Thom LaFond's Solo Debut Album Is Inspired by Fires and the Moon

Singer-songwriter Thom LaFond saw fires burning in every direction around his Nederland home in the summer of 2020. The sinister red hue is visible in a home video shot for his take on the Gold Brother song “Part of Me.” The lighting that day was striking, but LaFond hopes it was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of scene, considering it was courtesy of the massive fires.

“The lighting of it is dark but all black and pink,” he says. “The sun was just going down, and the fires were in every direction, diffusing the light.”

The video is one of about a hundred that LaFond recorded while sitting outside at dusk; not all of the footage was made during the emergency, and not all have been released. But the take he used is what stood out to him: It was a scary time to live in a mountain town in Colorado. LaFond says he and his friends spent time listening to the police scanner on at least one occasion, and they lived with the nagging fear that they would have to pack up their belongings and flee the area.

“That summer was catastrophic for so many people,” LaFond recalls. “There were firefighters working every moment keeping everyone safe. I was really lucky that even the closest fire was seven miles away. There was the feeling of the wind picking up and the idea that Mother Nature has this area in its grip.”



LaFond grew up in upstate New York, where he went to music school and found that his peers were obsessed with jazz and bebop. Location plays a huge role for him creatively.

“I kind of set my sights on finding my own niche and thinking that was cool,” he says. “Then I moved to Colorado, and now I’m finding myself playing with banjo players and fiddle players and mandolinists and things like that. Every part of my arrangements and the songs I write are a result of my environment.”

LaFond, who tours with agypsy jazz/instrumental/folk pop/swing band Banshee Tree, has now released his solo debut, The Moon Leans In, which is inspired by the nature surrounding him.

The songs, LaFond says, are “genre fluid.” It’s a novel label, but apt for a musician who considers his sound to include shades of Billie Holiday, Mac Miller and Andrew Bird, an indie-pop songwriter also known for his work with swing/jazz/ragtime/klezmer outfit Squirrel Nut Zippers. The ten tracks on the album also evoke a ’70s-era Harry Nilsson.

“I don’t really feel like I make one genre of music,” LaFond says. “When I’m recording and I’m getting musicians together, I try to keep genre out of it until the song is finished.”

The tracks are unified by a recurring theme of the moon as a representation of forces that are beyond our control, LaFond says.

“In some songs it’s mentioned more than others,” he says. “‘The Moon Leans In’ is kind of entirely about the moon. The chorus is just [about] when you are alone at night in nature and you look up. Maybe if you are playing a song, [the moon] seems like it’s closer, like it’s listening.”

LaFond says the tracks were drawn from about 36 songs he had already written, and he cycled two bands, including an acoustic swing group and an electric band, through the recording studio over just ten days.

“Working in our limitations and working with the players I really wanted to record, I had to rein it in a little,” he says of the recording process. “I had four-part string arrangements for songs, and then I just ended up having a violin soloist just play live. I settled on having one violin line instead of four.”

The Moon Leans In is now available on all streaming platforms. For more information, visit thomlafond.com.