A musical creation fusing hard-driving riffs, euphoric melodies, and serious lyrical depth, all while retaining an alternative-rock-pop sensibility, the universal din of THOMAS' APARTMENT is the perfect soundtrack for the beginning of the 21st century - bold, inviting, and urgent, but just familiar enough to bring you to that warm place where everything is just right. After the success of their debut, self-titled 12-track album in 2004, Thomas' Apartment is back with their brand-new second record, Synchrony, released Spring 2007.
The five members of Thomas' Apartment bring a menagerie of talents to the stage, glued together by the winding tapestry of the 17 tracks that tell the story of Synchrony. Each track is a distinctly written chapter of their personal experiences, richly illustrating the intensity of living as minorities in America, whether experienced as pleasure or pain. Ranging from the arena-ready clamor of "In The Silence" to the down-trodden yet inspiring lyrics of "Blue Skies", from the body-rocking grooves of "Temperature" to the cinematic orchestral movements of "Coda", Synchrony absorbs like a "greatest hits" of the last 2 decades of rock.
Since 2000, Thomas' Apartment has graced stages from small clubs to huge university amphitheaters to colossal venues like Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles and Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. With their captivating stage presence, tight-knit rhythms, and more hooks than a Home Depot, Thomas' Apartment treats every show like a sell-out at the Staples Center. What started with humble beginnings in a Los Angeles apartment has erupted into the airwaves across America, and the fervor's spreading fast - with no signs of slowing down.
Welcome to Thomas' Apartment. And don't forget to leave your shoes by the door.
Think. Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to be born. Nobody told me, "As you grow up you're gonna be short, and you'll constantly be picked on because the almighty forces of God have preordained that your genes will make 99 percent of the U.S. population taller and bigger than you. You have been selected to grow up a Chinese-Vietnamese minority in a nation where majority rules. Mother nature has decided that if you're born, you'll be confined to a social cage where you'll grow up confused and lost between three cultures; there won't be any role models for you, you'll have no approval of identity, no satisfaction of belonging." Nobody explained to me that someday after school in third grade I would be quietly eating a $0.25 popsicle as I waited alone for a ride home, when I would be interrupted by big teenaged bullies on bikes that would harass me on account of being small and different. They'd tap away the popsicle stick from my hands and I'd watch carefully as it'd melt on the blacktop of Slonaker Elementary School. It would be the first time I'd hear someone say the phrase "F***ing chink." Think back.
At five o' clock, Dad finally arrived to pick me up. School was out at three, but there were few breaks during the day when my dad was free from the demanding job as the baker at the Vietnamese bakery/coffee store. That day, the traffic of pastry patrons began to die down only at five p.m. Every day, Dad took me and my sister Amy to "the store" after school. We stayed with them until the shop closed around 9 pm. I remember how at the store, Mom was always busy tending to customers. Once in a while, when the counter was too much to be handled by my mother alone, Amy and I would try to come to her relief and help customers. But pretty much every time, when communicating with the customers, they would just point and laugh at the Americanized accent we spoke with, even if I did get their order right for "Cafe Sua Da Ngoc Ngoc" (in English, extra sweet French drip iced coffee with condensed milk.) We were ridiculed. It was no mystery why every time I stepped into the store, I felt hated for being me.
But mockery of being different was something I should have been used to by now. It wasn't unusual. At school, the Chinese kids would ask, "What nationality are you?" Half Chinese and half Vietnamese was the easiest reply to give, even if it wasn't accurate. And the skeptics would always investigate, "What do you mean, so you're part Vietnamese?" "So do you speak Chinese?" "What do you speak?" "Cantonese?" "Mandarin?" No, neither. Who ever heard of a Chinese dialect called Chow Cho? When I revealed the dialect of Chinese I spoke, chuckling always followed, "He's not Chinese!"
