I first stumbled upon The Tiny Tin Hearts last November. I'd stopped by Momo's late one night for a nightcap and loved the sound that this sprawling orchestra was creating. Since then, they've been getting their live act polished, winning competitions in The Chronicle, and now they are set to release their debut album. Time for Indie Sounds to talk to band leader Seth Osborn.
Photo by Valerie Fremin
Indie Sounds: When and how did The Tiny Tin Hearts get founded, and how did the name come about?
Seth Osborn: I started putting the band together in early 2007 mostly by posting Craigslist ads for musicians. I was looking for string players, horn players, guitar, bass, drums - the works. I had a batch of songs that I could play on either the piano or the banjo and I had this vision for a large ensemble that could create a wide variety of musical textures using acoustic instruments and performance instead of effects or digital sounds.
The name comes from the Hans Christian Anderson story The Steadfast Tin Soldier in which the hero, who is a tin toy soldier, falls in love with a paper ballerina and when she falls into the fireplace, he goes in after her. She burns up in seconds and he eventually melts. Afterwards, all that is left of him is a tiny tin heart. Kester, a good friend of the band and frequent guest singer, knew I wanted to reference that story in some way and he suggested the name, "The Tiny Tin Hearts."
IS: How did the band as it is now take shape?
Seth: The first two members besides me were Donald who plays trombone and Jenni who plays French horn and trumpet. It's amazing to me that either of them stuck around past the first practice - they were either more confident than I was about this project or more desperate!
At the time we practiced in the studio where I taught piano and the three of us would meet each week and play through my songs and try out other musicians. They were both so enthusiastic and positive even though at that time actually creating a full band seemed so distant from where we were. Within a couple of months we added Melanie on bass and Jim on cello.
A few months after that, we found Sean who plays guitar and lap steel and Jessie who plays drums. We started playing gigs at that point. Our first real gig was at Emo's on January 29th, 2008 - almost exactly one full year after Jenni and Donald and I first met up to practice together. A couple of months after that we added Dan who plays violin.
The songs I write are fairly unusual and I have always had a wall-of-sound aesthetic. I wanted a band that could do the wall-of-sound thing that I have kind of been doing since high school but with a lineup that was as unusual as the songs I was writing. I liked the idea of creating a huge sound by layering instruments on more the way an orchestra would. It would also allow individual players to create melodies and counter-melodies within the chords to weave a tapestry of tones.
Through high school and college I had been the leader and songwriter of a band that was a three-piece and performed my songs (and the guitarist's songs as well) as huge monoliths of sound and complex textures using a lot of electronics, sampling and keyboards. I have gradually lost interest in all the digital stuff (only when it comes to my own songs, though) while still going for a big full sound and a variety of textures. So I wanted to put together a band that could do some of the same things that my old band could do but with real instruments. I wanted a range of sounds and timbres to work with so we could pull it all together into something rich and strange and big sounding.
For the most part, I'll write the songs - lyrics, melody, chords and structure - and then we'll all have a great big arranging session to put all of the parts together. This is another really appealing thing about the big lineup: a lot of people with very different ways of looking at music all jump in and create one coherent sound. We get pop tunes that have classical, bluegrass, jazz, folk, rock and country all mixed in. So the songs are unusual and the arrangements are appropriately unusual as well.
IS: Who is who in the current lineup, and what did everyone do before TTTH?
Seth: There is: Dan Eversole on violin; Jim Korioth on cello; Melanie Martinez on bass; Donald McDaniel on trombone; Jessie Poole on drums and percussion; Sean Ziegler on guitar and lap steel; Jenni Wielan on French horn and trumpet. And I play piano and banjo and sing.
As for the history of the individuals ...
Melanie had recently left the Lisa Hayes Band and was working as a serigraph printmaking apprentice at Coronado Studio's Serie Project, pursuing another of her many artistic pursuits.
Jim had taken an 18-year sabbatical from music in order to devote himself to the study and practice of law. Following a career-ending health crisis, he found his way back to music when he joined The Tiny Tin Hearts.
Donald has spent the last 20 years in accounting as a CPA in both public accounting and industry. He is currently a senior financial consultant for Dell in corporate reporting. His music connection is that he was a music educator for nine years and holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in music education.
Jenni had been playing and recording occasionally with various pop groups and soundtrack composers but had always wanted to find a more permanent band. A performance of Tommy led to her meeting me through mutual musician friends.
Jessie passed up a music scholarship to Tulsa to move to Austin and play music in 2005. In the summer of 2007, he found himself sitting in a dorm room at UT avoiding mindless homework and feeling the frustration of yet-another musical fiasco that had ended much too late. He vowed adamantly before his then-girlfriend that he would join a new band and play a show before year's end! Fate would have it that he instantly stumbled across our tiny ad on Craigslist.
Dan played classical violin for years in youth orchestras around
Philadelphia and is now working on his doctorate degree at UT, using
lasers to destroy cancer cells.
Sean had been performing with a variety of country and singer/songwriter acts around Austin.
