“… a sneeze of an imagination.” Interview w/ The Tom Fun Orchestra

in Interviews by Natasha — February 6, 2010 at 12:21 pm | 2 comments

“… a sneeze of an imagination.”
Interview w/ The Tom Fun Orchestra

by Natasha Smith

The Tom Fun Orchestra is an 8-piece “cluster-rock” band from Cape Breton. Vocalist Pizza Garcia AKA Ian MacDougall has a voice comparable to Tom Waits, except it sounds as though he was born on a fishing boat, raised by sailors, and acquired a love for booze and cigarettes at a very young age. It is very deep, very husky, and it may take a while for it to grow on you. But once it does (and it will), it has a funny way of thrusting your fists into the air and putting a stupid grin on your face.

The music, which spawns the need to stomp your feet and shoot dark rum, gets its whale-of-a sound from the use of a violin, accordion, trumpet, banjo, drums, bass, and two guitars. Before their show at The Rockhouse on Saturday night in St. John’s, Ian and I chatted in the freezing cold attic on a surprisingly comfy couch.

BBtBB: Where did the name Tom Fun Orchestra come from?

IMD: Where did the name Tom Fun Orchestra come from? I tell lots of stories but none of them are true.  The one I’ve been going with lately is that I won it from Irving Layton in a gambling match on a river boat in Mississippi, on a Mississippi river boat in a game of poker. Irving Layton lost and I won. So I got the name Tom Fun. There were so many of us playing in the band that it might as well have been an orchestra. That’s where.

BBtBB: So it’s not the real story?

IMD: There is no real story. I don’t know where it came from. It was like a sneeze of an imagination.

BBtBB: Speaking of weird names: Johnny Turbo, Robot Orbison, Shampoon – you go by a lot of different names. What’s the story behind them?

IMD: I just get christened with a different name every now and then. The sky rains feathers and I have a new name.

BBtBB: Who are you today?

IMD: Pizza Garcia.

BBtBB: So, Pizza, how long has the band been together and making music?

IMD: About five years, it will be five years this February. There have been lots of different shapes and sizes of the band. It started as kind of a whim, it wasn’t anything that we planned on doing more than once. We wanted to make a spectacle one time, so we did. But then we kept doing it and kept inviting different friends to play. Sometimes some of those friends would stay with us for a long time and other times they’d leave. All just for their own reasons, all totally amicable. There’s a pretty good network of musicians in Sydney, so sometimes new folks join the bands when other folks can’t do it and then they go away and somebody else replaces them.

BBtBB: There’s 9 people in the band. That must be interesting while touring.

IMD: It’s cozy. We have a 15 passenger van that is covered in Nascar stickers. We got it from a Nascar tour company who used to take people on tours of the Nascar circuit and we figured we’re the next best thing to Nascar. It just seemed appropriate to take on this van. We fit in there comfortably.

BBtBB: I was picturing a mini-van and trying to cram 9 people in there.

IMD: One time, before we bought this van, we used to rent vans. We would usually tour with 2 mini-vans, but one time we rented a 15 passenger. Then, for one reason or another, we somehow ruined the 15 passenger and we had to drop it off at an airport in Moncton. They didn’t have any other 15 passenger [vans] so they gave us the smallest mini-van on the market. There were 9 of us in the band, but then there were friends or girlfriends or merch people in the van too!  So we had about 12 people and all of our gear and a stand up bass through the middle. We all piled into a 7 person mini-van and drove around New Brunswick. So it is possible. Anything is possible.

BBtBB: You Will Land With A Thud was recorded in Conneticut at Carriage House Recording Studio and released in February 2008. It has been two years now since the release. Is there another one in the works?

IMD: Two whole years. Yeah, that’s what we are doing this winter. Since the album came out we’ve been touring regularly and we haven’t had much time to work on a new album because our band is touring and there are lots of people in our band involved in other bands. So everyone has been kind of busy but this winter we’ve taken several months from touring and we’re just going to be working on [the album] at home in Cape Breton.

BBtBB: Any pending release date?

IMD: No pending release date – within the year.

BBtBB: When I hear your music, I hear Celtic Punk. Is that how you would describe your sound or do you have another word for it?

IMD: Cluster-rock. Counter-spectacle. Counter-spectacle I think is the best one. [It's] the most appropriate word for it. We don’t really aim for any particular sound, we just come up with a song and we write it based on whatever mood we are in.

BBtBB: The band has been compared to Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene. Do you take these as compliments or do you not really think about it much?

IMD: I don’t think about it too much but sure it’s a compliment, even if I don’t think we sound anything like a particular band. Our trumpet players’ line is, “It’s much better to be compared to good bands as opposed to shitty bands.”

BBtBB: You guys picked up CBC’s Galaxie Rising Star Award in 2008 and Entertainer of the Year, do you put much weight on that kind of thing? Is it something you’re aiming for?

IMD: I’m not aiming for them but it’s a nice pat on the back. Everything like that helps bring recognition. And with recognition you’re given the opportunity to continue doing what you’re doing. You know, more people knowing about it.

BBtBB: Your video for ‘Throw Me To The Rats’ is brilliant, it’s fun, it’s creepy. I love it! Where did you guys get the idea to use puppets?

IMD: We won that in a river boat gambling match from Leonard Cohen. He had the idea first and was going to use it for the video ’The Future’ which I think is a 1991 release. They [didn't] have the hand-puppet technology in the early ’90s so he just sat on that one for a while and he knew it was a good idea. He never went through with it and he gave it up in a gambling match. Thank you Leonard Cohen! I should say that the two guys that made it happen were Alasdair Brotherston and Jock Mooney and they live across the ocean. They’re Leonard Cohen’s right hand men when it comes to hand puppet animation or stop motion animation, I guess.

BBtBB: That was nominated for Video of the Year at the Music Nova Scotia Awards right?

IMD: That sounds right. I think it’s nominated for an East Coast Music Award this year.

BBtBB: Another great song off the album is ‘Highway Siren Song Breakdown’. What’s the inspiration behind that one?

IMD: It’s hard to say what the inspiration for anything is. I wrote it about a tornado, but then I changed the words. This has nothing to do with it, but I lived on a farm far from anything in northern Italy and there was this guy there that trained horses. He was like the Italian horse whisperer. People from all around would bring horses to this guy. Stefano was his name. In his spare time, when he wasn’t training horses and living on this farm far from anything, he built robots. He built these amazing robots. I even found an internet article on him – he was travelling through the States on horse related business, but in his spare time he was making robots in his room. He entered this robot tournament with students from MIT and Georgia Tech and all these engineers. So, he entered his robot in and I think he was the first runner up. I don’t think he got first place because you were supposed to turn the robot on with a remote control and he hadn’t quite finished his yet. But he almost beat all the other students! So this song was concocted and inspired by living on his farm. His robot, horse training farm. It’s a true story.

BBtBB: I believe you, it just sounds a bit wild. “So he builds these robots…”

IMD: They’re incredible.

BBtBB: Whats playing in your CD player right now or on your iPod? What are you listening to?

IMD: Hasil Adkins, The Travelling Wilbury is endlessly playing, John McQueen. I’m trying to think of the last thing we listened to on the way here. I can’t remember what that is but there was a cassette that I put in, that I mentioned earlier tonight is The Future by Leonard Cohen. We have a cassette player in our van.

BBtBB: Now for the Bring Back the Boom Box token question: If you weren’t making music, what would you be in jail for?

IMD: Probably for building horse training stripper robots. Well, they strip when they are training the horses and it’s inappropriate. There are often children around horses.