While patrons indulge on fried catfish and waitresses hustle from table to table on a busy Friday night at Rowdy’s Family Restaurant, a young, thin man with dark hair and black-rimmed glasses sits behind a Yamaha keyboard to set about the night’s work.

His fingers work their way across the keys, playing tune after tune while some people listen and smile, tapping their toes in time, and others simply continue their meal and their conversation.

The songs being played vary widely, ranging from classical compositions to the pop music favortes of today. Some are incredibly complex and difficult, and some — like one request of the classic beginner’s song “Chopsticks” — are less so.

The young man behind the ivories is St. Aloysius senior John Tillman Thomas, 17, who has been playing piano since he was in the sixth grade. After tinkering around on his older sister’s keyboard for a couple of years, he finally convinced his mother to let him take lessons.

“I immediately loved it and felt at home,” he said. “Six years later that hasn’t changed.”

Thomas began taking lessons from Susan Gambrell, who he refers to as his “music mama,” and considers her to be like a family member now.

Gambrell, however, isn’t the only woman in his life who has helped him on his musical path. Thomas also plays alto saxophone in the school marching band, which he credits to band instructor Vickie Baker Hopkins.

“(She) taught me a lot about performing and helping me grow in confidence as a performer-artist,” Thomas said.

Thomas is heavily involved in the arts at St. Aloysius, performing in the marching band and school musicals in the spring, as well as playing or singing in the choir during Mass on Sunday. He also takes theater and choral music classes during the week.

Playing the piano is an everyday release for him, Thomas says, but that’s not to say he’s necessarily “practicing” everyday. Some days, he says, it’s just about playing.

“It makes me happy,” Thomas said. “Whenever it’s a bad day… I can always rely on sitting down at the piano to help things. It’s as if the world around me disappears.”

But that’s not to say he doesn’t practice.

“I practice sometimes hours at a time on things (when) I’m getting ready for a recital or competition,” Thomas said. “But it’s hard to consider it practice when I really do enjoy any chance to play.”

For performance and competition, he typically prefers jazz or blues influenced pieces, but he also enjoys playing contemporary music or writing his own alternative-infused pop songs.

With his senior year of high school beginning, Thomas is at a pivotal point in his life where he has the opportunity to choose which direction to head in the future. Although he loves music, he might take a different path after graduation.

“As much as I love music, I’m also very interested in filmmaking and acting,” he said. “I’m definitely set on one of the two, I can’t see myself doing anything else.”

Regardless of what he decides to make a career out of, music will assuredly always be in his life, the one place that Thomas consistently feels secure in, he said.

“I’ve always been good at some other things, but music is the one thing I feel I can be great at.”