--taken from: LocalXpress
Matt Murphy (Super Friendz, Flashing Lights), Mike O'Neill (the Inbreds) and Chris Murphy (Sloan) bring their new trio, TUNS, to the Halifax Pop Explosion on Friday at the Marquee Ballroom. (Vanessa Heins photo)
by Stephen Cooke
How appropriate that Halifax Pop Explosion, the festival, should host the Nova Scotia debut of a trio formed by musicians who were part of the so-called Halifax pop explosion, the movement, of the early 1990s.
TUNS is the new entity formed by Sloan's Chris Murphy, Super Friendz and Flashing Lights co-founder Matt Murphy, and Mike O'Neill, whose band the Inbreds moved from Kingston to Halifax in the mid-1990s to get closer to the action.
Ironically, it was O'Neill who stayed, emerging as a gifted solo artist as well as a collaborator of Trailer Park Boys creator Mike Clattenburg, while the two (unrelated) Murphys put down roots in Toronto, but it'll be like old times when all three are onstage at the Marquee Ballroom on Friday night, with Partner, Monomyth and Century Egg.
"I'm kind of the new guy in the band, even though I've been around since '96 or whatever," chuckles O'Neill. "But those guys will talk at length, and I won't know when it's coming, where they fall down this hole about old places or bars or players.
"That's how the name came about. We were all trying to come up with one, and I think we out-clevered ourselves several times, with sheets of paper with all these names on them, and I could tell these guys wanted something that referred to Halifax. Maybe they're a bit homesick or whatever, but they needed something that referred to Halifax.
"At some point I said, 'How about I start bringing things that refer to Oshawa? Sunset Heights!' But no one was listening to me."
The name TUNS is a reference to the institution formerly known as the Technical University of Nova Scotia, the Barrington Street campus eventually absorbed by Dalhousie University. Its student lounge the T Room featured at least one show by City Field, Matt Murphy's collaboration with Halifax musician and artist Mitchell Wiebe, and it's the sort of inside reference that only a Haligonian of a certain age would get.
Perhaps it's also indicative of the feat of engineering it takes to get Murphy, O'Neill and Murphy in the same place at the same time — Matt Murphy is also a busy producer for Vice Media — for writing, rehearsing and recording. As a result, TUNS' self-titled debut has a sense of urgency about it that crackles with life and the need to get everything done right the first time.
It helps they've been friends for so long. O'Neill notes the idea for the trio actually dates back to when the three murderecords mates shared rehearsal space in Halifax in the '90s, and hashed out a few tunes for the hell of it.
"I think the first song we made up at the time was based on the fact that the Sobeys on Queen Street was open all night," he recalls. "So the song's chorus was, 'I know you're open when it's late.'
"That's all I remember about it, and the fact Matt sang the chorus, but that was our first jam and Chris was on drums, and that was close to 20 years ago."
More recently, O'Neill found himself increasingly in Ontario for work and to visit his mother, and during one hangout with his transplanted pals, Chris Murphy suggested reviving the trio concept.
"He asked why don't we jam at Sloan's rehearsal space and see what happens," says O'Neill. "I don't think I felt any of the nervousness or pressure that I would have if we had done this in our 20s. It was just like, let's do it and keep expectations low.
"What ended up happening was, Chris's incredible archival instinct took over, and he was recording everything, with our permission, all of the ideas we had. We knew we were going to try and write songs, but he was the one who started to create this archive of ideas."
With Sloan between albums, and Matt Murphy in need of a musical creative outlet, things progressed quickly, with 50 or so riffs and melodies coming together. O'Neill again credits Chris Murphy's organizational skills with devising a rating system to determine which ideas had the most staying power with all three members.
"We just sort of voted for our favourites, and from that list, we narrowed it down to 16, and then the process of turning those riffs into songs began," he explains. "By that time, I was in Halifax and Chris and Matt were working together in Toronto, and I would send them the stuff I was working on from that list," says O'Neill, who calls the ensuing recording session "a most productive and pleasant process."
"We enlisted Ian McGettigan (Thrush Hermit, Camouflage Nights) and recorded what we had. I don't have to tell you how funny all those guys are, and we all love hanging out, so the whole recording process was a joy without — and I'm speaking for myself here — the insecurity of trying to prove yourself. Maybe that's the maturity talking; we've all been making music for years, Chris is still in the same band he was in in the '90s, and it felt more like a matter of keeping up with each other rather than trying to win arguments."
The self-titled TUNS album was recorded and mixed last year, and the trio planned to release it before Sloan was back on the tour treadmill this year with its One Chord to Another 20th anniversary project.
Things got pushed back to this summer, when the project was picked up by boutique label Royal Mountain Records, also home to Canadian indie favourites Alvvays and Hollerado, and remixed by the go-to production team of Gus Van Go and Werner F.
"So it turned into a super-busy time for Chris, because Sloan was out doing these stretches of One Chord to Another shows, and plus he's also a dad, so he's been running between both bands. But it's been super-fun, and we're also going out on tour with Young Rival soon, which I think is going to be a great bill," says O'Neill, who says he loves watching the Murphys' musicianship in action onstage, and blurring the lines between each others' songwriting skills.
"With one exception, where I'm singing words that Chris wrote, if one of us is singing, then that person wrote the lyrics, with the help of the other guys," he notes. "But in terms of songs and melodies, it was very much something that we arrived at together. So if I got credit for one of the songs, like I Can't Wait Forever, it may sound like a classic Mike O'Neill song, but I can't say who wrote what because there's a lot of Matt and Chris in there too.
"It's a novelty, it's so different when you feel like you have to point out what you've done. I'm more anxious to point out what the other guys have done, because I remember that more strongly."
--taken from: LocalXpress
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