Single Mothers’ Drew Thomson on Travelodge, Greggs and touring the UK

Here’s where it lands. My name is Drew Thomson, and I am the founding member of a little band from Canada with two names: Single Mothers/SM Worldwide. One of the reasons we started going by SM Worldwide is that I was tired of explaining the name Single Mothers. I was raised by a single mother, and at the time of the band’s formation, so was everyone else. It was an homage. Being in a band, only ever having what felt like half of what you needed, I don’t know. That’s where the name came from. 

We’ve been around for longer than anyone thought possible, including me. I struggle even saying we’re a band. We’re more of a collective. We’ve had something like 40 different iterations. Almost every one of our five records has a completely different line-up of musicians on it. We’re a revolving door of artists and musicians coming and going, putting their own spin on what we’ve done and what we’re about to do. I’ve been the most consistent member, but even I’ve quit for a while and Single Mothers went on without me. I don’t know any other band that functions this way, but we make it work. We get on planes, and in vans, and we play shows and tour and put out albums. It’s chaos, honestly. 

I’m convinced every tour is actually going to fall through until the first show starts. Our bio is “Single Mothers broke up in 2009 and have been playing shows ever since.” But really, it should be “Single Mothers broke up in 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015 etc… and have been playing shows ever since.” And we have, in one form or another, and for better or worse.  

We just toured the UK in support of our first record Negative Qualities’ 10-year anniversary, and I didn’t think we were going to get there. We were supposed to do this tour last year, but I was bitten by a spider, and that spider bite got infected. I ended up in and out of the hospital for a week, so we had to cancel. Through the haze of a 104-degree fever, I emailed our agent: “I’m sorry but I can’t do these shows. A tiny little spider has tried to kill me. I will not let it, hopefully.” And I didn’t let it. I came back stronger than ever, and we re-booked the shows for April 2025, and until we got on stage in Bristol for night one, I really wasn’t sure it would work out this time either.  

I lost my voice the day before the first show. Maybe it was the flight, maybe something else. We flew overnight from Toronto. I always think I’m going to sleep on the plane, but I don’t — it’s wishful thinking. I start a movie, then stop it, start another one. Put on a flimsy sleep mask. Ignore the turbulence. Ask the flight attendant for an apple juice. Stand in the aisle stretching my legs and waiting to pee. I don’t sleep, but I pretend to, trying to trick myself into thinking I have. I thought I was smart this time, booking the tickets so we’d fly in a day early, stay at a Travelodge by the airport which would give us a day of recovery before the first show — something I haven’t done before. We usually go straight from the plane to the stage, playing the first set between cramps and sleep deprivation. I’m older now, wiser. I still lost my voice. Could have been worse.  

The band on this tour is Brandon Jagersky on drums, Luke Bentham (of The Dirty Nil) on guitar and Riley Simpson on bass. Riley has played more shows with me than anyone else in the Single Mothers universe, but he was finishing up a tour with his other band Big School just as this one started and had to fly in a day later than us. He didn’t get to enjoy the day off we were all reeling for. 

Brandon got to the airport before Luke and I and checked in his snare drum and cymbals. That’s an extra $200 CAD. These airlines will get you for everything you’ve got. I went to the front desk with Luke and pleaded with the Air Canada employee to let us gate-check Luke’s guitar for free. After a long back-and-forth and a Google of “airline regulations for working musicians”, they agreed. One employee was nice, the other wasn’t. They wanted our money, but WE also wanted our money. 

“So, what kind of music do you guys play?” the nice one asked. 

“I don’t really know,” I replied. We’ve put out five records and they all sound different. 

“Hey, you look really familiar, ya?” the nice one said, pointing towards Luke. 

“Oh yeah, he’s a rock star. He plays in The Dirty Nil!” I said. Luke laughed, took his guitar, and we proceeded to the gate, happy with our little victory. 

I love the Travelodge. They all look the same. Reliability is a small comfort in the chaos. We’ll still sleep on your floor, but if there’s no floors to be had, the Travelodge is a welcomed expense. I don’t know if this has to be said, but we are not a big band. We don’t make a ton of money, especially when we’re paying for flights and the rest of it, so the floors of friends and friends of friends have been a huge help in us being able to tour for as long as we have. 

