Will Tun and the Wasters

Joe(a.k.a. Waste Ventura) Talks About The Joy of Being Part of Will Tun and the Wasters

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“To me the Irish musical culture always represented what we’ve wanted to represent as a band, and that’s that ‘everyone have a go’, inclusive sort of vibe. Even if you’re not necessarily a musical maestro you can pick up a set of spoons in a pub and get involved in the jam.”-Joe

They are young men with inexhaustible musical energy. I have grown fond of this band ever since I got to interview lead man Will Tun and now the mic is pointed at Joe(Waste Ventura) who is the band’s accordion player extraordinaire. He  just finished his degree in International Relations,and he is now working for a local ecological charity organising a mini-festival celebrating local and sustainable food. According to him: ” I’ve just finished my contract with the Reading Town Meal– it went great despite the fact I only got 3 hours sleep and there were a million things to organise. Such is the life of an event organiser!” Sounds exciting. I am curious to know what’s been going on since the Wasters shared their story with us and also what awaits them in 2014.

1. Will Tun and the Wasters(with MC Amalgam) create an eclectic kind of music in a sense that you are not afraid to experiment. You guys bridge the gap between hip hop, folk and electronic music. Did you expect to attract this huge following when you started out?

No we didn’t expect any sort of following- we got excited when a few of our mates came down to the local open mic night! It’s always been about having memorable nights and sharing great experiences with friends, I guess three years on we’ve made a load of new friends along the way, which we’re very grateful for.

The Wasters having fun in Ireland

Regarding the idea of bridging the gap between genres I think there’s never really been a gap in our heads, it’s now we’re just trying it out for ourselves. When we were 15 and we first went to squat parties you’d have a room with a load of punk bands, some hip-hop artists, a massive rig playing dubstep, jungle, whatever. The atmosphere was just amazing and I think at gigs like that, the spaces in between genres, is where you can find some of the real unity vibe. You can’t have unity if you stay divided between genres!

Plus, if you think of so many bands who are regarded as classic now, they’ve always been the ones mixing the style up- I mean the Pogues are a classic example of bangin’ genre-crossover band right?!

2. It’s been three years when you all started out as a band. How was the journey as artists and friends at the same time?

The experiences from the band in the last 3 years have been amazing in terms of how we’ve developed as people. We recorded and released our first CD “A Year Wasted” just before we started Uni, and the response we got from that meant that we spent every spare weekend travelling 6 hours, on a Megabus across the UK to play with our favourite bands. As we’ve all spent the last 3 years in different cities across the country, it’s something that’s really kept us close.

The band is really kind of a vehicle for a group of friends to have these shared experiences anyway, and that’s what you remember when you’re grey and old, the experiences you’ve shared with others. And for everyone we’ve met while gigging, it’s never felt like a band-fan relationship for us, it’s always a personal thing where a lot of the friends we’ve made have been through the band, which is just this kind of amorphous bubble of Wasters who wanna drink, busk on street corners and travel round the country to gigs. It’s beautiful believe me!

3. I love the new EP and the remixes. What’s up next?

Cheers for digging the EP, it’s pretty exciting for us to have so much collaboration and all these amazing artists remixing our tracks, I never in a million years thought we’d have a Ragga-Jungle remix of one our tunes! I think in the future we want to collaborate and experiment as much as possible, it’s just too much fun not to. I think the ongoing collaboration between ourselves and MC Amalgam has really helped to push us with the experimentation and style, while keeping the overall vibe and message.

We’ve all finished Uni, and we’re moving to Bristol together as a band, so it’s really a time in our lives just to get out there, live it, and try new things. It’s just fucking cool that we’re in a band with all our best friends to experience that!

4. Tell me about covers. What are the songs you’ve covered live onstage that you found you and the rest want to do it over and over again during shows?

Poised to play the accordion.

We’ve started covering Classics of Love, by Common Rider. They are the first band Jesse Michaels started after Operation Ivy split up and they’re just amazing, have the best ethic and message, but are also criminally underrated. Will Tun has been getting into loads of music with really fast, spoken word style lyrics, and Operation Ivy have been one of the most important bands for the rest of us growing up, so it just made so much sense to try and put our Folk/Ska vibe on it. Add in a hip-hop verse from MC Amalgam and BOOM! there’s a cover, Wasters style. It’s a real bounce along jam vibe, so I don’t think we’re gonna stop playing it anytime soon.

5.  You are currently supporting Blackbird Raum( I have seen a couple of live videos on youtube and I think they are exciting). How  was the gig?