The same year in school, when working on a project over at a classmate's home, I called my mom to tell her where I was. When I first spoke in a broken Chinese-Vietnamese-English hybrid language, friends tortured me about how hilarious I sounded talking on the phone. It was one of the most embarrassing moments in my life. My -friends- made me ashamed to talk to my own mother. Fumbling, I tried to play it off by resolving my words into plain English while speaking into the phone. My mom wondered why I wasn't speaking casually and normally. Did normal even exist to me then? By the age of eight, I already realized that I hated being each and all Chinese, Vietnamese, and American. Each part defining me, each part outcasting and invalidating all others.
Throughout elementary school and middle school, I learned to keep my feelings to myself. For all those years, it was the same story I never quite fit in. At every attempt to speak out about how I was living without a sense of who I was, none took me seriously. People do that when you're short. Nobody seemed to want to understand the basis of my desolation, and I bottled the feelings in.
So I shut myself away from the world, and I would occasionally listen to the sound of music to zone out and get away from the disbelievers. Eventually I discovered that it brought me a sense of harmony. As I escaped into music more each day, music became more and more ornately decoded into stronger emotions within my mind. How did it work? How did specific compressions of air against ears make me feel a certain way? Inexplicably, it had the power to heal and fill in the holes of my life. And as I loved to listen to the sounds from modern musicians to classical composers, it never really came to my attention of who the artists were, aside from their names which associated their music to their identities. I never knew what the artists looked like and I didn't know what their ethnicities were. It didn't matter. That was the best part.
Naturally and gradually I came to understand that music made me complete. For months, I begged my parents for a piano. At first it seemed a phase, but after some time, they took in that I was more serious than they presumed. My first keyboard was an inexpensive Yamaha synthesizer. You know, one of those kinds where the "piano" and "harmonica" sounds seem mistakenly swapped. But for the moment, who cared what it sounded like? I got to play music.
Like trees reach out for the sun, I reached out to the keys of my keyboard to unlock utter self-fulfillment through the sonic waves I conjured from my fingertips. For years, I played and played and played. Eventually I began to be able to play what I felt, it was like channeling one source of energy and emotion into another. And slowly I became comfortable with playing my feelings for friends. When I did, they made me feel appreciated for the way I could finally express me in a way they could understand. The more I played for others, the more I wanted to give back to people that feeling that the most amazing artists had given me. And the people who listened to me play seemed to finally give me a sense of belonging. These people actually liked what I made. They listened without any racial biases or physical prejudices; they accepted me for what I did and for the feelings I shared with them through my music. It was my first chance to build and grow up with my own identity.
* * *
We were walking down Glenrock one night in a big group, when Bao invited me to a jam session for the first time. We hardly knew each other, and in my confusion I was convinced that he was only making friendly attempts at random conversation with me. A week later during Vietnamese Cultural Night (VCN) rehearsal, Nam asked me again to join them for a jam session, and I sorta presumed that they wanted me to jam with their band (as opposed to jam -in- their band!) Well they didn't make it very clear what kind of role I was playing, so like an ignorant fool, I kept disregarding their invitations. =P
Then one afternoon after coming home and removing my cloak of displacement, Bao caught me off guard and pressed his way into my apartment, armed with a guitar and an amp. I had no choice to defend myself with my synthesizer. Retaliation came with slight hesitation on my part, but Bao broke the ice by suggesting that we play a song we all knew, "Just Like Heaven," by The Cure. The song was then shadowed by several other Cure covers, which gradually eased our comfort zones during the jam session. It was awesome. I was starting to have a lot of fun and before I realized what was going on, Bao began to strum the 4 chords of Dreamscape. "Is that a song you wrote?" as if necessary to ask. And suddenly he began to sing, it was like a personal serenade ah, I listened to the words of the song, what could I do then but fall for this "softer sound?" I found myself filling up spaces with a vocal harmony part for the chorus that seemed to come from deep within me.
