The Last Act

The Critics

// April 1st, 2011 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

We just got a battery of critiques on our last CD “Still Standing” and I must say, I am little confused with the total lack of consistency.  Some examples:

• We get one guy saying he loves the writing, melodies, yet the production is some of the worst he has ever heard
• On the other side we get another who loves every aspect of the disc. Just loves it.
• We get one guy who loves the overall sound production and engineering, yet some of the songs don’t work for him
• We get another critic that says TLA sounds like Motorhead and Jason sounds like Lemmy.  This guy also goes so far to say that all the songs sound the same.  I can see what he is saying here as ‘Burning Stack’ and ‘the Last Light’ sound like almost the same song (not).
• Etc.

We have had these critics state that their most popular songs from the disc are anything from ‘Left For Dead’ to ‘Still Standing’, ‘Habitat For Insanity’, ‘Twilight Radio Waves’, and one was even ‘Break Me’. So obviously everyone’s specific tastes within this genre of music are totally different, as they should be. About the band and disc some say “Refreshing and different”, some say “Awesome, fresh, old skool rock” and some say “tired and dated” and “it’s been done”.

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Taylor’s Annoying Rings

// March 14th, 2011 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Drums are awesome, what sucks about it is this stupid little ring that carries after you hit a drum. 99.9999% of music has been so digitally altered and edited that no one except a drummer would know about it. It’s kinda like a crappy ring that just doesn’t sound good, and deadens the drums tone. I have spent literally hundreds of hours trying to get my kit to sound good. There are hundreds of theories and methods about how to get the perfect sound, and the fact is that there is no one way to get your drums to sound good. For my drums I usually tune the top and bottom skin to the same pitch, if not tune the bottom a little higher. The biggest thing is to get even perfect tension on every tuning lug…its f******g hard. The perfect drum tone is going to have a nice “dooo” sorta noise that naturally dampens itself after about a second or so with no annoying ring. Drummers spend forever trying to get it, but once they do it’s easy to re-achieve. New skins and the right skin help a lot as well.

The drums I am using currently are an old set of Pearl Exports. I’m not totally sure what year they are but I do know they are from the early to mid ‘80’s. They are a birch shell with a cheap cedar outer ply. Not a bad combination, they are about a low to mid-grade drum. The birch in the shell gives a nice resonance but not a lot of depth, while the cedar outer plies mostly give an inexpensive filler. The drums were originally covered with a plastic coating which can be compared mostly with a krazy carpet. I have since taken the plastic off and stained the shells a darker kind a mahogany color. This lets the wood breathe easier and gives a warmer tone. The only problem is I f*****d up and got stain on the skin seat and threw out the easy tenability of them…although it’s fixed now.

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The History of TLA – Part II

// March 7th, 2011 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

This week we have part 2 of the History of TLA.  It’s a big one…so enjoy!

Taylor Sanderson - TLA Drummer

About 4-5 months later in early 2009, TLA’s long time drummer Shawn Speirs (the guy who was with the band before the first CD in the late 90’s and came back after the first CD) seemed like he didn’t want to quit, but he didn’t seem to want to be in the band anymore either. So the band asked him to leave. It was a hard decision as Jeff and the guys had a problem (and still do have actually) rewarding Shawn’s loyalty to the band and the music by dismissing the guy. As Jeff says “It was brutal. One of the worst things I have ever had to do. But we needed someone behind the kit who wanted to be here and really wants to be here…if you know what I mean”. It was a few months (about 3) before they found his replacement, Andrew Whiting. In April 2009 Jeff was camping in the middle of nowhere and got his 4×4 stuck in a huge mud pit. He and his wife and 2 year old son walked for 10 km (Jeff’s son was carried) before finding someone to pull them out. Andrew was part of the group of guys who helped do that. Andrew stayed with the band throughout the disc and left August 2010 due to his lack of interest. It was a mutual decision for him to go as it was clear to everyone that their paths were not going the same direction anymore.

