After a hello, Evan Thomas sighed at the exchange of pleasantries. He sounded a little sad. Then he unloaded a bit. A friend of his is struggling, he said.
“I’m OK,” he told BandWagon in a phone interview. “I’m just rolling with the punches of life. I’m sorry to get so deep on you.”
If it’s a little unusual to, as Thomas put it, get so deep on someone he just met, someone who is writing a story on him, well, that’s just who he is. And that is also the point of this story. It’s not his music as such, although that plays a big role in how it all comes together, it’s the Discord group he started.
Thomas divides his time between Fort Collins, where he’s essentially from, and Miami, where he’s building a following as the artist TX2. He began the server/group-chat on the distribution and messaging platform Discord for his fans after struggling with his own mental health.
“There was a point where I was trying to end my whole life,” he said. “I felt worthless. And I had friends help me out. Once people feel like they’re alone, they need someone to talk to. I feel like that helps save lives. I’ve had people tell me that now.”
The Discord group (which he calls The X Movement) is for those struggling, as he once did, as well as his friends. He doesn’t allow any negativity. It has over 1,000 members, and he’s proud of it. It’s a place where participants can admit, flat out, that they’ve had suicidal thoughts, though it’s not only for that.
“I just want to help people out,” Thomas said. “People are getting the message.”
As TX2, Thomas, who is just 22, writes about his struggles and those dark thoughts in his music as well. He wrote “Pull The Plug,” a recent release with transparently gory video, about another really low place in his life. Writing about it, he said, helped him. The song did well on TikTok and YouTube and regardless of its controversial content, seemed to connect with others.
“My music is my source of therapy,” he said. “I enjoy putting all my emotions into words.”
TX2 plays pop punk rock with elements of rap and a smidge of metal, the kind of formula used by Linkin Park during their heyday, though Thomas himself would likely throw the adjective “emo” into the description. Indeed, it’s exactly the kind of music that cries out for angry and sad self-reflection.
He writes and performs all of TX2’s music on his own and has a band perform with him live. He’s had success in Miami, he said, attending school there and even pioneering an educational hip hop program. But he performed with said band to a packed house at the Aggie theater in Fort Collins last month and filmed a new music video while in the state, with plans to return for a show in the summer.
“I will always be a part of the Colorado music scene one way or another,” he said.
Thomas has been in therapy before, he said, but he now uses his music and the Discord group as an outlet, and he likes that others use it as well. It’s becoming as much a part of the music as the music is part of him.
“I always take a break in my set to talk about it,” Thomas said.
And this statement brought him back to the interview. As it was winding down, he had a question: “Hey, so how are you?”
