(Nathan M. Boone photo)
When I first saw the Tom Fun Orchestra, it was at an East Coast Music Awards after-party in 2007. A friend recommended we check them out, and so we did. I’d never heard the band before, so I didn’t know what to expect.
What I saw was a ballroom full of people dancing to sounds created by about 10 people on stage – a raucous mix of rock, folk, swing, traditional sounds – a melting pot of noise that you couldn’t help but dance, tap your toes or at least raise your glass to.
The fun was infectious as was evident by the smiles throughout the room, the biggest of which were worn on the faces of the nine or 10 musicians on stage playing guitar, bass, banjo, fiddle and a handful of other instruments.
It was electric and quite obvious at the time that this Cape Breton band was something special.
At the centre of it all was the ringleader in the middle, decked out in a white suit, curly mop of hair bouncing to the songs as his gravelly voice spit out lyrics over top of the music.
It was a great initiation to a great band.
Fast forward a year or so and the band has released its debut album, You Will Land With A Thud (Company House), and it is about to embark on a tour of Scotland and Ireland.
Ringleader Ian MacDougall (aka Tom Fun) spoke to East Coast Noise recently about the band, the difficulties of traveling with a nine-piece band and how he doesn’t like the Celtic reference people keep making when referring to the Orchestra’s sound.
“We get comparisons to Celtic music,” he says over the phone from the Company House offices in Sydney, N.S. “I don’t feel there’s anything Celtic at all.”
He says the label is frustrating at times because it pigeon-holes the band in a genre it doesn’t necessarily fit in.
“It’s people who mean really well” that are saying it, he explains. “As much as the reviewer means really well, it doesn’t do us any favours.”
The Tom Fun Orchestra formed three years ago, sort of by accident. The ECMAs were taking place in MacDougall’s stomping grounds of Sydney, and he submitted a “crappy quality recording” of some tunes he’d recording in his living room to see if he could land a showcase.
He succeeded in landing the showcase, but the trouble was he didn’t have a band.
“It took me two days to form a band,” he says with a laugh. He grabbed nine or 10 of his musician friends, taught them the songs quickly and they were off to the races.
“It was mostly to put on a spectacle,” he says of the decision to go with a 10-piece group. “It shouldn’t have worked.”
But it did. Reaction to the band was immediate, and it was positive.
“It was surprising at first,” MacDougall admits. “It was totally unrehearsed, so I’m sure it was entertaining in some fashion,” he jokes.
The band’s name was really a joke, one MacDougall admits he’d take back if he could, but “we’re stuck with it now.”
On the band’s debut album, the Orchestra consists 11 members: MacDougall, Morgan Currie, Hinson Calabrese, Alicia Penney, Shane O’Handley, Zach MacLean, Dave Mahalik, Victor Tomiczek, Devon Strang, Albert Lionais and Lachie MacDonald.
On the group’s Myspace page however, only 10 members are listed. The band’s official website says there are nine members. So you can figure out how many people are actually in the group next time you see them perform.
MacDougall says nine members are traveling on the current tour, which is part of the reason the band is hitting towns overseas instead of spreading their name across Canada first.
“It’s easier for us where there’s nine of us traveling. We can drive an hour between gigs instead of 10 hours between gigs,” he says.
He says it takes a lot of patience, planning and co-operation for the large group to travel together.
“We’re compatible with each other, but not with anyone else on the planet,” he laughs.
The band will continue to put most of its energies into overseas tours for now.
“It seems to make sense for us. And if I can get some quality travel in, why not?”
Check out the Tom Fun Orchestra here.
