About The Artists On The Album

About Thomas Negovan

The first notes of "And Dream Of Sheep" fall, and you listen. Intently. Orchestrated strings help define Thomas Negovan’s work on this track, but his scoring talents represent only one facet of his musical leanings. Other songs, such as those found on his 1995 debut CD with collaborator Enrique Vilaseco and band Three Years Ghost, bring his classical-mindedness in song writing to melodious, multilayered rock songs. And Negovan credits some unlikely masters with influencing his musical course in life.

"I wanted to be a Shelley or a Keats, but the role the Victorian or Romantic poet had in past societies doesn’t exist now," says Negovan. "Our closest modern equivalents are people like David Bowie and Mick Jagger."

Other musical influences range from T. Rex and The Church to Frank Sinatra and Mel Tormé. Count in the music of Nina Simone and "anything with a hint of mysticism," he says. Disparate literary works have made their mark, as well, including turn-of-the-century occult literature; horror, crime and superhero comics from the ’50s; and the writings of Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and Lord Byron.

Negovan’s debut release, Sidhe (1995), fused the artist’s penchant for linear orchestration with his drive to create smart, sexy and thoughtful rock songs. The result is a collection that laments lost love with a resignation that makes you feel as though you’ve stepped into a rock-and-roll-style Merchant and Ivory film.

In the years since this release Negovan has performed at The Bop Shop and other Chicago venues, on his own and with Three Years Ghost. He’s spent the last two years, in particular, refocusing what he and the band are doing: developing a richness in music that broadens the definition of rock. "We’re trying to approach our songs as soundtrack pieces instead of three-minute pop songs," Negovan says. "I like music that’s cyclical but not repetitive, music that’s epic in the way it builds."

And that soundtrack-style approach is paying off in other ways. Negovan’s been called on to score the soundtrack for Walter Did It, an upcoming David Lynch-style indie film by Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan, writers for Xena: Warrior Princess. He and band members are also completing Titan, a CD set dealing with mythological, cultural and spiritual themes.

- Jennifer Hicks