Musical Career
Thomas formed the band Cornbread and began his career in music by performing with the band in and around Columbus, Georgia. Cornbread made a bigger name for itself during the middle to the late 1990s and extended its shows to college campuses such as Auburn University. Thomas and Cornbread released several albums, including Flags of Our Fathers, which was released under the artist's name, Keni Thomas. Cornbread was also featured in the movie "Sweet Home Alabama" starring Reese Witherspoon. In the movie, Keni and his bandmates perform the feature song, "Sweet Home Alabama", (originally recorded by Lynyrd Skynyrd in the late 1970s) for which the movie was named. Thomas donates some of the proceeds to the Hero Fund, which directs those funds to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, an organization created to provide college scholarships and financial aid to the children of deceased or wounded Special Operations soldiers.
Keni has performed the National Anthem for the New York Yankees several times, including game one of the 2009 World Series, as well as for the San Francisco Giants on Memorial Day 2010.
Thomas appeared in a 2011 episode of the FX television show Louie, portraying himself in a fictionalized version of a real U.S.O. visit to Afghanistan he took with comedian Louis C.K. in December 2008.
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Famous quotes containing the words musical and/or career:
“Then, bringing me the joy we feel when wee see a work by our favorite painter which differs from any other that we know, or if we are led before a painting of which we have until then only seen a pencil sketch, if a musical piece heard only on the piano appears before us clothed in the colors of the orchestra, my grandfather called me the [hawthorn] hedge at Tansonville, saying, “You who are so fond of hawthorns, look at this pink thorn, isn’t it lovely?””
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“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
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