LISTEN: Derek Thomas Shares ‘Running Fast Ain’t Free’

New EP, Live at The Laguna Beach Cultural Arts Center, out Aug. 14

June 4, 2026June 4, 2026 Ron Hart 0 Comments California, Derek Thomas, Jackson Browne, Live at The Laguna Beach Cultural Arts Center, Nicaragua, Soul Water Surf, The Velvet Underground, Townes Van Zandt

Singer, songwriter and surfer Derek Thomas is back from the big waves with a great new EP due out Aug. 14.

Recorded at the Cultural Arts Center in Laguna Beach, Thomas’s upcoming live EP was a recording based on total chance. What began as a one-off performance in an intimate listening room was captured almost incidentally.

With no expectation of release, the performance unfolded freely, as musicians responded to one another in real time, the moments of performance shifting and stretching into new directions on the fly.

“The EP was never meant to be, it just happened,” says Thomas, who is also a surf guide, breathwork facilitator and founder of Soul Water Surf in Nicaragua, a holistic retreat space where music, meditation and ocean-based practices intersect. “And that’s exactly why it works.”

It was only after the gig, through the mixing of the salvaged board recordings, Thomas emerged with a nontraditional live album in the spirit of Townes Van Zandt’s Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas, and The Velvet Underground’s Live at Max’s Kansas City, capturing the atmosphere and sonic imperfections that are normally edited out of the final cut.

Rock & Roll Globe is proud to share a track from the forthcoming EP today on the site — the Jackson Browne-evoking strummer “Running Fast Ain’t Free.”

“I wrote ‘Running Fast Ain’t Free’ on a train riding down the California coastline,” he explains. “It was a cold, sad, and foggy day. Both figuratively and literally. I was returning from a trip up north spending time with someone I had recently met. We immediately deeply connected and found ourselves lost in one another. The trip turned out to be the end of the end of a brief but beautiful and intense relationship. In the end we both knew that it wasn’t sustainable. I left feeling grateful for our time together yet very aware that there was no future in it for us. It was of course a very difficult time on which I continued to ruminate on for many months.”

Live at The Laguna Beach Cultural Arts Center comes out Aug. 14 on all digital platforms. Preorder here.

Listen to “Running Fast Ain’t Free” below and visit derekthomasmusic.com for more information.