ANTHONIE TONNON: Looking At Both Sides
An interview by Tim Gruar.
Innovative musician Anthonie Tonnon and his full band have hit the road, touring their show ‘Leave Love Out Of This’ across the nation, including Palmerston North, New Plymouth, Hamilton, Waiheke Island, Mosgiel and Queenstown and a raft of festival gigs, including Poneke’s Cuba Dupa Festival this weekend. The popular festival, based around Wellington’s Cuba Mall area and Dixon St is expected to bring crowds numbering in the thousands after the event was cancelled over the two previous years.
During my regular commuter train ride, I had the opportunity to chat with Anthonie Tonnon via phone to ask him about his upcoming appearance at Cuba Dupa, working with a band of ‘Robo-Cops’, and innovative ways to merge public transport and rock’n’roll.
Back in May last year, Anthonie Tonnon won the Taite Music Prize for his remarkable album ‘Leave Love Out Of This’. Because of the recent restrictions, there wasn’t really a good opportunity to put this work out on the road until now. There were small tours, and local shows, one-offs and then there was the ‘Rail Land’ (More on that later). Now he’s on the road with his band touring the country with the album at last.
As I walk through Wellington Railway station, I dial Tonnon’s number and settle in on a quiet part of a commuter railway carriage. Initially, I ask him about the album and it’s intricate themes.
There was a rumour, an assumption, in some press quarters that ’Leave Love Out Of This’ was inspired by growing up in the Rogernomics era, the mid-1980’s. I ask his if that’s an accurate picture.
“Well, sort of,” he says. “But I feel that was a little distorted. The album, well I was looking at that bigger picture. What it means to be part of a generation that was born in the late 80’s. We had decided to create this post-humanist, economically rational society that depended on rational actors. I guess that children, like myself, growing up in that period, if you got the incentives right, would become ‘perfect geniuses’. We would be perfectly attuned to bring ‘market thinking’ to everything we did. But that’s not necessarily how it turned out. It made me think about whether having this thinking, being so economically equipped – does it change how we act in Society? Are we more harsh, ruthless or better prepared?”
“For instance, I went into my first two jobs having to know how the Individual Employment Act now works and realising you have to be this incredibly powerful negotiator because you are individually negotiating with your boss with every new role. In previous times a union would do that – for better or worse. But having done that for my early career, I was better prepared than those that were part of the ‘old’ union structure. Yet, all of that, for maybe 50c/hr more in the long run? Is that all worth it?”
He continues. “Having this economically rational view, how does this effect how we take on, or not take on, relationships? But we can’t go back. The old state run model, the welfare state, government owned enterprises, they were all deconstructed by the time I got to employment age.”
So how does all this translate into music?
“In the song “These Two Free Hands” – as an example – it’s about a career counsellor who’s having an existential crisis about what to advise their students on, their potential career options.”
“I had this experience growing up in the late 80’s slash early 90’s. You go to the careers councillor’s office, and you fill out a survey on the computer and it would tell you what you are going to do as a job. So, this song is thinking about the changes in work, about all of the job market in this new economically rational society. Jobs you can’t be recommended for ‘you’ because they don’t exist yet or are waiting for something in the future to happen first. Maybe those career councillors won’t be around by the time we leave school and start training. Everything goes so fast.”
As a writer, I ask him how he approaches these very complex problems. Because he seems to think quite deeply about them.
“Yes. But I’m not a black and white sort of writer. I try to be more, mmm, abstract in my narratives, if that makes sense? I like to get complexity into songs, and I believe you can get complexity into them.”
“I don’t feel compelled to take sides, with good or evil, hero or villain, or whether that’s systems or people. I try to do is situate characters in something wider than themselves. And I guess that’s what’s happening in ‘These Two Hands’. The Careers Councillor is dealing with this situation in the wider environment of a changing world, created by the economic policies of the 1980’s.”
It’s not just economic policies that drive his ideas. ‘Entertainment’ is a discussion, he says about executives in a media organisation discussing TV programming.
“You’ve got two people on either side of a debate in a media organisation debating what ‘Joe Public’ wants to see on their television. Like, does a forestry worker in Tokoroa want serious reporting and analysis? Or do they just want escapism and the NZ version of an American reality tv show, you know? Both sides have valid points. But it’s also quite ridiculous having people in Auckland, on massive salaries, debating what ‘real’ people want.”
And shaping the national conversation or creating diversions away from subjects we should be talking about. Like when marijuana law reform was distracted away by other petty topics at the time when the referendum went through.
