Gene Thomas ~ the original

"You know, Gene once said to me,  we're different from most people.  We sit around with noise always in our heads.  It kills us---and it gives us life.  Complex simplicity, is the only way to describe Gene Thomas.  Understood only by his closest friends, and then, never completely.  He writes with the insight of an old man, and like the rest of us, at times, closes his mind to the wisdom of his own words.  He's human, intensely idealistic at times, and at times a prisoner of himself.  Gene is not one of the "new breed" of country writers that seems to find its' label on so many the past few years.  He's just a writer of beauty in the same tradition as

Stephen Foster.  Unfortunately, most people will never see the diamonds for the sequins."

Mickey Newbury