Thomas was educated as a classical musician from age 10. After a career in performance, he became a Librarian. He has published over 200 reviews of indie, electronic, and experimental rock music and teaches the course he created, Inventing the Future: Underground Rock (1968-1993) at Kansas State University. He serves as the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum Librarian of Wonder and most enjoys discovering how interconnections between visual art, music, and literature point to the transcendent. In the past he was a two-time fellow of the Benjamin Britten-Peter Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies in Aldeburgh, England, and once served as Research Librarian at the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, DC.