During the next week's rehearsal Nam arrived, equipped with an electric bass guitar. Nam was co-president of Vietnamese Student Union then, and it was easy to tell by the way he spoke in crowds that he was the kind of person who lived life to the fullest with passion. We hung out a dozen times before, but I had much to learn about who he was. It was simply amazing to finally get to know Nam by means of doing something we both loved to do. I discovered that he had mutant powers that gave him the ability to amplify a person's emotions. He would get to know his friends with sincere interest, find out what they were passionate about, and just turn up the volume. It was uncanny how he pinpointed people's potential and magnified it to the nth degree. With the way that he cared about others, he'd find out about and support you in good times and bad. Nam was a good guy like that never using his powers for evil. We used to find Nam always complaining about being the most expendable member of the band, well I never understood why. It's pretty evident that Nam is the most crucial member to the subsistence of the band. Ultimately, his heart has been the one to keep us going and keep us all together.
Then, straight from a lead role in the Vietnamese Cultural Night drama production, came Billy with "I'm So Confused" put together a week before his first jam session with us. And wow! I was utterly astonished by the instant results. He had the words and chords written out on paper and had the whole song figured out in his head from beginning, to breaks, to the end. Billy told us what to play, where to fill in, and before we knew it we had another song! We'd never progressed so quickly. Within weeks, he showcased several more songs he was working on. And several more in the next. Even as we were trying to focus on current songs, he'd be like, "Hey guys check out this new song I did." In response, sometimes we joked and asked him to slow-down on the creative flow. Eventually we all came upon a consensus that Billy ate music for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which resulted in music also as his form of excrement. Except his excrement was always good shit. With awesome talent as a guitarist and perpetual creativity as an artist, it was clear that he fit well into the band's forming image. But even as the focus became clearer, the picture wasn't yet finished.
For the longest time, we looked for a drummer to jam with. After frustration of several flaked meetings with trial drummers, my roommate Kevin reminded me that a mutual friend of ours, Yanson, was a drummer. Why didn't he ever mention it before?! Then on April 10th 2000, we had our very first complete band practice session. What better icebreaker than the classic introduction-of-a-band-member "Just Like Heaven" tune? And that was it. I habitually find myself thumbing through my old recordings for a listen to the cheap mono recordings we captured that day. Yanson molded himself directly into his part of the jam session with his skilled drumming experience, and his energetic personality somehow complemented with a blend of perfect harmony to the rest of us. We all seemed to just get along. We all smiled and nodded as Yanson completed the picture.
Over two years of intense collaboration had passed. We worked hard to establish the songs that would eclectically shape our debut album. But just before we could finish it, Yanson's time with the band had also passed. He left due to personal reasons, and again we were without a drummer.
But what started as a misfortune soon reshaped into a blessing in disguise. Through a very long chain of chances and coincidences, I crossed paths with a guy named Ian one evening. In the beginning it was just innocent partying fun and hanging out. And then one day, knowing nothing about his talents, I heard him just messing around on the drum kit in the living room. I was like holy cow. He's good! Day by day, I got to know him better and learned how motivated and knowledgeable he was as a musician. And after Ian and I began collaborating on songs, I immediately got a feel for how experienced and driven he was as a sound engineer as well. When Ian expressed interest in drumming for us, everything became clear to me. At this point the rest of the band still wanted to audition other potential drummers, but in my mind, I knew there was no competition. I believed in Ian like Morpheus believed Neo was the One. As we looked past the opaque transparency from where Yanson faded, we saw Ian's strength materialize within yesterday's cavity. With Ian we were forward bound again. And at last, we were a band again.
* * *
Like roots reach for water, I ached for more than just an existence, I wanted to live and so I reached out to absorb everything the band offered to give me to help me grow. We formed sounds that were harmonically woven and spoken together as one, and suddenly we realized the opportunities that lay before us were more than just childhood dreams. I was no longer alone in building my own sense of identity. We were all in it together, and it was self-evident every time we jammed together in the living room.
At our apartment, everyone was welcome. For many, we're probably just a bunch of guys who play instruments. For others, we might be a band that's got a couple good songs that you might like to listen to. Perhaps there might even be some who go as philosophically far as believing that our apartment is a place where you can free yourself from beyond the body you were born in, a hideaway from the neighborhood you were forced to grow up in, a retreat from the life that you're living right now.
But for me it's more than just that. Thomas' Apartment gave me something I've never had. It gave me a place where it was okay to be me.