Ravinia 2019, Issue 1, Week 2

And after the call came, despite still having to face the autoimmune issues she had been dealing with before her brain surgery, Maldonado would eventually get better. “It’s a process,” Thomas admits. “We hang onto the good moments.” Then the 47-year-old hangs onto a deep breath. “I think its good when life is bad but you still weather through it,” he continues. “Whether that’s love or loss, you deal with it. And as you get older, you get that sort of perspective that the rough days are just going to be a part of your life, and that’s okay.” And it’s this reminder that is serving as the backbone of Thomas’s current single, “One Less Day (Dying Young),” which speaks of the importance of living life to its fullest, despite what you might see waiting for you right around the corner. His lyrics touch on how he’s not afraid of getting older. And he’s living those lyrics at the moment. “Some people may say that getting old sucks, but as far as I am concerned, the alternative sucks even more,” Thomas laughs. “With youth comes a promise, a feeling that you can stay young forever, a time when the possibilities of the future are sexy and beautiful. But then you have the people who make some bad decisions, and you realize that getting older isn’t afforded to everyone.” One of those people is George Michael, a “very good” friend of Thomas’s whose Christmas Day death in 2016 continues to rock him emotionally. Thomas says Michael is just one of the many artists that indirectly influenced much of the music on his fourth studio album, Chip Tooth Smile, which was released on April 26. “I just wanted to pay homage to him and all of those peo- ple that made up that time [of my life],” he says of the disc, recorded primarily in his basement. That time was the ’80s, when Thomas found himself smack in the middle of a hectic home life in the middle of the state of Florida. Thomas anchored himself by swallowing up music—from Prince to Phil Collins to Cyndi Lauper to the Scottish rock band Big Country—that would influence a career primed to explode. Thomas was 22 when he signed his first record deal with Matchbox Twenty, an accomplish- ment that came after a few ALL PORTRAITS BY RANDALL SLAVIN 12 RAVINIA MAGAZINE | MAY 31, 2019 – JUNE 16, 2019