Leon Thomas has, oddly enough, played a concert in an airplane hangar before. It was a promotional gig a while back, with the burgeoning R&B star setting up alongside a fleet of fancy cars and a rented jet. For this second hangar show, though, Thomas and his band actually got on the plane. A fully functional Boeing 767-400, where they played a six-song set for a lucky group of fans seated with their tray tables up, hands in the air, and setbacks in their full upright position.
“It was a surreal experience,” Thomas tells Rolling Stone of the gig, which was captured for the inaugural episode of “Overhead Originals,” a new music series from Delta and YouTube premiering today. “Arriving to the hangar and seeing all the musical equipment being loaded into this actual plane was insane. Doing a 30-minute performance, with a live audience — it was definitely surreal.”
Thomas, an established singer-songwriter who broke through as a solo artist with his hit 2024 record, Mutt, has shown a knack for crafting memorable live performances in any setting. The recent Grammy-winner put the same care into plotting his plane gig. He curated a setlist that featured a trio of Mutt favorites — the title-track, “Vibes Don’t Lie,” and “Yes It Is” — his 2023 cut “Treasure In These Hills,” and two tracks from his latest EP, Pholks, “My Muse” and “Just How You Are.”
While turning a jet cabin into a stage makes for a unique setting in and of itself, Thomas credits his creative team for enhancing the atmosphere and “making sure we brought my world onto this plane.” Of the overall experience, he adds, “Certain times in your life, you can dream up certain things, and this one I didn’t necessarily have on my bingo card for 2026. It was a great opportunity to perform in a space that was unorthodox and really cool. I think creative ideas like this help celebrate artists.”
Thomas is doing a lot of traveling himself right now: He wraps a European and U.K. tour tonight (April 3), and later this month, he’ll join Bruno Mars on his North American stadium tour. Touring is a grind, of course, so while Thomas doesn’t always get the chance to deeply explore the cities he plays, he always finds time to visit a good restaurant and walk around to “feel a bit of the culture.”
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“Now I have a good bucket list of places I want to come and return to, simply because I got to travel here through music,” he says.
Even when on the road, Thomas stays busy with songwriting and producing, setting up a mobile recording studio in his hotel rooms. He hasn’t shared any firm details on a Mutt follow-up yet, and while there are unspecified deadlines, right now he’s just “following the music.” Thomas says he’s already got about 30 songs written, but wants to get that number up to between 60 and 100 before he really starts putting a proper project together.
“I’ve got a long laundry list of songs I gotta finish,” he says. “Some of them have been easy to finish while I’m on the road, but I’m doing my best to stay creative because I know this is such a momentous time in my life and it needs to be documented not just through visuals, but also through music.”
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Thomas is getting some help from new collaborators, too. After the Grammys in February — where he won Best R&B Album and Best Traditional R&B Performance — Thomas says he was approached by some his biggest musical heroes. He refrains from offering names, but acknowledges a recent photo of him and Pharrell working in the studio in Paris.
“I was doing my best not to geek out the whole time,” Thomas says with a laugh. “And also it’s important to be a real creative and be like, ‘Hey man, let’s try this idea. Let’s do that.’ You can’t be a ‘yes man’ in the studio with Pharrell You got to be real, you know? It was nice creating with him, and he’s just like me, man — he’s a fellow alien in the recording studio. He spoke my language.”