Supporting Blackbird Raum was amazing thanks- they’re doing something unique with their sound within a rich vein of American bands that have come out of our generation, the likes of Mischief Brew, Guignol, Savage Wasteland Collective, all the Plan-It-X bands.

The United States has produced so many great bands, but I don’t want to fetishize their musical heritage, what I find really exciting now is all the UK bands doing it for themselves- Damsel, Ash Victim, Dangle Manatee, Bandit the Panther, Let’s Go Nowhere, Perkie, Olive Anne, there are too many to name! The sad thing is, I’ve spoken to a lot of people who are quick to be dismissive of this style of music, they say it’s boring or that it’s ‘not real folk-punk’, whatever that means. But for anyone who’s been to a free DIY house-show, spent time watching poetry in a shed or jamming in a field drinking cider til 4 in the morning, then you’ll know just how welcoming, supportive, open-minded and accessible this scene is, and any music that represents values like that is fucking amazing in my opinion.

6. Autumn is here (and soon Christmas holiday). What are the exciting things that happened to WTATW this Halloween?

Plenty of exciting things are happening to us this Autumn- we’re starting a whole new chapter of our lives by collectively relocating to the city of Bristol as a band. We’ve got a bangtidy 7 bedroom house where we can put on a shitload more house shows and really devote ourselves to honing a sound for our first album. Before any of that though, we’re going to be touring Ireland with our good friends Jake & the Jellyfish. We’re finishing the tour in Dublin with one of our favourite bands Chewing On Tinfoil so it’s a real dream come true!

To me the Irish musical culture always represented what we’ve wanted to represent as a band, and that’s that ‘everyone have a go’, inclusive sort of vibe. Even if you’re not necessarily a musical maestro you can pick up a set of spoons in a pub and get involved in the jam. In that way it’s kind of a spiritual homecoming for us, even though we’re obviously a product of being born and raised in our particular community in Reading.

7. While growing up, what’s that pivotal moment in your life that made you decide you want to be a musician? 

There wasn’t really a specific point in my life where I wanted to be a musician, I’ve just always thought the release that you get from going to a gig is unlike anything else. When you’re 15 and you go to a Rancid show,  and you just get that “wooooaaargh” factor, well I guess I thought it’d be fun to get that buzz for yourself, and now we’re living it with Wasters. It’s fucking fantastic, there’s still nothing like having that connection with a whole crowd of people all in it together.

8. What can one find in your suitcase/backpack when you are touring? What are the things you can’t leave behind when you hit the road with the gang?

I normally have more books than clothes in my bag with me, and enough space for a bottle of cider of course! Our bassist Ivo found a nice leather suitcase in a bin about a year ago that we’ve been using as our merch-bag ever since- we’ve branded out into Will Tun & the Wasters chili hot-sauce that we sell on tour. We’re trying to come up with more ideas for ridiculous merch, so if you have any suggestions let us know!

A collection of clips from their tour of Ireland with Jake and the Jellyfish in October 2013
The song is Wandering Ways from our debut EP from 2010 ‘A Year Wasted’
Available for free download at willtunandthewasters1.bandcamp.com

Check out Jake and the Jellyfish athttps://www.facebook.com/Jakeandtheje…
Their facebook is https://www.facebook.com/willtunandth…

Keep looking for that double rainbow ;)-WTATW

Dark Dealings: The Dark Interview with Novelist Karen Victoria Smith

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Plus: Riders by Dave Hum, Brendan Hendry, Brendan Mulholland and Paul McSherry, Kinfolk and Will Tun and the Wasters

Blog:  Storyteller’s Grove   http://kvictoriasmith.blogspot.com/

Goodreads:  http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5830445.Karen_Victoria_Smith

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/KVictoriaSmith

Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/116156670429771791626/posts

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/karen.k.smith.37

Pinterest:  http://pinterest.com/kvictoriasmith/

Wall Street has fangs. In a 24-hour world, does anyone notice the unusual behaviors of many, including the reclusive rich. When international power brokers, vampires and shape shifters hiding in plain sight, threaten  Micaela and those she loves, will this heiress to a Druid legacy deny her power again and let others die? Can she accept the friendship and love of others with strange and frightening powers? A thrill ride of money, magic and murder across the globe.

Do you sleep better at night believing that vampires are things of fiction?