I was in a local band called This Life Electric when I decided that I really wanted to be playing my own music since that was what I moved to Austin to do in the first place. I had a list of songs written and so I left TLE, which sadly broke up about a year later.
IS: You just finished making an album - tell us about making it, and who was involved apart from the band?
Seth: Making Last Flight of the Martyr Aviator was amazing. We recorded at Bruce Robison's studio, Premium Recording Service, which is a fantastic place. The album was produced by George Reiff, who has been an active musician and producer around town for a long time. He has worked with Jakob Dylan, The Dixie Chicks and Ray Wylie Hubbard, to name just a few. He did a beautiful job translating our big complicated and sometimes chaotic sound to recording without losing any of the quirkiness that makes this band cool.
Most of the album was recorded live with the whole band playing as an ensemble as opposed to track-by-track recording. We had to overdub some strings and vocals and a few percussion parts but beyond that you're pretty much just listening to us playing together.
Steve Christensen did a fabulous job engineering the sessions and also ended up doing the final mix for one of the songs, Luke. There was a great team of interns working at the studio while we were there - they were all pleasant and friendly and we still run into them occasionally around town and they remember us, which is flattering! We also had a great group of friends and well-wishers who stopped by the studio to take pictures, bring treats and lend an ear. It was a great overall experience.
Steve and George. Photo by Melanie.
IS: Another name question: Last Flight of the Martyr Aviator?
Seth: This was inspired by Emilio Carranza, the Mexican pilot who, in 1928, made the third longest non-stop solo flight ever. Shortly afterwards he crashed his plane in the Pine Barrens (we're supposed to call them Pinelands now) of southern New Jersey. I'm a Jersey boy and except for the four years in college I spent living in Philadelphia, I lived in New Jeresy until I was 24 and moved to Austin, so I've always been inspired by the landscapes and people from my home.
After a late night trip with my roommate to the Carranza Memorial outside of Tabernacle, New Jersey, I felt a fascination with Emilio Carranza that has never gone away. It stayed in my head for years and then I wrote the song The Aviator and we named the album after it. It's not really so much about Emilio Carranza - I just used his life as a springboard to inspire the lyrics of a song.
So many of my songs involve some form of transportation and love - the two topics are compelling to me and they came together in the lyrics of that tune as I imagined the thoughts going through someone's head as they realize their plane is crashing and they will never get to see their loved ones again.
Many of the lyrics from the songs on this album are also at least partially inspired by New Jersey - Navesink, for instance, is the river in northeastern Jersey that my grandparents' house is near. Luke was written about returning to New Jersey after a long trip out to the desert and Love and Jet Engines was written about a trip to New Jersey from Austin.
IS: What are the plans to release and distribute the album?
Seth: The album is available at Waterloo Records and will be available on iTunes very soon. It can also be purchased at any of our shows; we will be having a CD release party on September 25th at The Parish. Opening for us will be Mother Falcon, and afterward Deadman will perform.
IS: How does the live show compare to the record?
Seth: The great thing about the record is that you can really hear every instrument while still getting that big full sound. We're known for playing epic full sounding shows but a lot of instruments get lost in those shows. The strings and the vocals can get buried easily - even the banjo and horns sometimes get lost in the volume of the ensemble. On the record it's all right there for you to hear though. George Reiff really managed to capture our live sound while cleaning things up a lot. We're all thrilled with it and it sounds beautiful.
IS: Do you plan on touring to promote the album?
Seth: Touring is not really in the works right now unfortunately. The size of the band makes it difficult and we have a lot of financial stuff to take care of with this first album before we can really think about the expense of touring. Perhaps after the second album. We have been playing some shows outside of town, though, in Dallas, San Antonio and Kingsland and they've all gone really well. I hope we can do some more performances in other cities before long because it's a great experience.
IS: Are you looking to get the album picked up by a label, or seeking other representation?
Seth: We aren't currently looking for a label right now though I guess if the right offer came along we'd consider it. So far, we've been running the business ourselves (we have two accountants and a lawyer in the band) and it's been going pretty well. We will hopefully be looking for a manager before long who can take over some of the promotions from us but right now we have several members that are very active in scheduling gigs and promoting the music so we do pretty well.
IS: Which major act would you love to open for?
Seth: We have such a list! I'd love to open for Paul Simon, Sufjan Stevens or Arcade Fire. I know some of the other folks have The Decemberists, Maceo Parker, ELO and Nick Cave on their lists.
IS: What's next for TTTH?
Seth: We're working to generate enough music for a second album while being right in the middle of the release of this first one. I guess the idea is to create another album next spring and try to release it around this time next year. Then maybe we can think about a tour in the summer of 2011. It seems a long way off but we have a lot to do before then!
[Editor's note: I do still like TTTH, even though they beat out the lovely and talented Sarah Sharp in the Soundwars competition. Don't do it again, guys.]
Web: www.thetinytinhearts.com
MySpace: thetinytinhearts
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