“True. The characters in that song are arguing from different points of view. I try to look at all sides. Especially when there’s a character I don’t agree with. I try to find their point of view. I try to find some empathy with them. Their mindset. If nothing else, it’s more therapeutic than shouting and raging at them. If you come from a particular side of the political spectrum, you can often feel like you are on the losing side of history. So, it’s healing to try and understand where the other side is coming from. There’s something about walking through the ‘process’ in someone else’s shoes.”
Tonnon got to walk, or ‘ride’, in another’s shoes when he became involved in an initiative to launch a new high-frequency bus service (called Te Ngaru or The Tide) in Whanganui, where he now lives. The new service runs from Aramoho to Castlecliff every 20 minutes from 7am until 7pm, Monday through Thursday, and from 7am to midnight on Fridays. Until recently, the city had very poor public transport services, especially weekend evenings. But that wasn’t always the case. “In past years it had a very good and efficient service,” he says. “I was brought in based on my Rail Land experience and knowledge of public transport.“
So, Whanganui owes this reimagined bus network to Tonnon, who is also a public transport enthusiast and served as the Whanganui District Council representative on the Horizons Regional Council’s passenger transport committee. Tonnon’s knowledge of public transportation history in Whanganui influenced the design of Te Ngaru, which effectively reactivates some of Whanganui’s old tram routes. “We built our city and housing along tram routes,” he said. “This bus route is a connection of two tram routes, the old Aramoho tram route and the old Gonville-Castlecliff tram route.”
“I came to it through music. I was making a music video for the song, ‘Old Images’. We ended up making it about the Dunedin Railway system which I didn’t know anything about. Even though I come from there. I was completely shocked to find the city had a suburban railway system like Wellington, and it was still running until 1982. I was also shocked to learn I grew up in this new era to learn that all these things, like the railway were closed or taken away. The Dunedin of my youth, we had infrequent diesel buses and we were told that’s all there was and all you could have in such a small city.”
“That sent me down a bit of a worm hole exploring public transport options in small towns and cities across NZ. A lot of small towns were served by trains or by NZR busses. We had that incredible inter-regional bus network, once. These were Government owned and run in the public interest, not purely for profit. And they worked quite well. And they disappeared in my lifetime. NZR was sold in 1993, for example. And yet there were still good bus services still going until the 2000’s. This closure has all happened on our watch.”
“And I didn’t just want to bemoan it. I want to do something. I think what isn’t working is a musician just writing a political song and that’s it. Back in the 60’s and 70’s musicians wrote songs to inspire political movements. But that’s not how it works today. Now protest songs are just making a noise on one side of the argument. Protest songs don’t work anymore. You can’t just be a political artist, left to inspire others. It might have worked in the era of the Vietnam War or the Springbok Tour. But not now. Then the support came from the biggest voting block. But my generation isn’t that voting block. They don’t have the numbers to make political and actual change. You have to get in and do it yourself. That involves looking at both sides to work out the solutions.”
“Why not try and do things? Artists are in an interesting position. They are used to being innovative, doing things no one asked them to do. In the 1980’s model there was an expectation that a bus or train service, for example, had to make a profit. That it couldn’t just work and enrich people lives, without financial reward. But artists can do things as much for the reward of the process as for the money earned. So, I wanted to do something positive. And what I could do is create shows – like Rail Land.”
He’s referring to his ‘Rail Land’ project which took in over 20 venues over the summer of 2020/2021. It’s what Tonnon describes as “a tour celebrating public transport in Aotearoa…a journey of the mind, through song and story, about New Zealand’s on-and-off again love affair with its railways, and its public transport system.”
Where possible, the show was accompanied by an experience – a communal journey by rail or public bus in places where services no longer exist. Chartered transport ‘to bring Rail Land to life for one night.’
“And in that show, we would charter a bus or train, or ferry and take an audience all together to a show. It was great because instead of me trying to convince people to use public transport, to get to a show, they came along as part of the show. And they had a great experience, had a wonderful time and got to experience the value of something that happens now. We are in the age where affecting change, like adding new buses takes years, feasibility studies etc. Nobody in the political world seems to be able to get things moving fast enough. We could just do it. But I could make a bus just turn up, people can ride it to my show and get familiar, expect it, even. Experience it now and demand more. And these were really successful.”
