2010-Caio Thomas

maplerivermemories
Jul 8, 2024
5 min read

"It's a Good Day to Be an Adult and an Eagle."

Note: It was a beautiful day on the Blue Earth River paddling with my NHS students. While there would be plenty of team-building and planning later, one canoe hosted an hour-long discussion of favorite guitar players. In my years of canoeing, it was a memorable conversation with a unique young man. He’s still unique and still shredding.

A well-rounded education tries to create an enriched individual, yet it is also a process to find strengths and interests for young adults. For Caio Thomas, his future flashed before his eyes when the Maple River Jazz Band hushed to allow the fledgling guitar player an opportunity to soar with one of Rock and Roll’s classic guitar solos found in Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” Given the weight of the situation with an audience of judgmental peers, Thomas rose to the challenge. “That was like a pretty big moment I remember from school,” Thomas reflected, “because everybody loved it.” With stage fright conquered, Thomas nurtured his skill by volunteering weekly as a musician at Hosanna Lutheran Church in Mankato. “They had a confirmation service every Wednesday for 7th and 8th graders but you know there was a youth band of high school kids that would play for that service, and I played guitar in that too.”

Despite his initial foray into music, Caio Thomas was already an established commodity as an academic. During high school, he participated in drama, speech, and NHS. This self-described nerd attended Gustavus Adolphus College after graduating Maple River, where he pursued degrees in Computer Science and Japanese. Prior to his senior year, Thomas had an opportunity to live in Japan for several months and the experience changed his life. “It was really amazing. I was living with the Japanese family the whole time and they didn't really speak English.” Along with full language-immersion, Thomas also came away impressed by the culture of Japan. “It's a really great country. It's really clean and beautiful, and everybody takes care of things. You never see litter or anything over there. It's weird too because they don't have trash cans around outside since people will actually carry their trash with them until they get home. Plus, the food is amazing and there's just no shortage of places to travel and visit.” During his time in Japan, he had to make a life-changing decision between teaching English as a second language to Japanese students or to use his computer degree. He chose to be a software engineer. “I decided to go down that path instead because I didn't feel like I would be able to continue with music much in Japan.”

So our mild-mannered Clark Kent became a software engineer, where he currently works for a private company called Royal Credit Union, which is based out of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Not only does this allow Thomas to work from home in the Twin Cities, but it also allows his inner Superman to emerge on weekends to rock the faces off of concert-goers.

While too many music enthusiasts end up like “The Summer of 69” (Tommy quitting and Jody getting married), Caio returned from his trip to Japan and maintained his focus on his guitar.

After graduating from Gustavus Adolphus College, Thomas moved to the Twin Cities and immediately began networking with other musicians. Not even six months later, he met Chad Helmonds, the drummer of his current band, The Failsafe. “(Helmonds) put out an ad on Craigslist saying we need a guitar player for this band called The X Project, and that was the first band I joined when I moved up here. That band kind of fizzled out and then Chad joined another band called The Phoenix Philosophy and the lead singer of The Phoenix Philosophy was a guy named Jesse, and he’s now the lead singer of The Failsafe.”

Since forming in 2019, the band has been steadily improving and reaching newer and broader audiences. Initially, the band tried to do everything themselves, relying on Hellman’s experience as an audio engineer. Just when the band was gaining traction with their debut album Erasing Color, Covid shelved everything and touring came to an abrupt halt. Instead of letting it defeat the fledgling band, they used it as an opportunity to regroup. “We basically figured we just need to focus on our social media and you know work on writing new music and stuff. Basically, we just put out singles throughout the next three years or so until we had enough for an EP so there's six songs on that which we just put out.

Toxic Hearts also allowed others into the creative process of recording music. A key moment came when the band traveled to Nashville last September to work with Andrew Baylis, who has done a lot of work for artists including best-selling artist Jelly Roll. “He really helped take our sound to the next level and our most recent song that we put out just a couple weeks ago is called “Dying to Exist.”

As a software engineer, Thomas is able to bring work on the road with him. “Luckily, I can work from the car.” With the momentum for fresh new songs, the Failsafe has plans to go beyond the Midwest on their next tour. Having already experienced touring, Thomas has learned that the rockstar life isn’t as glamorous as people expect. “Just because you're a musician it doesn't mean that you're automatically going to have people come to the show. People have this kind of image in their head of rock stars just kind of like partying all the time and you know they just play their music and they play shows and then everybody else takes care of everything else. Nowadays, it's a lot more focused on the business stuff: making sure you're promoting yourself well and selling our t-shirts and merch. “We don't actually get a lot from the music itself.”

While still chasing after the thrill of a Jimmy Page guitar solo, Thomas has turned over an unexpected new leaf: Pickleball. “I'm a lot more into sports now. Actually, I'm a pretty avid pickleball player.” After picking up badminton during his time in college and Japan, Thomas found that the hot new sport of pickleball came close enough to badminton. “I was looking around for places to play but nobody's playing around here. But pickleball…they're both racket sports.”

When thinking back to 2010 Caio, he realized he didn’t really have a plan. “I kind of liked just going to school. I remember when I first graduated college and was done with college I was like ‘Man, I kind of miss being in school.’ So while a career and passion both aligned, he has advice for recent graduates: “Try to think further down the line than I did back then. Instead of just thinking like ‘next year I'm going to college’ think ‘what am I going to do after college.’ What's your work goal five years from now? Think of what you're doing in your life and how are you going to get to that point.”

For Thomas, his 5-10 year goal is to continue to grow THE FAILSAFE yet even if he has to play with cover bands as an old man, music will always have a place in his life.