Getting to Know: Toronto Rock Trio, Love Tapper
In today’s Getting to Know, we meet Love Tapper, an experimental Toronto rock trio that recently released their debut EP, Hostages. If you are in an up and coming band that would like to partake in a Getting to Know feature, contact editor@riffyou.com to receive the questionnaire and instructions. Thanks!
Band Name: Love Tapper
Band Members: Skutch Tully (guitar, vocals), Darren Vanstone (bass), and Riley O’Connor: drums
Years Active: 1
City of Origin: Toronto, ON.
Who are you and what do you do?
“My name is Skutch and I sing and play guitar in a band called Love Tapper.”
In 100 words or less, tell us how your band has gotten to this point.
“All three of us have played in various touring and recording bands for quite few years. I took some time away from music for a while to concentrate on other interests and got dragged out of my hiatus a couple of years ago a when a good friend of mine asked if I’d be interested in singing and playing guitar for a one-off gig, which was a performance of Thin Lizzy’s “Live and Dangerous” album from beginning to end. That was a really cool experience, and preparing for it forced me to get serious about woodshedding the guitar again. That led to writing and demoing some new songs, and eventually, hooking up with Darren, our bass player, and our drummer, Riley, this past winter.”
What is your latest release and how would you best describe it to someone who hasn’t heard your band?
“Our new EP is called Hostages. We recorded it in Toronto with Christian Anderson, an up-and-coming producer who used to be the guitarist in a band called Braintoy. It’s basically a loud and fast rock record that sounds like three people playing music in a room together. We banged it out pretty quickly and didn’t get too far down the rabbit hole in terms of overdubs or processing.”
When making an album, which aspect of the process do you put the most time into and why?
“We put a lot of time into everything. I usually get ideas for songs when I’m doing something other than playing guitar, like walking around downtown, riding my bike, or driving around listening to late night call-in shows on AM talk radio. Writing is a pretty subconscious and mysterious thing. Rehearsing is more of a left-brain activity; it’s just muscle memory and repetition. Production is sort of a combination of the two. You can get as freaky as you like with effect pedals and stuff – which we totally love to do – but sonically, everything still needs to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle when it comes time to mix.”
What is the best part about your band and why?
“I really enjoy the fact that it’s such an effortless band to be in. The guys I play with aren’t flakes, loose cannons, or addicts like a lot of creative people tend to be. At this point in my life, I just can’t deal with that anymore. I think we’re also all on the same page in terms of what we want to get out of the band.”
What makes your band unique from the rest?
“I really prefer to not think about that very much. Too much self-awareness isn’t always a good thing for artists. But I suppose we’re doing a few things that are unique when compared to other heavy rock bands that are around right now. For one thing, the bass plays a more dominant role in our music than it does in a lot of other bands in our genre, where the bass is more of a support instrument. In many of our songs, the guitar follows the bass riff instead of the other way around. Darren comes up with parts that you wouldn’t typically associate with heavy rock; they’re more like the bass lines you’d hear on late-seventies post-punk records like Gang of Four and stuff like that – really melodic, and EQ’d in a way that forces them up front in the mix. And our drummer, Riley, is heavily schooled in jazz and is comfortable playing in all kinds of wacky time signatures so he brings some of that into the picture, while still hitting really bloody hard. And I suppose I write lyrics that are kind of esoteric and play guitar in a way that doesn’t really come from a blues tradition…like a lot of hard rock seems to.”
How does your band survive the challenges of touring/gigging?
“The usual hissy fits and fist-fights…just like every band throughout history.”
Would you rather be critically-acclaimed; rich and famous; or an under-the-radar band with a dedicated fan base?
“I think our preference would be to have a really dedicated fan base. I’d rather play a gig for 50 people who really understand what it is you’re going for and are totally into it, versus an arena full of people who are just sort of passive about the role music plays in their lives. I mean, look at a band like Swans. Their music demands a lot of patience from the listener to say the least, but you can bet that everyone who comes to one of their shows is a rabid Swans fan.”
If you’d have to compare your band to another one out there, living or dead, who would it be and why?
“I can’t really think of any one band specifically, but I guess I’m most interested in bands that are always trying to move forward artistically and push one another into new directions, without collapsing under the weight of their own egos. The Beatles obviously had a pretty good run in that regard. They never made a bad album, but they had to make Please Please Me before they could make the White Album. Talking Heads did that really well too.
Which band/musician would you like to share many drinks with? What would you talk about?
”It would be pretty wild to hang out in the studio with some of the early Jamaican dub producers like Lee Scratch Perry or King Tubby, and see the signal path and techniques they used to achieve all of those insane sounds. That’s some of my favourite music ever. Or maybe Brian Eno. The stuff he was doing with tape looping in the seventies and eighties just boggles the mind.”
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