Cap Thomson (6-string banjo and vocals) has been singing and playing the banjo-guitar since 1952 with the San Francisco Folk Music Club and an earlier version of Crawdads in medical school. He co-directed the Midnight Special, a live folk music radio program on KPFA in Berkeley in 1959-60.
After psychiatric residency at the MGH in Boston (l960-64) and a year teaching psychiatry at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, he and wife Helen moved to Davis, California to start the Yolo County Community Mental Health program in l965.
He soon met three other future Putah Creek Crawdads through the Davis Unitarian Church. Cap is delighted to still be playing with the Putah Creek Crawdads after more than 50 years. Cap retired from the county after 27 years but still enjoys seeing the odd patient and belting out an old-time tune with his friends..
‘You get a line, I’ll get a pole....’
