For eighteen years, cult cabaret crooner, electronic songwriter and punk storyteller Tomás Ford has blazed his own trail
as an independent solo performer. His range of award-winning alternative cabaret spectacles, immersive nightclubs and
underground festival programs have built him an audience around Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Europe.
Since his start in the punk rock scene of early ‘00s Perth, he’s toured every dive bar, music festival and club he can make
his way to. Th rough the 2000s he toured in the fringes of the Australian music scene, joining huge tours with Birds Of
Tokyo, Gary Numan, Laneway Festival and becoming a staple of the Big Day Out’s anarchic sideshow Lilyworld.
In 2012, he switched gears to focus on performing at Fringe Festivals and found a home there. His intense late night
ELECTRIC CABARET was a magnet for awards for its’ non-stop intensity, exploring his anxieties around performance
over driving techno and David Lynch-inspired visuals. His suburban Australan noir thriller CHASE! has received rave
reviews around the world; its dark story unfolding over 12 epic songs and backed by twin projections that take audiences
on a journey from suburban Australia to the darkest back alleys of Singapore. His ridiculous CRAPTACULAR saw
him remake top 40 pop songs into an unpredictable carnival ride of ridiculousness. He spent 2019 in Kuala Lumpur,
writing the confessional comedic travelogue SAD DAD about his wife and the impact of her auto-immune disease.
Most recently he has created ...COME HAVE A BATH WITH ME?, an online show designed to be a cocoon away from
COVID-19, performed from the comfort of his bath to an audience who are also in their own baths. Th roughout all
of this, he’s also played his material on the live music circuit, with his pub and music festival shows drawing their own
notoriety for off -the-rails chaos.
Amidst the main thread of his career, his immersive comedy club night CRAP MUSIC RAVE PARTY has become a
massive international draw, selling out around the world and becoming an institution at the Edinburgh Fringe. It’s a simple
concept - you can request any song, as long as it’s crap. Tomás plays the worst of the worst cheesy music, using it as
a backdrop to hyperactively clown his way through trashy lipsynchs and costume changes for up to fi ve hours at a time.
He’s proudly the biggest idiot in the room at these shows, giving everyone room to let their guard down.
He’s won awards including a VIMA Award (Malaysia’s version of the Grammys) for Best Dance Release, awards from
Adelaide Fringe & Perth’s Fringe World Festival, was a nominee for the prestigious TO&ST Edinburgh Cabaret Award
and four WAMi (Western Australian Music Industry) Awards for electronic music. He semi-regularly enjoys waves of
national viral fame in Malaysia each time he releases a song in the Bahasa Malay language. He’s also had a huge number
of his videos go viral online - check out his back catalogue of music video releases on his YouTube.
Alongside this work, he has produced venues and festival programs including the fi rst three years of massive
independent Fringe World hubs Noodle Palace and Midlandia, two years as creative director of the Commedia Dell
Southbound stage at Busselton’s Southbound festival, Mandurah’s Hubbub regional fringe program and alternative comedy festival The Fxxk Yxu.
Tomás now runs livestream platform Normal Place, supporting other fringe artists to make live events. Amidst Coronavirus,
he was forced to turn to livestreaming for income and took to it like a duck to water, building a whole new audience online, with his own webcasts via Normal Place, Twitch and his Patreon. With an online audience hungry for content, he is currently rolling out his new album Come Have A Bath With Me, recording the songs from Sad Dad and producing a film of Chase! It’s a chaotic time - but, as you can tell from the fun unpredictability of his live shows, that’s how he likes to roll.