It is the first time that CMF features a novelist. I think that those who read Dark Dealings will really know why she is making a stir in the literary world. Through the twists and turns of this story, Karen Victoria Smith incorporates traditional Irish music either as a way to describe a feeling of the moment, an incident music or the tunes around characters when they go to a ceilidh. This is after all a story that merges Celtic myths and vampire horror. For those who haven’t picked their copy of Dark Dealings, I recommend you do it now. It is a great read.Very satisfying and full of suspense and action. You won’t be disappointed. In fact you will keep coming back for more and wish for a continuation story of the characters. It is a book with a lot of HEART, WIT and LAUGHTER. You will know more through this interview:

CMF You created an interesting character in Micaela. How many percentage is she you?

 

KVS: It is an interesting process. I did not set out to create a character that was me. But writers write what they know. And by that I don’t mean just that because I worked on Wall Street that is what I write about. We, as writers of novels or music,  know emotions and experiences; we know our life and the lives of those near and dear. I was recently talking to a friend about a difficult decision I had to make but wasn’t ready to make. I said I was just going to put it up on the shelf and deal with it later. I suddenly heard Micaela’s voice coming from my lips. She is in some ways a lot like me.  But good characters always get to do the things we wish we could do and say the things we wish we could say. Micaela is perhaps my alter ego in that way.

You told me that Dark Dealings is “It has been a labor of love. A tribute to all I know and have learned”. How strong is the knowledge of Celtic mythology in your family?

The knowledge was stronger in my grandmother’s generation. She is my Una (Micaela’s grandmother), but not so much in my parents’ generation. My grandmother instilled in me not only basic knowledge as a small child but a love and curiosity for my Celtic/Druid heritage. I began to seriously reconnect with that heritage in college and have pursued it since.  My dream would be to live in a traditional cottage in a  small Irish village where I could write and smell the earth and feel the energy from the land.

Your characters unfold gradually as opposed to in your face kind of vampire treatment. Do you have a liking for things that are implied in writing?

I have always like novels of discovery.  I want my readers to see my characters change and grow and, in the process, become dear friends and family, even the vampires.  I am a throwback to in my approach to writers like Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, even Stephan King.  I can only wish to approach their caliber of writing, but I like the tension, the relationships to evolve. It is so important that reader feel like a novel is an experience in which they are a participant and not an observer.  When I read as a child, I always imagined myself to be a character in the story. That extended to my favorite television shows and movies.  I wrote some of it down but never kept it.  Guess today you would have called it FanFic.

Dark Dealings is certainly not your typical vampire novel. We are dealing with a career woman dealing with powerful people and war of wits. Is this going to be a chronicle?

It will be a chronicle of both Micaela and a number of the characters in Dark Dealings. I am currently working on edits for Ogham Court, which is based on Devlin, Nora, Aine and set primarily on the street where the Salmon Run Inn and the Singing Stone is located.  Relatively minor characters in Dark Dealings but who have developed lives of their own that I suspect one day will come full circle back into Micaela’s life.  Micaela as a strong career woman is again a reflection of my personal career path before a became obsessed with writing.  She is also a product of my taste in female characters. I could never stand helpless females waiting always to be rescued.  Even when I read Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (hardly paranormal horror LOL) I identified with Jo. She was smart, strong-willed with a hidden vulnerability, with a sharp tongue that was sometimes her undoing.

I think one of the things that are worth noting is how the relationship between the characters unfold. When we think of Nikki, her tale is kind of ‘sneaky’ because who would have thought there is more to her than just working as a law enforcer. Are you more into the characters or the plot?

I think both are important. But I consider myself character-driven.  I start with a rough sketch of a plot and the theme. I spend a lot of time in the beginning developing my characters and they continue to reveal themselves in each round of edits.  For me, it is taking well formed characters and sticking them in tough situations and watching how they respond and are changed as a result.

 Where did you get your inspiration for the Baron?

Beyond my central interest in my Celtic heritage, I have been fascinated by old European royalty before the late 19th century. Two of my favorites are the English , particularly the Tudors and the early Russian dynasties. Both are so deliciously dysfunctional full of treachery, murder and political intrigues.  I actually debated the end scene for the Baron (trying to avoid spoilers here). Could have gone either way for him.

If ever this becomes a movie, who do you see playing the role of Liam?

I have some thoughts on this but I would really love to have readers chime in on my Facebook page with their suggestions or to  my Pinterest board for Dark Dealings.  I love seeing for my work and the works of others how each reader brings their own interpretation to the character. It is a shame we lost Heath Ledger, though 

The book is like a sly predator. It starts gradually and the last parts become really explosive and action packed. This isn’t one of those sentimental romance novels masked as vampire fiction. was deviating from the typical vampire franchise your intention?

