Sonoma son Tommy Thomsen rocks Rossi’s Jan. 29

If there ever was a Sonoma home-town boy, Tommy Thomsen would be it.

Born and raised in Sonoma Valley, Thomsen’s family has been living here for over a century.

Thomsen family members adorn the wall of historic photos in the Swiss Hotel, something Thomsen is proud of. Thomsen has been playing music since he was a freshman at Sonoma Valley High School, heavily influenced by his mother, a piano player know as “Big Red,” and his Uncle Pete, a milkman who sang opera on his rounds. Her collection of Big Band 78 rpm records stoked his interest in popular music. After buying his first guitar at Ruggles Music on the Plaza in the mid-‘60s, it was all about emulating the blues style of Freddy King, “The Texas Cannonball,” and Jimmy Reed, whose playing influenced a string of musicians from Eric Clapton to Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Thomsen hit the road in ’66 to pursue music but the road was a rocky one. Even though he was a member of the merchant marines, that did not keep him from getting drafted to the theater of the Vietnam war.

Thomsen’s conscientious objector status landed him an 18-month stint in Lompoc Federal Penitentiary, finally being pardoned in 1974 by President Gerald Ford. He was not alone as a musician in prison, as there were many like-minded folks, and Thomsen acquired an acoustic guitar and shared licks with other inmates.

After his release from prison, Thomsen hooked up with the Sonoma County music scene and played with the likes of Sammy Hagar, Commander Cody, Billy C. Farlow, Bill Kirchen and the Moonlighters and Asleep at the Wheel. But, the hand of fate was not yet done with Thomsen – and his years of partying were about to catch up with him in a big way. Leaving Sonoma one particular evening on the way back to his merchant ship in Martinez, a drunken Thomsen ended up in the Union Oil refinery, although not via the main entrance. The police arrived and that was the beginning of Thomsen’s sobriety. “My life wasn’t funny by the time I quit. I needed to. It was quit or die.” Thomsen’s liver was also beginning to fail, also attributed to his prior lifestyle.

Focusing on music, and still in the merchant marines, Thomsen honed his skills all over the world, and throughout California as well, developing his own unique style of Western swing, which eventually led to his induction into numerous halls of fame for the genre.

Come 1997, his liver was about shot, and fellow musician and friend Norton Buffalo put on a benefit concert for Thomsen in the Sonoma Plaza to help raise funds. The next year a liver arrived and things all seemed well, until last year, when cancer was discovered in his liver. Thomsen beat the odds again and is now cancer-free and as healthy as he’s been in a long time. Alcohol-free for over 27 years, Thomsen sees big things ahead.

“I feel like the window is still open to me to do things,” he said. “I’m sounding good, feeling good, getting ready to book the new year.”

Thomsen recently connected with some musical friends in Portland on his way to perform at the Seattle Western Swing Hall of Fame, and the group decided they should put some of those tunes on an album, which culminated in Thomsen’s latest release “Crazy ’bout her Gravy,” a collection of mostly standards mixed in with an original or two.

The release party will be combined with Thomsen’s birthday celebration tonight, Jan. 29, at Rossi’s 1906 dancehall at 8:30 p.m. and he’s got an all-star band to boot. With him tonight will be Grammy Award winning lap steel guitar player Ken Emerson, Wendy DeWitt on keyboards, Kirk “the madman” Harwood on drums, Ken “Snakebite” Jacobs on sax, Bobby Black on steel guitar, Richard Chon on fiddle and Sam Page on bass.

For more info on Thomsen, point your browser to tommythomsen.com. For more info about the show, point your browser to ros sis1906.com.