Event

Ural Thomas and The Pain

Years ago, Ural Thomas rejected the cruelty of the music industry. But the Pain brought him back.

Ural Thomas has lots of stories. He's been around the block, you might say, even though he's lived in the same North Portland housewhich he claims to have rebuilt himself, using all recycled materials, after it burned down in the mid-'70sfor the past four decades. In his youth, Thomas was a hot-shit soul singer, with a voice of equal parts grit and grace, who went from performing on street corners to sharing stages with R&B royalty. He says he opened the Rolling Stones' first show in America and one of Otis Redding's last. He played the Apollo with James Brown. He tells tales of record companies piling money on his bed and sending women to his hotel room, trying to seduce him into signing a contract.
Hearing him recall those days, from a seat in the cluttered rehearsal room at the rear of his home, it's hard to parse fact from fiction, the exaggerations from the misremembrances. But Thomas, 73, who speaks in soft, mannered tones, never sounds boastful. Those memories, for him, aren't about personal glory, but pain and disenchantment. Yes, he met his idols and became their peer, but he found many of them cold, dismissive and mean. He was lied to by labels, ripped off by managers and betrayed by his own friends. No matter how accurate the details, the stories Thomas shares say everything about who he is, and why he eventually returned to the neighborhood where he grew up and never left again: He just didn't have the heart to make it in the music business.