Thomas Truax's homemade musical menagerie returns to the Market Bar
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Amid the framed photographs and newspaper clippings adorning the Market Bar’s walls, each depicting one of its favourite sons or daughters – an article about the Proclaimers, a photograph of Billy Morrison, an old autographed New York Dolls set list – one image stands out.
Hanging on the wall near the bar is a black and white photo of a somewhat-gaunt man intently playing something musical that could as well be described as a contraption as an instrument – a gramophone horn with strings and microphones and other sundries attached to it.
That man is Thomas Truax, the American singer-songwriter whose home-made instruments – including the above piece, named the Hornicator – and unique approach to music has provided the city pub with one of its most highly anticipated gigs.
Yet Thomas had his own baptism of fire during his first gig, having to acclimatise to the Market’s sometimes raucous environment.
“When I first played there I actually didn’t find it very enjoyable because people were talking and it was noisy and I felt like, ‘Wow, this isn’t really a place where people come to listen to the music,’” he explained.
“I had a break between sets and during the break, I went down to smoke a cigarette, and I was feeling like ‘Ah, great – how am I going to get through this second set?’
“And several people came out and they said, ‘My god Thomas, it’s never been so quiet in there – it’s amazing what you’re doing!’”
He laughs, before adding, “So it’s, uh, all things are relative!”
In addition to the Hornicator – his “Left Hand Man” – Thomas will be bringing a slew of other homemade instruments, crafted by him to offer his unique sound. His last visit, in October 2016, saw him accompanied by his trusted motor-powered drum machine Mother Superior, alongside the Saxogramophone and the String-a-ling.
While these are what he’s currently touring with, Thomas has had a fascination with DIY instrumentation, and experimenting with sound and music, since an early age. “I was really bored when I was a kid, so I thought, ‘What can I do with this boredom?’ And I’m still working on it!” he laughs.
“You know those little door-stoppers that are kind of like springs when you open a door and it bounces against the wall to stop it from actually hitting the wall? I remember just lying on the floor just plucking those things because they go, ‘Kdr-dr-dring’, you know, they make a fantastic sound!
“And at some point I thought if I put that kind of sound through an amplifier and put some sound effects on it then what can I do with that? It kind of built from there.”
Yet it wasn’t until several years – and several failed bands later – that he finally took to bringing his own-made instruments to a live audience. “You work with your friends in a band for a while, and just when you feel that you’re starting to get somewhere, somebody gets a job, somebody gets married, somebody doesn’t want to do it anymore – that became very frustrating to me,
“I didn’t want to do a solo act or a one man thing; it wasn’t in my plans at all. But I started building these instruments, and I realised that well, okay, I’ve been offered this gig, and Joe can’t do it and Scott can’t do it – but Mother Superior can do it and I can do it so let’s take it anyway and do it as a side project.
“And, um, basically some friends saw me doing that and said, ‘Oh, you should do this instead of your band, it’s much better!’ – which was kind of insulting!”
Thomas’s – and Mother Superior’s – latest visit to Inverness comes as part of the singer-songwriter’s UK tour undertaken in advance of the release of his latest record.
There’s been a few hitches with this one however – partly due to Thomas organising everything himself. “It was supposed to be coming out for this tour, but you know...
“I’ve been on record labels and you always wonder, ‘Why does it take so long, when you finish a record, for them to actually get it out?’ And then you’re doing it yourself, and you realise!
“It was kind of disappointing not to have it for this tour, and it’s taken me a while but I think that it’s that I take my time when I’m working on the music. Like my granny always said – ‘The good things are worth taking your time on.’”
But while the album may be a few months away – Thomas has set a tentative release date in January – he’s still releasing music regularly through a direct subscription service, the Full Moon Music Club. “I’m much more loose and experimental with that stuff than I am with the proper album stuff, and I’ve got a lot of optimism about where that’s going – it’s kind of a new thing for me.
“This is more of a thing where you come up with something that might be very topical and of the mood of the time and you can lay it down and get it out to people.”
It’s a lot of balls to juggle for the artist. And, with the hopes of releasing his first book soon – a collection of pictures and tales in a book called Wowtown Stories – there’s no end in sight to the workload for Thomas.
“I’m one of those people that thinks I can pack into a day about twice as much as I ever can, if not three times, so I need to be careful about what I promise I’m going to deliver!” he said.
“It’s probably a common thing these days – we’re all told that we’re able to do a million things, we’ve got an application on our computer for all one million and one of them, and then when you’re on application three making your film after your new song is done, you think to yourself, ‘Let’s see, what’s one million and one minus three!?’
“There does seem to be a thing these days where people, musicians and movie makers and people just churn things out and throw them at the wall to see if anything sticks or gets attention – and I see a big muddy wall a lot of times.
He pauses before adding, with a sentiment that would make his granny proud, “You sort of have to come through it to find something that is worth spending time with.”
Thomas Truax comes to the Market Bar tonight. For more information, go to www.thomastruax.com
