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Tom Fun Orchestra with Jon & Roy
Marquee Room
Saturday, February 7 - Saturday, February 7

More in: Rock / Pop

The biography on the official website of The Tom Fun Orchestra reads like a chaotic Dickens novel. The plot is innocently charming, with mischievous and fanciful characters, and Tom Fun, at the centre, relishes in the playful anarchy of it all. A young vaudevillian born to gypsies, Fun spends his childhood “being raised by call girls, learning cuss words and card tricks from tramps, vagabonds and outlaws,” until he forms The Holy Microphone Machine in an abandoned theatre in Sydney, Nova Scotia.

“We won that bio in a Mississippi riverboat gambling match,” explains Ian MacDougall, lead singer and guitarist for the eight-piece travelling circus, though this number has been known to swell when the tides are right. While that biography has nothing to do with the actual lives of the musicians, The Tom Fun Orchestra did have a similarly serendipitous origin. Upon returning to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, from a trip to Scotland, MacDougall quickly set out to play a show, what was supposed to be “a one-off spectacle.” The idea of getting a group of people together to play a show merely for entertainment is common in Nova Scotia — growing up in Cape Breton meant that MacDougall was raised “with a piano in every house,” and the spirit of Tin Pan Alley still very much radiant. It wasn’t until his trip to Europe that he discovered not everyone owns, or knows how to play, a guitar.

His return to Cape Breton was a return to a large, rich, musical community. The ranks for his impromptu band rapidly swelled, and it worked wonderfully — not for nothing did he want “a lot of people onstage.” They continued to play shows and, within their first year, realized that The Tom Fun Orchestra was anything but an ephemeral occurrence. Indeed, such was their success that, even though all the members were already in bands — and not necessarily the traditional Nova Scotian folk variety, but bands ranging from punk to rock to pop — their new caravan remained intact.

“There’s a lot of camaraderie in the scene [in Nova Scotia],” says MacDougall. “Once we realized that we were doing it for the music, not the spectacle, we just kept going. This is a full-time gig for everyone.”

At once, they set out to record their debut album, You Will Land with a Thud. The recording session, which took place in Connecticut rather than in their hometown, proved that the band was ready to deal with the logistics of being larger than a traditional four-piece. Needless to say, scheduling all eight members plus guest musicians turned out to be one of their biggest hurdles. Capturing the band’s live sound was equally tricky — having nurtured a reputation for lively, energetic, anarchic performances, capturing this spirit on record was a priority.

“Eventually, we just did a live-off-the-floor cut, where you could see everyone, and the energy of the live show was emulated,” MacDougall explains. “Plus, we were already excited to be in Connecticut, so we channeled our efforts into capturing that energy.”

While the album does an admirable job, The Tom Fun Orchestra is still a band to be experienced rather than merely heard. As MacDougall says, they’re dedicated to spreading “fondness for cheap perfume, bourbon and show tunes... to an ever-growing congregation.”