TLOBF Interview :: Thomas Truax

The notion of a one man band usually calls to mind a ruddy cheeked maniac strumming a banjo, blowing into a plastic trumpet and stomping about with a bass drum strapped to his back. Step forward Thomas Truax, whose “band” consists of a series of fantastical home made instruments that have to be seen to be truly appreciated.

Normally he’s delighting crowds with his own quirky compositions, but he’s recently recorded an album consisting of covers of songs featured in the films of David Lynch. It seems like the perfect time to discuss film, music and the lack of decent cherry pie in England with one of the strangest exponents of the one man band you’re ever likely to meet. One more cup of damn fine coffee please…

The new album consists of songs that featured in the films of David Lynch. Was it the songs themselves that generated the idea or the films?
Both. I knew maybe half of the songs before I heard them in the films. Others, it was the film that introduced me to the song, so those had more of a contextual identity for me. Something like ‘In Dreams’, the Roy Orbison song, or Blue Velvet, are forever altered, colored, by their inclusion in that film. That’s the potency of Lynch’s power. ‘I Put A Spell On You’, on the other hand, has just always been a favorite song of mine. I’m glad he featured it in Lost Highway, because I’ve always wanted to cover it. Some of the songs were written for the films, some of them by Lynch himself.

What elements of David Lynch’s style do you particularly identify with?
I love his sense of humor, the absurdity of it all, his melodrama. A love of rock and roll, sappy love songs, and the Wizard of Oz. His celebration of cliches. And mostly that place he finds between comedy and tragedy.
I like the irony, for example the fact that Twin peaks satirizes soap operas, and yet it is a soap opera, and then there’s that mirroring soap-within-a-soap on the tv all the time: ‘Invitation to Love’. The ridiculous and the sublime and the horrifying all have a place in his vision, and real life can be like that.

I grew up in American suburbia with manicured lawn competitions and sexual repression and that kind of thing and I always felt there’s something weird and ugly with the potential to explode underneath all this and the more you cover it with sugar and whipped cream and T.V. dinners the worse the explosion is going to be when it finally erupts. But maybe it will only be explosions in a dream, a subconscious response to the repression. Eraserhead was like that, and a revelation for me. That was the first Lynch I saw, and I thought, hmmm, maybe I’m not alone in thinking this way. Maybe you can get the ugliness out through some kind of artistic expression.

Do you have a favourite film of Lynch’s, and are there any characters that you used as inspiration from a stylistic point of view? The brooding lunacy of Frank for example? Or Henry Spencer – the printer who’s on a hellish holiday and who’s soundtrack is industrial noise?
I don’t really have a favourite film, it’s easier to single out the weaker ones, which are the exceptions, but the middle of the second season of Twin Peaks loses it’s step, and there’s Dune, though there is a lot in Dune that’s worth a look, failed as it is.

The only definite character thing I’ve drawn from has less to do with the album and more to do with having fun with the live tour and in promoting the album, and that’s this sort of Twin Peaks FBI agent role which I’ve been assuming in order to keep myself in the right mood. It’s not Dale Cooper or anyone specific, (though I do think the character of agent Cooper is largely an alter-ego of Lynch) it’s like the FBI has sent out another agent for another purpose and that’s me, Agent Truax. It’s more like I’m a kid playing secret agent while I’m out on the road. I guess I’ve never really grown up, and I suppose I probably never will, but I don’t see that as a problem.

I wear a suit and tie and carry a special briefcase of gadgets that are specific to this tour and to some of these songs, along with my ‘regular’ instruments. When I first started the tour I would carry the briefcase to the stage and open it and set it up as part of the act, while some Twin-Peakish intro music was playing. But I’ve abandoned this more often than not because I don’t think everyone is getting it, especially as I’ve usually just set up a bunch of other gear anyway, so people aren’t quite sure if the show has actually started yet or if I’m still setting up. And it’s not the first time I’ve ever appeared in a suit.

But anyway the role suits the lone-travelling musician well, I travel into different towns, sometimes send messages back to Twitter about how a certain cafe makes a good cup of coffee but the search for cherry pie in England is pretty challenging, so there are these running gags. We’ve been playing around with this, myself and other people working on the album. Like Ed Pybus from SL records (my label), for example, is Special Agent Pybus and we communicate in code when we need to and such. My publicists are special agents too. These are the kind of things that make the job fun. People take themselves too seriously, even in rock ‘n’ roll. We’re having loads of fun.

Yes I worked as an animator in New York at MTV for four years on Celebrity Deathmatch, and also did some work on Cartoon Network’s ‘Robot Chicken’ in L.A.

That was the last ‘real’ job I had. Quite a few years ago now. In the studio where they did Robot Chicken there was an old metal locker in the coffee room. One of the doors had a spooky clown painted on it that I really liked. Turned out David Lynch painted that, supposedly. He did some work of some sort in an earlier incarnation of that studio.

You’re quite often associated with another director – Tim Burton – on account of the homemade instrumentation that you use. Do you think this is a fair comparison (I think Brits of a certain age are reminded of The Great Egg Race), and are there any other directors who you considered before embarking on the project? Scorsese would be a pretty good choice for example as would John Waters.
Mm, yeah, you’re right about the other directors! Tim Burton more because of his vision, the others more on the songs they’ve used. John Waters has featured loads of great campy classics hasn’t he? I’m a big admirer of all their work, but I never thought in terms of ‘I’m gonna make an album of songs by a film director, which director will I choose?’