LOL, I most definitely do not write romances.  The recent trend in vampire and shapeshifter fiction has been very light, right up to vampires that walk around in the daylight.  It was not always like that. Vampires and other preternaturals  can be multi-dimensional characters yet they are capable of great violence.  I am actually a huge fan of Laurell K Hamilton and her Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series.  Ms. Hamilton builds intricate worlds of preternatural creatures in an alternates and very edgy universe.  Her plots and subplots are not everyone’s taste as she pushes the envelope on sexuality and violence.  But at the same time she explores questions of power and what it means to be human or a monster.  The Trueblood television  series is similar in that it does not sugar coat the needs and desires of the humans or preternaturals.  Lestat in Anne Rice’s chronicles is also from that same genre.  Ms Rice’s beautiful writing is I think pivotal to the resurrection of the paranormal genre beginning in the 1970’s and 1980”s

I think there can be romance but that it must be the light part of a very dark world.   It is part of the exploration of the character whether they are a normal or a preternatural.  In Celtic tradition there is the balance between the male and the female, the light and the darkness. Balance does not always mean 50-50. AS the light and dark half of the day the balance changes throughout the year and is part of the cycle.

Dark Dealings is an LGBT friendly fiction where characters like Connie really shines. Has the current political climate gay rights also influenced your writing?

 

Frankly no.  The current political climate is wonderful but a step in the evolution of society that began decades ago.  When I first imagined Dark Dealings, it came from the recognition that most non-Judeo-Christian cultures have some form of the vampire and shapeshifter. I wanted to develop an international multicultural world for Micaela to move in. It seems a natural extension that a diverse world be just that …diverse.

Somewhere in my upbringing, twelve years of Catholic School notwithstanding, I developed a more pagan philosophy regarding all living things. It perhaps comes from the Celtic acceptance of all the possibly creatures that populate the Otherworld and this world. Or maybe growing up in the post-Woodstock generation.   In my world, as in my life,  people do not come from cookie cutters or in one flavor. It is the variety that makes life an exciting ride.   In the middle of Dark Dealings, Micaela goes to her grandmother Una to talk about creatures and thing which are not supposed to be.  Una’s response is that “we who have touched the Otherworld know differently.”  I wanted to create a world in my book and the books that follow that accept that all things are possible and valid. It sounds trite but if we can accept the premise of vampires and werewolves who seem just like us than why not LGBT characters who are three-dimensional and powerful characters in their own right.  I love the character of Connie; she is smart, quick with a weapon when needed, a powerful shapeshifter and a loving and loved partner who happens to be another woman.  Regardless of sexual preference I want all my characters to be multi-layered and complex. I did not set out to make her lesbian but as she evolved she spoke to me and told who she was.  She is in some ways the perfect foil for Ethan or perhaps a hint at a less stuffy side of him.  I suspect we will see more of her.

Amazon page:  http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Dealings-ebook/dp/B007Z9DEEI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1339463063&sr=1-1

Barnes and Noble page:   http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dark-dealings-karen-victoria-smith/1110689732?ean=2940014403795

Kobo: http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Dark-Dealings/book-CsfyASlwhkGw-LavyIuQHA/page1.html

Smashwords (for other formats) http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/157380

Available in print through Amazon.

Also in print at CreateSpace eStore: https://www.createspace.com/3868445

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Featured MP3: Riders by Dave Hum

http://www.davehum.com/

One of the tracks taken from the album Travelling Light. I will have a full album review soon.

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Featured video: Brendan Hendry, Brendan Mulholland and Paul McSherry

They have a CD Tuned Up. Review also coming up soon.

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Featured Band: Kinfolk

http://www.myspace.com/kinfolksongs

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/kinfolksongs

Bio:

Kinfolk are Brian Mcdaid and Gerry Power. Brian and Gerry met in south of England in 2000. Both were working in different bands, and involved in different musical collaborations. Gerry was busy on the London singer songwriter circuit playing suppot spots to established artistes such as Nils Lofgren, Colin Blunstone, Geno Washington, Bert Jansch. Brian was poised to go to America having just been offered a deal. Since that meeting they have worked together with a number of other musicians, mainly playing live venues throughout the UK. Since late 2004 they have been drawing on their shared musical heritage to create KINFOLK and their debut album: THIS LAND.

