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No doubt his background as a businessman contributed to Brent Thompson’s ability to put his band on the local musical map.

His talent, however, had a little something to do with it as well.

In 12 short months, Thompson has taken his merry band of musicians from a concept to stages like “The Shed” at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson in Maryville, where the group will perform Thursday night. Through a combination of creative talent and an ingenuity for performing, the Brent Thompson Band – formerly Brent Thompson and His Wandering Circus – have made a colorful splash on the local music scene.
Thompson, a native of Chattanooga, has long been a singer, but it’s only been over the past few years that he’s returned to the stage.

“I kind of come from a musical family – my parents were both classical music singers who sang in the opera when I was growing up, and I was a soprano in the Chattanooga Boys Choir,” Thompson told The Daily Times this week. “When I got into high school, I got involved in a rock group, and we ended up playing Riverbend in Chattanooga. That was still one of the great highlights for me, to be on a great big stage with a great big sound system and hearing your voice go out over all those people. That’s when I definitely caught the bug.”

Thompson came to Knoxville to attend the University of Tennessee, and driven by hunger for a career, he thought he had left music behind. After graduation, he moved back to Chattanooga and then to San Francisco, where he turned to the Internet to find “something a little bit different,” he said.

“I decided to audition for a band, and I found a group looking for a vocalist that played music like The Doves and Coldplay and Radiohead,” Thompson said. “I auditioned for the band, got the gig, and here I was, this Tennessee guy in San Francisco playing fairly big gigs and getting down to LA a little bit. It was a really exciting experience for a while.”

The restaurant business eventually led Thompson back to Knoxville, where he realized that the bug for performing live, ignited all those years earlier as a teen on the stage at Riverbend, still burned bright. At the time, he had started composing original music, and eventually connections led him to local piano player Ben Maney. Through Maney, he was introduced to other musicians that helped him form the band Raj and Redwood, which played around East Tennessee quite a bit.

Eventually, Raj and Redwood disbanded, but Thompson’s original music made its way to deejay Matt Morelock, host of WDVX-FM’s “Blue Plate Special.” Morelock was impressed and wanted to get Thompson and his musicians on the show. A fan of the program, Thompson realized he wanted to make the most of the hour he would get on the air.

“Since I had this hour, I wanted to do something crazy, so I got the guys from Raj and started adding instruments and three or four or five more vocalists,” Thompson said. “I had some help, and we ended up putting together a group of about 15 people. And even though it was on the radio, we decided to dress up like clowns and perform this music.

“I liked the spectacle aspect of it, and I asked myself how I could get my music noticed quicker. I wanted to make more of a sudden impact. It was like getting back to my roots a little bit, and I liked the orchestral feel of it.”

The band marched into the WDVX studios with drums, a tuba and in full clown makeup. The audience was spellbound, especially when Thompson and His Wandering Circus marched back out just as jubilantly as they came in. (The group even paraded down Gay Street after the show in an impromptu parade.)

Shortly thereafter, the band was booked at venues like downtown Knoxville’s World Grotto and the Preservation Pub. Brent Thompson and His Wandering Circus were even invited back to perform at last year’s “Blue Plate Special” Halloween edition, and Thompson composed a script for the entire program.

Eventually, however, the spectacle aspect of the band ran its course, and Thompson opted to scale back the group and focus more on its music. Introducing pedal steel to the mix, he eventually changed the name to the Brent Thompson Band.

“We set the wardrobe, the wigs and the horns aside and really kind of got back to the music, and that’s where we are now,” he said. “With the pedal steel, it just sounds really rooted in Tennessee, but it doesn’t sound like things people have necessarily heard around here. I’m trying to differentiate myself as a songwriter and not fit into any particular genre or sound like any particular thing.

“For a show like the one at ‘The Shed’ with Webb, we’re more rock focused, and I get to rock out a little bit. I’m really liking the direction everything is going.”

So, apparently, are the musicians with whom Thompson plays. The band isn’t 15-strong like it used to be, but that’s more out of logistical concerns than anything else.

“I kind of knew you couldn’t do this for a long time, because even though it’s fun, it’s really hard getting 15 people together,” he said. “I’m appreciative I had that many people for that long of a time, but it was an orchestra, and what everybody understood was that it was about the compositions.

“In scaling back, we made sure it was tight and all these parts were down. We took some of the chaos out of it and decided to focus on the songwriting, and it’s been very positive.”

Bottom line, he added – it’s about the music and the feeling behind it. And Thompson doesn’t need clown makeup or a parade to get that across to those who hear him.

“I think it’s about the feeling, and that’s something I’ve tried to hone,” he said. “That’s the reason I got the job in San Francisco, because when I perform, I feel it. I think I earned the respect of the people I play with, and growing up with a classical background, when I would give them these home recordings to learn my songs, I think they could really appreciate the orchestral standpoint of it.

"They could really hear it, and it was beautiful to them. I go wild when I get a chance to step into a rehearsal with these guys. It’s one of the places I’m at my happiest. They’re a super group of guys, and they’re extremely talented and committed to the original music.”