MUSIC
BY WILL KENNEDY
URAL THOMAS AND THE PAIN
DUSTY 45s
Portland soul and R&B legend
Ural Thomas comes to Eugene
L
oads of tall tales surround legendary Portland soul
singer Ural Thomas.
Some say Thomas opened for The Rolling Stones
and Otis Redding and played alongside James
Brown at New York’s Apollo Theater. Others say
Thomas lives in the same north Portland home he rebuilt
from salvaged material after a fire burned down the struc-
ture in the ’70s.
Who knows if any of it is true — and frankly, it doesn’t
matter. “Love for my people” is what Thomas says keeps
him going after nearly six decades as a performer.
Born in 1939, he got his start in the late 1950s with
the doo-wop band The Monterays. “I’m just repaying the
people,” he continues. “I feel like I’m 15!”
Thomas evokes a time when mythmaking was practi-
cally as important to a performer as what he did on stage.
Those were the years when Ali was “the greatest,” and he
told us so.
Thomas’ mother played music in church. “I absorbed all
that music,” he says, as he did his mom’s interest in blues
players like Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters.
After meeting soul aficionado and drummer Scott Ma-
gee about a decade ago, Thomas formed the Pain and, until
recently, the band played a weekly residency at Portland
venue The Goodfoot Pub and Lounge. The shows quickly
became one of Portland’s hottest tickets.
Before Magee found Thomas, he tells me, he was “itch-
ing to play soul music.” Finding a genuine soul music sur-
vivor to front his band felt like a blessing. “I knew of his
music,” Magee says. “We all know how lucky we are to
play with Thomas.”
So far, Portland has managed to keep Thomas under
wraps. But now, after finding a manager, Magee says Ural
Thomas and the Pain are ready to spread the love — to get
“outside our comfort zone,” as Magee describes it. “We’ve
had a lot of developments,” he adds, including a new re-
cord coming out next fall on Portland label Tender Loving
Empire.
The album will be all-original material, Magee ex-
plains, with some new tunes but also some music that’s
been with Thomas for years. “Songs he’d forgotten about,”
Magee says. “Or just kind of had in his head.”
Sometimes Thomas just sings a tune, Magee continues,
and the Pain will take it from there, figuring out the key and
backing arrangements.
This won’t be the band’s first recording project. In
2016, the group released an eponymous compilation of the
Pain working through a variety of Thomas’ material from
over the years. The album came out on well-known Seattle
curators of lost soul, funk and R&B masterpieces Light in
the Attic Records.
Throughout, Thomas and his band attack the music
with working-class tenacity, whipping up the dance floor
like their suppers depended on it — because, for musicians
from Thomas’ era, it did. ■
I-5 Killers presents Ural Thomas and the Pain, Seattle’s True Loves and Eu-
gene’s Pancho + The Factory, 9 pm Thursday, March 29, at Hi-Fi Music Hall
Lounge; $8 adv., $10 door, 21-plus.
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