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Thomas Truax is a New York songwriter and musical instrument inventor. His live shows are part performance, part exhibition and always a huge amount of fun, as he leads you through stories of his fictional home of Wowtown, with backing from instruments with names such as 'The Hornicator', 'The Stringaling' and 'The Backbeater'.
Everyone who has seen him play has told at least one other person about him, and usually many more. Anyone who has bought his records, too, will have found that he is no novelty act. His songs are perfect nuggets of off-kilter indie that cover such universal topics as your friends all going to live inside the internet and your wife falling in love with the clone of yourself you left to look after her while you were on tour.
Thomas is playing a number of live dates in the UK and Ireland over the next few weeks, beginning on 19 Jul. See his website for more details. |
Q1 How did you start out making music?
Initially, I've been told, I was working on percussion techniques on the walls of my mother's womb from the inside. Upon arrival into the cold world outside, my experiments with changing the tonality of the umbilical cord by stretching it to varying tensions and plucking it were unfortunately cut short before I was able to perfect the technique. But I've since picked up again on the same principle using my invented/self-made instrument 'The Stringaling'.
Q2 What inspired your latest single/album?
'Stranger On A Train' (from 'Why Dogs Howl At The Moon' album) is about traveling on the British rail system, which is how I often tour in this country, though as I gradually build my act and amass more equipment/instruments that I have to carry, it's becoming less practical, sadly. It can be quite an adventure though, as evidenced by the song.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
I don't have any one process, sometimes it's a chord or series of chords, sometimes it's a lyric or a strange sound that lays the foundation from which I start to work and play. If I start to see a pattern develop in my working technique, I try to creatively deviate from that as I don't think the most creative music comes from following the same path each time. I think it's the opposite. Throw out the rule book, fuck things up. That's rock and roll.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
Alexander Calder (inventor of the mobile), Marcel Duchamp, Hazel Atashroo, Vincent Van Gogh, Heath Robinson, Roald Dahl, Henry Miller, Thomas Hardy, David Lynch, Elvis Presley, and Iggy Pop, for starters.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
"Thank you for taking a chance on something other than Celine Dion, I hope you wont be disappointed!"
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest single/album, and for the future?
I'm working on a covers album all based on songs featured in films by David Lynch, and my ambition is to make each tune come alive in a new way, or at least with a twist, and not fall into one of the many classic traps of the dreaded covers album phenomenon. Outside that, I think it's important to play my Hornicator on Jools Holland some day. He's been known to present something a little different sometimes, and people stuck at home in front of their televisions need a good Hornicatin' now and then, or so my grandmother used to always say.
published july 2008
