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TMO interprets the past for today

It’s no good trying to be Sid Vicious when your bandmates are thinking more along the lines of Bob Dylan.
C04-tequila
Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra is a band with a diverse background that has appeal for a wide variety of listeners. They’re at the Vat on Thursday.

It’s no good trying to be Sid Vicious when your bandmates are thinking more along the lines of Bob Dylan.

Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra’s singer and accordion player, Ian Griffiths, learned this the hard way when he tried springing a new tune called Mountains of Fire on his West-Coast-based band members.

“I was thinking of it as a punk song — I wanted it sung loudly and aggressively,” he recalled. But whenever other musicians from the high-energy band known as TMO joined in, the sound turned into something slower and mellower.

Yet in the end, the collaborative version “was 10 times better than what I had tried to force as a songwriter,” said Griffiths, who told this anecdote to explain how songwriting is always a team effort, in which all the musicians add their own unique ingredient.

For TMO, which performs on Thursday at The Vat in Red Deer, songwriting has always been a mixed bag.

The group that’s been described as a gypsy-ska-roots band is made up of five musicians from diverse backgrounds: Standup bassist Peter Mynett has a jazz foundation, while percussionist Paul Wolda excels at African drumming. Guitarist Kurt Loewen used to play in a reggae band, and violinist/ mandolin player Patrick M’Gonigle is currently studying at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Griffiths, who was raised in Hinton and later took environmental studies at the University of Victoria, spent a couple of years learning the flamenco guitar in Spain.

He counts among his own broad influences the late singer Camaron de la Isla, whom he considers “the best flamenco singer who ever lived,” the French alternative folk group Les Ongles Noirs, and the Vancouver Island roots duo Fish and Bird, whom he praises for making “fabulous, beautiful music.”

TMO (a pun on the Harper Lee novel To Kill a Mockingbird), has a big West Coast following, and has played across Canada and the Pacific U.S.

During a recent 14-shows-in-14-days tour of Vancouver Island, Griffiths recalled playing to a crowd of 70-year-olds in Chemainus one night, then the next night at a “sweaty” dance party in Nanaimo, at which there was nobody over 25.

Griffiths believes the ability to appeal to vastly different audiences lies in the band’s knack for taking classics, such as the Gospel Plow Appalachian tune, the gypsy standard Dark Eyes, or the klezmer Jewish Anniversary Song, and giving them a unique TMO twist.

“Hopefully we’re taking the old and we’re making it new. Whatever it is, I feel it’s working, if we’re able to play to old folks and young folks and they’re all digging it.”

While the group also comes up with lots of original material, paying homage to the past has become a TMO trademark.

“Like it or not, you’re always drawing on influences from the past,” said Griffiths. “You grow up listening to music that sneaks into your head.”

For more information, call The Vat at 403-346-5636.

lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com