Michael James Thomas is an Australian singer-songwriter.

Mick Thomas was born in Yallourn

Yallourn, Victoria

Yallourn, Victoria was a company town in Victoria, Australia built between the 1920s and 1950s to house employees of the State Electricity Commission of Victoria, who operated the nearby Yallourn Power Station complex. However, expansion of the adjacent open-cut brown coal mine led to the closure...

, 7 February 1960, the middle child of three. His father, Brian Thomas, was an electrical engineer with the old State Electricity Commission. His father's family were from Tasmania and his mother, Margaret, was from northern Victoria. They met in Melbourne after Thomas's father returned from World War II.

"He served in the Pacific with the Navy during the war. He was in Japan shortly after the nuclear blast on Hiroshima. He was one of those blokes who never left Australia again. He had a normal life after the war but I'm sure his dreams were full of those things." - Thomas

The family moved with the work, from Gippsland to Colac

Colac, Victoria

Colac is a small city located in the Western District of Victoria, Australia, situated approximately 150 kilometres south-west of Melbourne on the southern shore of Lake Colac and the surrounding volcanic plains, approximately 40 km inland from Bass Strait. Colac is the largest city in and...

, Horsham

Horsham, Victoria

Horsham is the largest city by population and regional centre of the Wimmera region of Victoria, Australia and is approximately north-west of Melbourne via the Western Highway. At the 2006 census, Horsham had a population of 14,125. Horsham is in the federal Division of Mallee...

 and then Geelong, Australia. When he was 15, in Geelong, Mick Thomas started playing folk music. In 1981 (at age 21) he moved to Melbourne and after a couple of years in Melbourne's pub rock

Pub rock (Australia)

Pub rock is a style of Australian rock and roll popular throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and still influencing contemporary Australian music today....

 scene with bands like Where's Wolfgang and Trial, Thomas formed the first version of Weddings Parties Anything

Weddings Parties Anything

Weddings Parties Anything were an Australian folk rock band formed in 1984 in Melbourne and continuing until 1998. Their name came from The Clash song and musicologist Billy Pinnell described their first album as the best Australian rock debut since Skyhooks' Living in the '70s.-Formation and...

 in late 1984.
The band released seven albums between 1987 and 1996, with most of the material written by Thomas. The band also won two ARIA awards and toured relentlessly - in some years spending more time on the road than not - and got quite big in Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 and parts of America. They had a couple of minor hits, "Father's Day" and "Monday's Experts", but what they really achieved was to mix bush ballads with rock'n'roll; a band who could perform a deep, highly literate song based on a poem by Bertholt Brecht to beery, Blundstoned punters in Collingwood

Collingwood, Victoria

Collingwood is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3 km north-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Yarra...

 without looking, or sounding, silly.

Following the demise of Weddings Parties Anything in 1999, Mick embarked on a solo career and eventually settled with a new band 'The Sure Thing' which has been through many different lineups. About this time he also started the now defunct label Croxton Records with friend Nick Corr

Nick Corr

Nick Corr is co-founder, with Mick Thomas of Australia's Croxton Records. Founded in 1999, the label provides a home for a select group of acts, with the house ethos a mixture of country and roots, folk and rock...

.

Mick has written or co-written plays Over in the West and The Tank (with his older brother Steve) and is an accomplished music producer and engineer. He has been a mentor for many in the Australian music scene, especially in Melbourne. He is often rated with Paul Kelly

Paul Kelly (musician)

Paul Maurice Kelly is an Australian rock music singer-songwriter, guitarist, and harmonica player. He has performed solo, and has led numerous groups, including the Dots, the Coloured Girls, and the Messengers. He has worked with other artists and groups, including associated projects Professor...

as one of Australia's greatest songwriters.

Albums

Wedding Parties Anything
Solo

• Under Starter's Orders: Live at the Continental - Croxton (CROXT001) (1998)
• The Tank - Croxton (CROXT020) (14 June 2004)
• Anythings, Sure Things, Other Things - Liberation Blue (BLUE0722) (13 August 2004)

Mick Thomas and the Sure Thing

• Dead Set Certainty: Twelve Songs That Wouldn't Go Away... - Croxton (CROXT004) (1999)
• Dust on My Shoes - Croxton (CROXT007) (2000)
• Live Dust (2001)
• The Horse's Prayer (2002)
• Paddock Buddy - Liberation Music (LIBCD8220.2) (12 March 2007)
• Spin! Spin! Spin! - Liberation Music (LMCD0047) (17 April 2009)

Mick Thomas and Dan Warner

• Five Bells (1999)

Mick Thomas and Michael Barclay

• A Head Full of Road Kill - Croxton Records (2010)

EPs

Mick Thomas and the Sure Thing

• Something to Fight For - Croxton (CROXT018) (2003)