We got off the plane, picked up Brandon’s drums and got a cab to a Travelodge near the airport. It was in a truck stop-type thing with a Greggs and a Costa. I couldn’t have been happier, seeing that Greggs sign. Since our first tour in the UK over 10 years ago, Greggs has played an integral role in my UK survival. 

Our very first UK tour was also supporting Negative Qualities. We had just finished recording it with Joby Ford of The Bronx in their studio out in LA, and a week after recording finished, we were to support them in the UK for our first time. That recording session didn’t pan out — we showed up with almost nothing written after being on tour through the US and Canada for almost the full year prior, parted ways with our then-drummer halfway through, and had to fly home to find a new drummer before the tour started. That’s when I met Brandon for the first time. He practised with us once, then got on the plane and did that whole tour, and most tours since. 

The Bronx had a tour bus and let us stay with them on it for the whole thing. It was the first time I’d been to the UK, and it was magical. You would fall asleep on the bus in one place and wake up in another. I never knew where I was, but there was always a Greggs. So, Brandon’s introduction to touring was opening for one of his favourite bands in the UK and staying on a tour bus. We haven’t been on a bus since.  

Back at the Travelodge, I took a shower and laid down for a minute. Brandon saw that Father John Misty was in town that night, and we knew someone (thanks, Carly) who could maybe get us in. We looked up the bus schedules, trying to decipher where and how we were going to get to the venue. We found a bus to the Tube to another Tube and headed out. Our leisurely day off was becoming an adventure. We made it to the show (thanks, Carly — again), and the next morning Riley showed up at the Travelodge, banging on the door. 

We’ve had a lot of ups and downs in the UK, but also a lot of pleasant middle ground. One could say it’s all downhill once your first UK tour is on a bus, but it’s not. I’ve joked about it, but only because I am self-deprecating and, deep down, perhaps, somewhat insecure (no, I’m not!), but I’ve never expected much. If it weren’t for touring, I’d probably never have been to most of the places I’ve been able to go, even if it’s just for a day, and I feel very lucky that yelling words into a microphone has been the catalyst for world-ish travel. We have slogged it out in rainy and cold UK winters multiple times, walking through Christmas markets, playing to 30 enthusiastic kids and going to Primark looking for warmer clothes. 

But this time, in April, it felt special. During Covid, I didn’t think we’d ever be back, and then after the spider thing, cancelling the last tour, we were determined to have a good time. Our driver on this run, Darren Johns, who plays in his own band called Crazy Arm, met us in the Travelodge/Costa/Greggs car park just after Riley started banging on the door. We had met through mutual friends and had been frantically chatting back and forth for the previous few months. 

We don’t have a manager, and since Covid have switched booking agents. Two nights before we left, I had a little panic attack as I had never submitted our UK visa paperwork myself. When we tour the USA, this is a big deal and it takes months, but for the UK stuff our old agency always took care of it for us. I mistakenly looked to what I’d heard is the future, ChatGPT, for answers. I asked it if I had submitted the correct documents. It said, no, I absolutely hadn’t. I asked it again. It reminded me that it is smart and I am not and that I did not submit the correct documents. I emailed Darren, I emailed our agent, and I emailed the person we were working with for the UK paperwork, but there is a time change between all of us, and this was at midnight, UK time. My heart dropped. I went for a stress run. The tour wasn’t going to happen, again, I thought. The next morning, people emailed me back and reassured me that everything was correct. I went back to the AI thing, and I told it that I was right, and it was wrong. It said, “No, I’m right.” I deleted the app, essentially killing it — I hoped.  

The first show was Bristol. It had been five or six years since the last time I had been there, and it felt different. It was hip? I was intimidated by the vintage T-shirts and haircuts surrounding me. I asked Darren if the vibe had changed here, and he said something along the lines of “Yeah, yeah, it might have, mate.” We loaded in our rented gear, did our sound check, and I went looking for a Greggs. None to be found. Something HAD changed! I was right. 