The idea came after I was introduced to Lynch by my friend (the photographer) Chris Saunders, who has done photos of us both. Chris and I and our friend Dave Woodcock were having a pub conversation later and Dave, who also does music, was talking about piecing together an all songs-from-films acoustic guitar set he was going to do on an upcoming afternoon and suddenly BAM, the whole concept for the all-Lynch songs album came, pretty much fully formed, velvet covers and all. I said to Dave ‘Why don’t you do an album of all Lynch songs?’ and he said no way, you do it. So I said fine, I think it’s a perfect idea, and never gave it a second thought. So due credit to my friends and a couple pints of Guinness.

Do you fancy having a go at acting like Chris Isaak? And are there any particular roles you like, or directors you’d like to work for.
I took acting classes in New York for a while, it was loads of fun, when I was going to film school. But what makes a person want to be an actor is more of a curiosity to me than actually pursuing it would be a goal. I was taking a hard look at all that was out there, for artistic expression, and film making was right up there with music for a while. But I realized what I really don’t like is waking up real early. So that’s one strong reason music won over film.

That said, I do think a lot of my own songs are, in a way, like short films, and maybe I approach them a bit from a filmmakers perspective. Only you’re using words and music to evoke pictures in peoples minds, using their imaginations, rather than physically recreating situations to be shot with a camera. Even in cases when there’s not a concrete plot line, you’re still creating atmospheric settings- (which might be something you could say of Lynch)

Which film would you like to have composed the score for and why?
Maybe Herzog’s remake of Nosferatu. I thought that deserved a stronger score. It’s a great film but I felt it suffered for that, in my view anyway. But I’d still leave a lot of it without music, as I think there’s a less-is-more reward, especially as it was evoking, and being reverential to, the silent version on which it was based.

Where does the inspiration come from when designing your instruments? Do you sit at home and think, I could do something with that George Forman grill? Are you working on any new instruments at all?
I’d likely hear the sizzle of the meat frying away and think, what a great sound! How could I mic that and make it repeat rhythmically on stage? Would it go against venue licensing laws to have cooking meat on stage? Would it bother me because I’m a vegetarian?
I’m at a point now where I am refining Mother Superior and adding some parts to the Stringaling. All my instruments are kind of works-in-progress and I’ve got more than I can carry at the moment but I’ve also got a room full of great bits and pieces that are going to mate and become new things eventually.

Have you ever had problems getting instruments like the stringaling through customs?
In fact it’s the Stringaling that has been pulled over twice. I wont try and take it through carry-on again. As I went through security they were seriously alarmed by the x-ray and as one of the agents was removing it from my bag very carefully I said “I guess you’ve never seen a Stringaling before?” but she just shushed me and said stand back, while she examined it with rubber gloves and made some ‘code red’ type calls on her handset. Some men in suits with clipboards came in and hovered around, looking it over, writing things and looking very grim. It was so bad t.v., hilarious in a way, I mean the Stringaling’s got a small plastic skull on it with rattling teeth and a plastic slide-whistle and some other pull-string toy parts on it. It’s built on a wooden bongo drum painted silver with a length of dryer tubing attached to it! But inside is a tiny mixer that I built into a small tea tin, and I think that’s probably what put them all on guard. There’s a battery and some wires and things, you know, primitive, pre-digital technology. After a while they loosened up a bit and asked me “What do you call it? What does it do?” And I nearly got myself stuck having to do an impromptu performance.

Apparently you’re defined as being a part of the Anti-folk movement, and the Steam Punk scene. Do you feel a part of these genres? I think singer-songwriter, or musician is a fair summation, but as far as genre definitions go these seem a little far off the mark. I particularly like the description “outsider music” which is completely at odds with the inclusive nature of your live show.
I don’t consider myself part of any movement, unless it’s a movement to champion the individual rather than the conformist.
There are brilliant people in anti-folk. Jeff Lewis, Lach, Major Matt, Beck. I know some of them, and I’ve played on bills with them, but I’m just who I am, doing what I do.

Steampunks like what I do, and the steampunks I’ve met, I like. I think what I’m doing fits in with a certain DIY victorian-style aesthetic. They like to build things. Of big bolts and brass and dials, a future of the past. They’re dreamers. I’m a dreamer. The Hornicator might appear as a dictionary-definition steampunk picture. Brass, victorian, modified. But I might call it a pimped-up gramophone horn. That wouldn’t be very steampunk of me, using that terminology.

Anti-Folk seems to be such a negative sounding moniker, doesn’t it? It suggests picket lines burning beards and holding signs that say “NO TO REAL ALE”. Does it mean anything to you at all?
Yes in Wowtown once there was an Anti-folk concert and all the local folk got upset asking ‘What have they got against us folk? We haven’t done anything!’

What’s next for Thomas Truax?
Many cups of coffee, late nights, cuts and solder burns, I imagine. I’m also working, very slowly but surely, on a DVD: high-resolution versions of my music videos, interviews, compilation of live footage and such.

Thomas Truax on MySpace