Thom Chacon draws attention to boxing with music

Singer/songwriter Thom Chacon has boxing in his blood. The young Californian’s cousin is the legendary fighter Bobby Chacon who Warren Zevon celebrated in song and who Bob Dylan sings about when he covers that song in concert. Chacon’s Featherweight Fighter, recorded with Dylan’s bassist Tony Garnier and drummer George Receli, is 11 songs of hope and redemption, glory and dogged persistence.

“Featherweight fighter, featherweight fighter
Speed and guts is all he’s got/
Five foot five a buck twenty seven/
And he makes his livin’ in the ring with sweat and blood.”

Chacon has traversed the world playing his songs, eschewing modern trappings for the more organic mode of harmonica, the strum of his acoustic, his laid-back delivery and his poetry. He’s toured all over the world to the kind of powerful reception that even he himself is astounded by. In California, he opened for singer/songwriter Jason Mraz. In India, opening for superstar Lucky Ali, the reception was as strong as it was in Thailand, and as strong as it was within the confines of Folsom Prison where he also performed. “That 2004 Folsom Prison gig was a life-changing experience,” he remembers. “I left the prison that day knowing I would make a change in my life.”


Everywhere Chacon goes, in fact, people seem to react to his melodies, his voice and his words. His music, as heard on the impressive Featherweight Fighter album (Pie Records) espouses universal sentiment, and is delivered in an honest open way. There’s no pretense in his groove. What you hear is what you get with Thom Chacon. There’s an inviting inventive melodicism at work, predicated upon lyrical wisdom and an everyman aesthetic. It’s likeable. As is the artist himself.

The story of Thom Chacon itself could be a cautionary tale but isn’t. He moved to Durango, Colorado to write songs and perfect the zen of fly-fishing, where he remains to this day. He now says it was the best decision he ever made. (When he lived in California, he was a horseman who took folks on gallops!)

Thom Chacon, through his music, would like to bring some attention back to a once-glorious sport. “Boxing is a great metaphor for life,” he says. He admits he hasn’t been as close to his retired boxer cousin as he’d like. But he wants the great Bobby Chacon to hear his song. “He helps train kids through a church,” Thom says. “He was a great fighter because he fought great fighters. That’s what made him great. He literally went from rags to riches to rags again collecting cans in the street. It would be nice to get his name out there again, especially if it helped him in any way.”

“And the lines from troublesome times/
Cover this face, from years of disgrace/
Now I can’t be used, I’ve got nothing to lose/
I’m losing again, I’m losing again/
And I’ve never known when to admit it’s the end.”

Thom Chacon’s words cut like a right hook. He seems to get right to the meat of the matter. In “Losing Again,” he sings his words in the kind of voice reserved for late-night last-call bar-rooms, with the stink of cigarette smoke still in the air.

“I’m so tired, arms hang down at my side/
As my body resigns/
The bell sounds, can’t take much more, wanna hide/
but I won’t be denied.”

Thom Chacon is back out on the road again, singing songs from Featherweight Fighter and debuting as-yet-unrecorded new songs. He has a world of ideas in him.