Growing up in Dallas, John Thomasson found the bass guitar the same way many did – a friend started a band and no one else played bass. He attended the Booker T. Washington School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and then the University of North Texas, where he studied music. After that, he was part of a band called Little Sister (later changed to Sister 7) and had some minor radio hits in the 90s. After moving to Austin, John started playing with one of his heroes – Davíd Garza, playing on his first major label record called This Euphoria.
In 2000, John got married, quit playing music for the most part and went back to school to get a degree in Psychology and focused on musical cognition. After working some tech jobs at Apple and Hewlett Packard, he wanted to play a little bit more while preparing for grad school. He started recording and touring with Matt Nathanson in 2004, and one of Matt’s songs that John played on was “Come on Get Higher”, a double-platinum single. Working with Matt also gave him the chance to play on the original Conan O’Brien show and Late Night With David Letterman.
After the birth of his first son, John and his growing family moved to Nashville in the fall of 2009. There, he learned about the family-friendly way that Nashville acts toured and that sealed the deal for him. He landed the gig with Little Big Town in April of 2010 and has toured with them ever since. During that time, he also recorded with LBT on numerous successful records, including: Tornado (platinum album) which featured hit singles “Pontoon” and “Tornado”, Pain Killer (Platinum album) which including the triple-platinum single “Girl Crush” and gold single “Day Drinking”, The Breaker, Wanderlust (produced by Pharrell Williams), and most recently, Nightfall (Self Produced).
Spotify playlist of some of John’s work:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0s9wubeza5T6XMKuZNyeED?si=vj4C1X7fTiWhrsQnU7E-Mw
John Thomasson on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/johnthom/
Little Big Town website:
http://www.littlebigtown.com/