Dylan John Thomas

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Forty million streams and 60,000 tickets can’t be wrong. The numbers don’t lie, and nor do the tunes – impassioned songs of love and regret, faith and fatalism, rejection and connection, realism and idealism. 

After selling out six nights at the Barrowlands, Dylan John Thomas is Scotland’s worst kept musical secret. From pavement to arena, the DIY artist who did it all for himself, all the way to a sell-out homecoming show at Glasgow’s 14,300-capacity Ovo Hydro. A self-taught, multi-instrumentalist, mainlining the old-time rhythm of Johnny Cash (“boom-chicka-boom…”), the high-picking melodies of Simon & Garfunkel, the lyrical poeticism of Leonard Cohen – but all retooled with a twentysomething’s freshness, rigour and vigour, and the ardent fandom to match. Boom-chicka-BOOM. 

His second album, Nothing Here Worth Taking, was recorded at Magic Box studios over the past year with Scotty Anderson (The Snuts). Entirely written by Dylan, with most of the instruments self-played too, the 10-track set is a rousing, carousing blast of brass, blues, banjo, piano and classic, retro-futureproof, singalong songwriting. 

That spirit is there in vivid form on lead single ‘Got You on My Mind’. The first song completed for the album, it’s a banjo-and brass-driven anthem. “I got into banjo two years ago, just after the first album came out,” Dylan explains. “We went on a wee trip round Scotland, and I took it with us. We were just kicking around, playing all the old folk songs. And by the time it came to recording this album, I'd written a couple of songs on it.” 

“It gives a different type of sound to the guitar. It’s still sticking within that bluegrass feel, I suppose, with the rolling fingerpicking. But I wanted to see if we could fit it into the new tunes.” 

The thrilling blast of brass is also there in the title track, a song of encouragement and support for a mate whose relationship was breaking down. That brass sound, he explains, calls back to the ska he loved as a kid. ‘Nothing Here Worth Taking’ and ‘Got You on My Mind’ represent the overall palette of the album: “It's an amalgamation of all different kind of influences pulled together to create the sound. Which seems to kick off live all around the country.”  

That music was first showcased in 2024’s self-titled debut album. Rousing and impassioned, it’s a record that distilled everything Dylan had learned growing up as a kid in foster care and finding his way. Mentored by Gerry Cinnamon and hand-picked for arena-scale supports slots by Liam Gallagher, Sam Fender and Stereophonics, his is a story of letting his music do the talking, the fans do the shouting and the music industry playing catch-up.

That word-of-mouth enthusiasm was built by Dylan and the band-of-brother mates who play with him over years of grassroots gigging. Like Cinnamon, the Scottish “unknown” who sold out the country’s national football stadium Hampden (twice), behind a microphone is where Dylan is at his most eloquent. 

“Aye, it's been a bit mad,” he acknowledges with a wry grin of his fans know-all-the-words fervour. “To headline at arena level off the back of first album was mental.” Dylan’s introduction to music was unconventional. 

“In the foster house, we were always on the PlayStation. Tony Hawk skateboarding was the game we had at the time. I say that we used to play it: it was just a bunch of boys elbowing each other out of the way – everybody trying to grab the controller!” he remembers, smiling. 

If the controller was out of reach, the rest would just listen to the soundtrack. “Ring of Fire would come on every five minutes, and we'd all be jumping around the room singing it. Through that, I ended up asking for a guitar that Christmas, and Ring of Fire was the first song that I learned. Listening to Johnny Cash then naturally evolved into listening to different artists from the ’60s.”  

Not for young Dylan the era’s heavy rock or mod outfits. As well as Cash, he was drawn to the songcraft of The Beatles, Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen. “I just got in about that type of music. And those influences shaped the tunes that subsequently became part of our shows and part of these albums.” 

But before that, that music saved teenage Dylan. As he puts it: “There was a cathartic element of playing music. It was probably the only thing that got me through that childhood, being able to pick up a guitar no matter what day you were facing.” That, in turn, shaped him for the challenges of being a young, grafting, unknown artist.  

It begs the question: is one of the reasons listeners connect so passionately with Dylan’s music the fact that they understand the real-life emotion that's in his lyrics? Whether or not they have direct experience of the challenging background he experienced, they have experience of the sentiments.  

Dylan won’t underestimate the positive influences he himself channelled. “Well, I have had messages from folk who had been in foster care or had mad upbringings,” he begins, “saying that they had a similar experience and have been listening to the tunes and going to the shows. It’s warming to hear folk connect with it. Because I know how lonely it felt growing up in there.” 

“I was still a wee guy in foster care when I was sneaking into Gerry’s shows in Glasgow – he used to have a jam night back in the day. He took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. It wasn't just music. It was life lessons as well – becoming a man and trying to figure the world out. To have someone like that, who genuinely cared. Because when you're that age, you don't know much. You don't know what path you're going to go down.” 

Those life-lessons were invaluable for Dylan, and help explain why his own music has encouragement and positivity baked in. But in practical terms, “his music and what he was doing with it was obviously a massive thing. Gerry ended up taking me on tour, from King Tut’s all the way to his arena shows. During that touring, I learned so much from him. And to see the way that he blew up first-hand was a bit mad!” he admits. “That whole time was mental. So in terms of a mentor, I couldn't have asked for anybody better than Gerry.” 

Having learned from the best, when it came to his second album, Dylan wasn’t about to rush anything. 

“I let the album grow naturally. The pressure to try to do a full album in a month or so, I wasn't really into that. I didn't want too much of a time constraint on it. I just let the tunes come to me and recorded it as I went along.” 

That sense of time taken, and space explored, and the studio used as a playground, is there in ‘Call It a Day’, where whistles, harmonies, keys and percussion swirl and swoop around hooky banjo and guitar lines. And it’s there in ‘Come and Get It’, where Anderson’s atmospheric production ushers in a track with an irresistible dancefloor beat. 

“With the first record, we played it all live before we even recorded it. So we already knew what we thought it should sound like. Whereas with this record, it’s the first time I went into the studio to record something before people had ever heard it. That's the main factor that’s different from the first record to the second record.” 

“So, with Come and Get It, that’s drawing on the dance music we were all into growing up as well. You’re pulling inspiration from dance tracks and the way that they can kick off – but keeping it within the same sonic thread where you've still got your guitars and the right rhythm section.” 

Dylan adds further colours to that palette on ‘The Bridge’, a gorgeous piano ballad with one of his loveliest vocals. “I got into piano when I was younger,” he says. “It's decent for writing because the notes are like a spectrum from left to right, low to high. There was a lot of the album written on it and then changed to either banjo or guitar for recording. The Bridge was one of the songs where it felt right to keep the piano rather than changing over to guitar.” 

On the crackling and sparkling songs of ‘Nothing Here Worth Taking’, his single-minded dedication and devotion to improving his craft have paid off. 

Now, after his longest break from performing, Dylan John Thomas and his band of mates are raring to go and get back on the road. There’s another homecoming triumph already on the horizon, a high-on-the-bill appearance at June’s TRNSMT festival in Glasgow. 

“Just getting back into playing shows will be class. We all grew up playing live music. For us, that's what it’s all about.”