The guys wanted to be sure that the guy they replaced Andrew with had talent, that the personality would fit with the other band members, and that the person had the commitment level that they are at: to do whatever it takes to make it in the music biz. An extensive tryout/audition period began late August with about 10 drummers. Many of these guys were really good and committed like you wouldn’t believe. Jeff says “It was heart breaking to let some of these guys know they hadn’t been chosen as they wanted to be in TLA so badly, and a good 4 of them were excellent drummers!”. In the end, Andrew was replaced late September 2010 by Taylor Sanderson. Taylor is 19 years old, but plays as good or better than guys who are 10 years older than himself. Taylor is a ‘savant’ (for lack of a better term) when it comes to the drums. The band says time and again they are lucky to have him. To show the commitment level Taylor has, he has to drive 1 hour in each direction 3 times a week to practice with the band…once again, wow! Continue Reading

The History of TLA

// February 25th, 2011 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

We have had a few questions around the history of “the Last Act” the past few months. So we thought we better write a blog post about it! So without further adieu…

The oldest members in the band are Jeff and Paul. And yes they are twin brothers. Yet Jeff is the only member who has stayed and kept the band together since the mid to late 90’s.  Everyone else has left, left at least once, or been asked to leave. With the exception of Jason and Taylor, the current guys.  They haven’t been in long enough to be kicked out! =P

The first TLA disc was released in 2000.  This was after the long time drummer at the time had left the band high and dry before they went into the studio. So it was just Jeff and Paul. The replacement drummer they met up with to do the CD with was in Kamloops.  He was an old friend of Jeff and Paul’s from school. This turned into a big fiasco, lots of drama, people getting ripped off, etc. A long, sordid, and drawn out story which we won’t cover here.  The good thing about all of that was the guys were introduced to the studio (Small World Studios) and Henry Small (think singer from ‘Prism’, album ‘Small Change’). Unfortunately the first attempt at recording in Kamloops was a wash. The band finally ended up using the studio drummer for recording the first CD on the second trip out to Kamloops, and Paul was singing. Good songs, but a seriously dated CD and the vocals are not bad, but could have been better. And a lot of lessons learned.

The next disc was “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” and was released in 2005 with a new band essentially. It was also produced by Henry Small and recorded at his studio in Kamloops. Paul had left the band by this point, but Jeff, Stan Engelage, Colin Murphy, and Shawn Speirs put together a pretty good CD with this incarnation of TLA. Unfortunately it was also quite dated. All of this was realized too late, well after the disc was released and started to receive reviews.  Not a lot of promotion was done on that disc until it was 2 years old…which at that point was a little late. According to Jeff “Everyone had the best intention to do something. But if you don’t have a plan, like we didn’t, time has a way of flying by with no results of any kind. Before we knew it 2 years had gone by and nothing had been done! So I started working on it”.  It was up in front of a few A&R execs at the beginning of the promotion, but they all said “nothing special” or something similar.  So Jeff figured he better learn how to promote it on his own. He sure learned a lot from this in preparation for the third disc, “Still Standing”.

In late 2007 the band started in on “Still Standing”.  The working name at that time was “Problem With Authority”.  In early 2007 some desktop wallpapers/pictures were released with the concept art and this name on it…a collector’s item if you can find it (I know where to get some)!  Stan Engelage had left the band due to time constraints and Paul Larsen joined up in November 2007. Colin Murphy had also left the band as he had another band he was playing with and TLA became second to what he was doing with them. The band brought a guy onboard to sing after that for 6 weeks but it was determined he was not a good match for what TLA was doing.  Same day that decision was made (and executed by asking him to leave), Jeff got a  call from a young guy who was a singer/guitar player looking for a band. There is quite a story around this, but we’ll call it fate for this tale.  The guy was Jason Turnbull, and a week later he was the front man for TLA. What sealed the deal was after giving him the music for “Is It True?”, the guys asked him to take a shot at melodies and lyrics. And he came back with what’s on the CD now, lots of the harmonies and everything.  Pretty impressive.

:: To be continued next week!  Stay tuned! ::

– Janet Sawchuck,
Writer for TLA and TLA Web Admin