In 2017, my cover band Maggie Speaks started a new program called Celebrity Sit-In. It has been an incredible addition for corporate events, charity galas and fundraisers, high-end weddings, and music festivals.
Celebrity singers from world-famous bands join Maggie Speaks on stage to perform their top four to six hits. I have been fortunate enough to do this over 30 times in the past few years and each time, I seem to learn something different from each of our guests. Here is what I learned from Mickey Thomas of Starship:
Mickey Thomas got his first big break in 1974 when he joined the Elvin Bishop Group as a background vocalist. Within a year, he had stepped out front to lead the band, and in 1975, recorded “Fooled Around and Fell In Love” which reached number three on the charts. This hit cemented Mickey as a voice to be reckoned with in rock and roll. In 1979, Mickey joined Jefferson Starship and recorded some of rock’s biggest anthems, including “Jane” and “Find Your Way Back”.
In the eighties, the members of Jefferson Starship had some internal legal disputes: the band splintered when original member Paul Kantner sued over rights to the name. A settlement was reached and Mickey and Grace Slick wound up moving forward as Starship. In the mid-eighties, behind Mickey’s soaring tenor, Starship ran off a string of three number one hits with “Sara”, “We Built This City”, and “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” from the movie Mannequin.
Today, Mickey continues touring with Starship, covering the full gamut of material from their beginnings as Jefferson Airplane through the Jefferson Starship days and the MTV generation Starship era. At age 70, Mickey still has the distinguished tenor voice and still performs all of his songs in the original keys.
Maggie Speaks performed with Mickey and a bill of four other celebrities in January of 2018 in Scottsdale, AZ at a corporate event for a tech industry conference. It always amazed me that Mickey could sing so high, so consistently night after night. As a vocalist for Maggie Speaks, I had to know his secret.
After walking off stage singing background for him on “Fooled Around and Fell In Love”, I finally felt confident enough to approach him and ask, “Mickey, night after night, how do you sing so high, so consistently for so many years with virtually no drop-off?”. He took the time to give a very thoughtful and helpful answer:
“I always try and stay within myself and trust my muscle memory. I never sing too loud and I never sing too hard, so in essence, I just take really good care of my instrument. Many singers strain so that they can hear themselves better to try and verify that they are in tune. I have been doing this long enough that I just trust that what is coming out of my throat is consistent with the last night. Why would it be any different?”
I found this advice extremely helpful and have tried my best to adopt it for my performances. Now, Maggie Speaks has performed with Mickey three times and we can’t wait to grace the stage with Mickey again, he is a true gentleman and an even more gifted performer.