Down the street from the venue was a little music store with a little man smoking a cigarette in the doorway. Luke wanted to go in, so we asked the little smoking man if the place was open. “Kind of,” he said and, after a couple more puffs, he welcomed us in. “You’ve never seen a place like this, lads,” he went on, and he was right. For the next 40 minutes, he took us up and down narrow staircases, lighting cigarettes and pulling out vintage instruments from little crevices. “Guess the year!” he’d say, handing Luke an old guitar, then telling us the year it was made.  

To my surprise, the show was full. It may have sold out, if not close to it. My voice was still gone, almost completely. I croaked into the mic the best I could, and I’m sure I sounded bad,  but no one said anything to my face about it. I managed to say between songs, “Sorry, I’ve lost my voice!” but it mostly came out as “S…s…I……v..ce.” I think they all got the point. The crowd was great, and I felt happy. “If every show was like that, I’d do this forever,” I whispered back in the green room. But no one heard me.  

Manchester Punk Fest was next. I have a sweet spot in my heart for Manchester. I love the city, and we’ve had some fun shows there in the past. A few years ago, I did a solo tour through the UK and EU with Dave Hause, and my favourite sets were Dublin and Manchester. They just seemed to get me, so I was excited to go back. 

After driving around for a bit, we found parking in an expensive car park. The Canadian dollar was quite low at this time, and everything that went onto my credit card was basically double. I think the parking cost $40 CAD, and all those little charges add up, but it is what it is. We walked through the streets, headed towards the building in which our passes were held, and everyone seemed to know Darren. I still couldn’t talk, so he’d introduce us to someone, and I’d nod, hoping they wouldn’t assume we were Americans (sorry). We loaded our guitars and things into a little room off the stage and asked if the schedule was still what the schedule said it would be, and it was. 

The day was turning into another smooth and beautiful ride. Darren went off to meet some friends, and we hunkered down in the band area munching on carrot sticks and hummus and cans of water. 

I used to drink a lot. I don’t even remember some of the tours we’ve done, and the old me would have been arguing with someone over drink tickets at this point and heading to the off-licence for cans of Strongbow and ale, but I’m almost nine years sober now and have learned the importance of hydration and hummus.

When I was young, my mum and I lived with my grandparents. My mum was still in uni when she had me, and I spent a lot of time with my grandma. We were very close. In 2015, literally minutes before we were supposed to play Reading and Leeds (I forget which one), my girlfriend called me when I was drunk in the van. She told me that my grandmother had just died. I hung up the phone, cried for a minute, and looked at the time. There wasn’t time to process anything. It would have to wait. I headed towards the stage. 

Not long after that show, I stopped drinking and started turning my life around. Staying on the path I was headed wasn’t sustainable. The band would have imploded in a way that it wouldn’t have been possible to piece it back together. You can’t be everywhere at once. I was sad I wasn’t with my family when she passed, and at the same time it was a dream of mine to play Reading and Leeds. And that’s what touring is. It’s missing one thing to do another. Just like everything else. 

As the clock kept ticking towards our set time, I tried messaging Darren about getting back into his van because I needed my show clothes. I sweat a lot, and instead of ruining everything I pack, I try to just ruin one outfit, which I play in almost every night. It sounds gross, and after a while it is gross, but I’ve already told you how much it costs to check baggage in. Either my phone wasn’t sending the messages or Darren’s wasn’t receiving them, but there was a lag, a silence eating up the minutes. 

I am also embarrassingly superstitious. I have a little pre-show routine I need to do. I must change my socks, for instance. I can’t have anything in my pockets. Sometimes, if I think a set is going badly, I’ll start rummaging around, looking for bits of Kleenex or guitar picks that hid themselves from me on my initial pocket inspection, and if I find something in there, I’ll expel them from my presence, out towards Brandon’s drums or behind the guitar amplifiers, and magically feel better. I don’t like that I do this, but I do. 