Brian was born in Glasgow, Scotland. His parents are from Donegal and Fermanagh in Ireland. Gerry was born in London of Irish descent, his parents coming from Cork. Both share a similar musical heritage being influenced by traditional and contemporary folk music from Ireland, Scotland and England. For Brian this influence was inevitable – his uncle was the lat Irish folk legend Corny Mcdaid.

Typical of many young people, their musical experience and experimentation developed over the years. These included rock, pop, jazz, funk and country. However throughout their musical careers they have always maintained a strong acoustic and folk link.

This meeting of musical experience has produced a song writing duo that has flourished and developed together. They have produced songs of quality diversity, appealing accross a wide range of folk music tastes.

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Up and coming: Will Tun and the Wasters – Star of the County Down- Acoustic Cabin Sessions

They will be my featured band around mid-October so watch out for an interview with someone in the band .

Celtic Punk, Wooden Flute, Northumbrian Pipes and Irish Inspired Prints.

/ mrbaxteria2008 / Leave a comment

Stephen Ducke on wooden flute

Play it again Stephen!

I featured an e book about learning how to play the tin whistle by Stephen Ducke. I told you how amazing that book is. It has 430 MB of files containing music, texts and illustrations will be enough to give you all that you need to get you started. Well, this guy doesn’t just teach one instrument. He teaches a LOT of instruments including the wooden flute. He makes amazing music too. Just take a listen to his myspace page and it will give you a good impression if not tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about Irish maestro Stephen Ducke. He now lives in France. He also runs www.tradschool.com which I posted here from my previous article but didn’t realize who the man behind the site is.

http://www.myspace.com/stephenducke

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Featured band: Greenland Whalefishers

If you think Norway is just about melancholic Scandinavian music then you are wrong. The Greenland Whalefishers not just ruins the stereotypes, they also bring a kick…yeah more like a kick in the eye with their brand of Irish music or Paddy

Greenland Whalefishers

rock. Whoa! And check this out, this guys have been on the road for 16 years! They love what they do, they don’t apologize for the awesome music and they are performing live in the Czech Republic this week. Yes get your socks rocked with the Greenland Whalefishers!

http://www.myspace.com/greenlandwhalefishers

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Featured MP3s: Will Tun and the Wasters.

Will Tun and the Wasters

Don’t let their wacky pictures and band bio fool you. These guys are SERIOUS about their music. I was impressed by the amount of craft they put on every recordings. They are Will Tun and the Wasters, a young, fiery and energetic 7 piece folk punk-ska band from Reading, England.
They occasionally add in a bit of gypsy to their song repertoire as well as collaborating with a French Rapper called MC Amalgam!
These 3 tracks  are from our latest release “Time is a Bastard”.

http://www.reverbnation.com/venue/318780#!/willtunandthewasters

https://www.facebook.com/willtunandthewasters

They have an interesting bio:

Deep in the winter of ’09 a lonely group of introspective alcoholics (AKA The Wasters) who were sick of having nothing to show for their drinking, decided to legitimise their actions by forming a band. Naturally this was to be a folk-punk band. One fateful night at a party after a few, the ebbullient Burmese violin/guitar maestro Will Tun steps on to the scene and a union is formed. The only trouble is he doesn’t know how to drink and he likes coldplay. Thus begins the fusion of two opposing worlds into the weird, smorgas board band dynamic of Will Tun and the Wasters. The Wasters learn to play music properly (kind of), Will Tun learns about punk rock and cider and somewhere in that process some songs got written.

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Featured Video:Kathryn Tickell – ‘Lads of Alnwick’

Kathryn Tickell and band (Peter Tickell – fiddles, Joss Clapp – guitars, Julian Sutton – melodeon). Song taken from a live set recorded at The Zodiac, Oxford. 8th September 2004

Prior to hearing her through The Sky Didn’t Fall with Corrina Hewat, I already posted a video about her. But you don’t really get to know an artist’s music unless you listen to an entire album. The northumbrian smallpipes are really great to hear and no one plays it like the way she does.

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Today in pictures: Eva McCauley

Have you seen the works of Eva McCauley before? If you haven’t check them out. Intense stuff. She is a painter and print artist. Well, it was a surprise to know that he is also the mother of famous bodhran player Jacob McCauley.  I never realized Jacob has an awesome mom! Eva is the Founder & Director of Riverside Celtic College,  in Guelph, Ontario. These images are about her latest exhibit.

Eva McCauley: Painter and print artist.

More of her artworks can be found in her official site: http://www.evamccauley.com