UTR Presents
Anthonie Tonnon announces new album and national tour in March 2015
On a torrential November evening recently, to a hundred people crowded in the time-warp glow of Aucklands Old Folks Association Hall, Anthonie Tonnon christened his backing band (still up to that point nameless, after almost two years of existence) The Successors - revealing the name of the first record to be released under Tonnons own name.
“Absolutely masterful performance from Anthonie Tonnon last night. One of the best Ive seen.”
- Hayden Eastmond- Mein, The Pantograph Punch.
Canapé King Records, in association with Southbound distribution, will release Successor in New Zealand on the 6th of March 2015. Canapé King Records is delighted to also announce that Pittsburgh-based label, Wild Kindness Records, will release the album in the USA during the same week.
The album features nine songs, coming in at just under 42 minutes. Prose, rather than poetic writing, influences the lyrics - most of which are written as second person narratives. “I wanted to write songs which, when you heard them, could feel like a condensed experience of reading [The New Yorker’s] “Reporter At Large” column,” says Tonnon, who recently wrote a piece for The Pantograph Punch website on the development of “A Friend From Argentina” - a song from Successor based on Donna Chisholms 2012 Metro article “Blow Time.”
“Some people inspire love songs. Metro magazine and I inspire songs about barflies and blow”
- Donna Chishom, Metro Magazine
Produced with band member and engineer of recent EPs by Tiny Ruins and Fazerdaze, Jonathan Pearce, using Mt Eden’s The Lab studios and a personal collection of analogue equipment, Successor is an album with a mixture of fidelities. “Water Underground” and “Railway Lines” employ Tonnon’s full band - Jonathan Pearce (Watercolours, Sal Valentine And The Babyshakes), Stuart Harwood (Paquin, Proton Beast) and Edward Castelow (Dictaphone Blues, The Brunettes, The Ruby Suns), to reach for something akin to the late-70s studio sound of Supertramp or the early kraut-swag of Neu!, while “A Friend From Argentina” was recorded as a single solo take into a 1960s journalist’s portable tape recorder.
Tonnon started developing the album after retiring the moniker Tono and the Finance Company in 2013. The long-established Dunedin band released a charting album and toured with alt-folk heroes Beirut, but it felt like a project that belonged to a time and place. “Increasingly, my influences have been writers, rather than musicians, and I wanted to work under a name I felt I could keep working under for the next few decades.”
Touring and testing songs on live audiences became Tonnon’s primary production tool, who used the name change to start touring solo, releasing short-run cassette tapes. The album was recorded between and around two full band New Zealand tours, and two solo tours of the USA and Australia. “In the USA I’d seen bands head out on tour and master new material on the road”, Tonnon explains. “There’s an subconscious feedback you get playing audience after audience, and you end up delivering the songs at a higher level.”
Tonnon’s arresting, theatrical show has recently seen him perform on the acclaimed Daytrotter Sessions in Illinois, and open for indie stalwarts Okkervil River in New Zealand and Harvey Danger’s Sean Nelson in the USA. Billboard.com recently featured him in their list of “New Zealand acts you need to know about,” and Tonnon will tour with Australian indie-folk master Darren Hanlon on his Christmas tour of Australia later this month.
“Anthonie Tonnon can really work a crowd, whether its slinging a guitar solo or working it with his full four-piece band. The Auckland-based singer-songwriter was a hot talking point among international delegates at NZ’s Going Global summit in September, his highlight song “Water Underground” still resonating long after the performance had wrapped-up.
- Lars Brandle, Billboard.com
In March, Anthonie Tonnon will present Successor around the country. All shows are with The Successors unless noted otherwise.