“After I did the one man shows in Whanganui where we brought back the night bus, I asked ‘why only one night?’ What can we do to get these working permanently? I started lobbying, and through that the Mayor then got the councillors onboard. Which is how the Whanganui Council, where I now live, got involved. It took three years, but it feels good to do this. Buses are the ‘gateway’ drug for train services and many other things.”
He feels that there’s an opportunity to connect public transport to a show, as a wider package for the audience – transport to and from the gig or some other way of dovetailing in, to make it easier to get off the couch and participate.
Tonnon also helps operate the Dury Hill Elevator, Whanganui’s equivalent to the Kelburn Cable Car. “I like to get involved with as much as I can. These are a number of artists who also work here. It’s another way to experiment and collaborate and connect.”
“Musicians can really help by thinking about their audience’s need. They can schedule their shows to start or finish if we time our shows to go with transport timetables in time for people to catch the last bus or train. People are more willing to come out if they can have a guarantee of a good time and be able to get around safely. Because there’s something that we as musicians can do that Netflix or other streaming can’t. We can get people, no matter how small the audience, to come out of their houses to a show. And that’s something in this day and age. We have that power. We have to acknowledge that and respect our audiences. Meaning, the audience will respect us, too. They will make more effort to come out because they have the certainty of a good and safe night out.”
“At my Taite Awards speech I raised this, that artists have a place in society for other ideas, they can inspire different thinking and use of spaces, transport options, buildings anything because they can look beyond the economic models. They have the imagination. Instead of being on the side-lines trying to inspire change, get involved in the change.”
“A show is quite an opportunity, a miniature society that you create for the night. There are no rules that you can do with that society, you can choose how you communicate with people that respect you and so long as you maintain that and respect them back you can do anything.”
Tonnon is also community minded in other ways, planning his upcoming tour with a focus on Festivals, like the upcoming Cuba Dupa, including additional regional shows as well. “I thought maybe we can build something, because I’ve played there as a solo artist – Dunedin, Palmerston North, and Whanganui and others.” He wants to get back there, where there is already some audience waiting. But also, it would be good to be on those bigger stages.
“It’s a dream to be playing festivals. It takes a long time to develop our material. Sometimes our material isn’t directly associated with festivals, pop music. Maybe not as ambitious as you want to make. But for me, I think, it’s better to make more challenging music, more creative and I’m finding that the audiences are coming along and embracing that. They are maturing and more accepting of the variety we bring. Because festivals are different to your own show. Not as well known or understood. Bringing our material, a safe space to do that. Cuba Dupa is a place we can do that.”
“Earlier gigs, a few years ago were harder because we didn’t have those festival venues, which are more financially sustainable. As a band our partnership was small venues, sometimes solo, but now it’s more fulfilling to play those bigger venues. We are getting to do these summer tour experience of festivals and smaller venues. We did Splore recently and it was a really marvellous and quite surreal experience. I think the divisions between what was obscure and what is accepted as popular is fluid – audiences are really growing in their acceptance.”
While Tonnon lives in Whanganui, the rest of his band members are spread out around the Motu. Like many acts, they cope with the separation and can easily come together as a unit after working together for a number of years. There’s drummer and long-time collaborator (since living in Dunedin) Stuart Harwood; North Island based David Flyger (bass); Poneke’s keyboardist Brooke Singer (French For Rabbits) on synthesizers and samples; and electric guitars and percussion by Sam Taylor (Nadia Reid).
Tonnon describes his band as ‘Robo-Cops’ a mix of live performance, controlled by Tonnon himself with synths and other equipment, like a puppet master. “It’s been experimental at times working with drum machines and live drumming. We had to build a new way around things. We didn’t want to play just pre-sequenced stuff and waiting for when it was ‘our turn’ to add in our contributions, you know?”
“So Stu, for example can be playing electronic drums to the point where he needs to bring in the acoustic drums. But if there’s a point where he can’t do both, then I trigger the electronic drums. So, we swap backwards and forwards, naturally. We’re all moving as much as possible. But everything is connected up to Midi’s too. I can put filters over what a player is doing or distort what Brooke or Stu is playing. Dave’s guitars go through two deluges, so I can manipulate that sound in real time. We’re all kind of interlinked in this way – half human, half machine. A meeting place between organic and digital.”
Anthonie Tonnon will be performing at 8.15pm tomorrow (Saturday 25th March) on the Wellington Airport Ngā Taniwha Stage at the CubaDupa Festival. For more information on CubaDupa you can check out their website here. Anthonie is also travelling his way around the country on his ‘Leave Love Out Of This’ Tour, for more information including how to purchase tickets head on over to his website here.
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