I needed to change my socks, and my socks were in the van, and Darren had the keys and, also, I forgot where the van was. Fifteen minutes before our set started, Darren texted back that he’d be there in a minute. I met him outside of wherever I was, and we sprinted towards the van, each thinking we were following the other in a confident stride. It wasn’t the right way. Darren started asking people on the street where the car park was, and we turned around and sprinted the other way. I needed my socks.  

Because I found my socks, I assume the set went well. The show was packed. We were two for two. People sang along, and my voice wasn’t quite as bad as it had been the night before. Things were looking up.

Ihad made plans for us to stay with my friend Louie in Glasgow, but a few days before, he told me that work had called him in, and he probably wouldn’t be there to let us in. Naively, I said it wouldn’t be a problem and we would get a Travelodge and hopefully I’d see him another time. Well, Glasgow on a Saturday… I wasn’t thinking. I looked up hotel options and there weren’t any we could afford. He said if we could get from Manchester to Glasgow before 1pm, he’d still be there to give us a key, so we departed early from the Manchester Airbnb I had rented and headed north with Darren at the wheel. 

We made it in time and got the keys from Louie, who introduced us to his six-foot-four Irish roommate. We went for lunch with the roommate, then to the museum, before we had to load in at The Hug and Pint, a tiny pub with a stage in the basement that could hold around 100 people. 

This was our first show with the band Other Half, who would go on to do the rest with us, and they were amazing. Not just nice people, but their music was right up my alley sonically. Again, to my surprise, people were there, and it was packed. Everyone seemed to know every word, and although it was a small show, it really felt special. Sometimes it can take an ocean of distance to really appreciate and perhaps validate yourself for what you do. It shouldn’t take this much, but I remember thinking, ‘I’m in Glasgow, with my friends, and all these people came here to see a little band from London, Ontario, Canada,’ a band I didn’t think would exist outside our little city and sometimes didn’t even think should exist at all. 

It turned out the bartender was Canadian and from a town not far from where we live. We chatted a bit, loaded out, then went looking for ‘pizza crunch’ — a Scottish delicacy? After a few places didn’t have it, we finally found some. A guy took out a frozen pizza and said, “Pizza crunch, yeah?” and then some other words I couldn’t understand. He deep-fried it and gave it to us — a steaming little box of deep-fried goo. We got in the van and let the smell of success surround us.  

Louie got home from work around 4am, but I had his keys. We hadn’t thought about that. I was in a deep dream but kept hearing a buzz entering it. Buzz, buzz, buzz. I woke up. Buzz, buzz, buzz. It wasn’t my dream. ‘What makes a buzz?’ I thought. ‘Where am I? Whose floor is this? I’m in an apartment, apartments have buzzers.’ I checked my phone — Louie was stuck outside.  

We played London at New Cross Inn, and it was the second-last show of the tour. Something was in the air that night. The room was full of people singing along, yelling, jumping from the stage and into each other. It reminded me that life, art, and love is a marathon. Sometimes the music industry can feel like a constant sprint, trying to catch up with the trends and ever-changing landscape of social media and streaming numbers. We’re not a band built for that. We are in it for the long haul, the pace of something that has to stop and fall apart, then come back to the starting line as something new. I feel lucky to be able to do what I do, go where we go. It’s not always easy, but not much is.  

Because Riley flew in separately from us, I had assumed he had booked his own flight home. He didn’t, and neither had I. A few days before we were set to leave, we realised that he might be stuck in the UK. In the living room of Darren’s friends, who we stayed with the previous night, we searched for a way to get him back to Toronto. Flights were thousands of dollars out of Heathrow by then. Just as we were about to press the ‘buy’ button on Expedia, I said, “Let’s look at Gatwick,” and luckily, we found a cheaper flight. Now we just had to get Brandon, Luke and I to Heathrow for 10am, and Riley to Gatwick for 11am. Darren loaded us all into his van and made sure we got to where we needed to go. 

At the airport, I found the Air Canada desk and again pleaded with them to let us gate-check our instruments, including the drums. After 20 minutes of back-and-forth, they agreed, and we saved the $200 CAD that it cost us before. We walked to the gate, instruments in hand, happy with our little victory. I finally took a breath, realising that the tour didn’t fall through.