock odyssey of love and lust, frustration, pain and hope, barreling through a thicket of chords and choruses toward the uncertain promise of a brighter future.
“Almost all of it is autobiographical or about people I know,” Thomas says. “Some might not be exactly true, but I don’t have too many fictional songs. The ideas are very real.”
The Richmond native’s renaissance is grounded in a near-lifetime of playing. Thomas got his first guitar at 10, started his first band in middle school, and by the end of the last decade was touring the U.S. and Europe with The Trongone Band, a group originally formed with his father and brother. Then came the COVID reset in 2020. Gigs dried up, and the band evaporated.
In 2022, Thomas moved to Boynton Beach, Florida, at the northern end of the Gold Coast, and quickly found work in the booming construction market. He still played gigs, but renovating homes and performing at beach bars didn’t fill the void of being a full-time artist. “I felt like my soul was completely sucked. I realized I had to do something,” he says.
Thomas decided to fly solo. “I just wanted a fresh start, something that was completely me,” he says. The family name had proved to be both a vestige of the past and a marketing challenge. “It sounds like either Italian spaghetti, or like someone is going to see a trombone brass band,” he says. “It never fit the Southern rock and roll thing.” He stripped Trongone from his stage moniker, using only his first and middle names.
Thomas also stopped partying. “Getting sober was my best decision,” he says, noting how a clear head positively impacted the creative process of his new album. “I put my blinders on for at least two hours every night, writing music, writing lyrics, making demos.” When he had more than two dozen completed songs, he contacted his longtime friend Dave Schools — the bassist of rock band Widespread Panic — and booked time at Richmond’s Spacebomb Studio.
“Highway Junkie” starts and ends on the road, with guitar-powered detours along the way. While “Nothing I Wouldn’t Do (For You)” is a classic country duet with Galax-based singer Dori Freeman, “Little Love Machine” has the rocking horse momentum of a 1970s ZZ Top cut. The opening title song is about outrunning the past, and the closing “Last One Standing” expresses regret for past mistakes and accepts the inevitability of the future.
“I don’t know what it is, I just know that I’ll get there,” Thomas sings in that final tune. That solitary “I” becomes the plural “we” in the final stanza — a glimmer of hope for whatever comes next.
Andy Thomas performs an album release show for “Highway Junkie” at The Broadberry on April 3 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25.
