The Last Act

The History of TLA

// February 25th, 2011 // Comments Off on The History of TLA // Uncategorized

We have had a few questions around the history of “the Last Act” the past few months. So we thought we better write a blog post about it! So without further adieu…

The oldest members in the band are Jeff and Paul. And yes they are twin brothers. Yet Jeff is the only member who has stayed and kept the band together since the mid to late 90’s.  Everyone else has left, left at least once, or been asked to leave. With the exception of Jason and Taylor, the current guys.  They haven’t been in long enough to be kicked out! =P

The first TLA disc was released in 2000.  This was after the long time drummer at the time had left the band high and dry before they went into the studio. So it was just Jeff and Paul. The replacement drummer they met up with to do the CD with was in Kamloops.  He was an old friend of Jeff and Paul’s from school. This turned into a big fiasco, lots of drama, people getting ripped off, etc. A long, sordid, and drawn out story which we won’t cover here.  The good thing about all of that was the guys were introduced to the studio (Small World Studios) and Henry Small (think singer from ‘Prism’, album ‘Small Change’). Unfortunately the first attempt at recording in Kamloops was a wash. The band finally ended up using the studio drummer for recording the first CD on the second trip out to Kamloops, and Paul was singing. Good songs, but a seriously dated CD and the vocals are not bad, but could have been better. And a lot of lessons learned.

The next disc was “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” and was released in 2005 with a new band essentially. It was also produced by Henry Small and recorded at his studio in Kamloops. Paul had left the band by this point, but Jeff, Stan Engelage, Colin Murphy, and Shawn Speirs put together a pretty good CD with this incarnation of TLA. Unfortunately it was also quite dated. All of this was realized too late, well after the disc was released and started to receive reviews.  Not a lot of promotion was done on that disc until it was 2 years old…which at that point was a little late. According to Jeff “Everyone had the best intention to do something. But if you don’t have a plan, like we didn’t, time has a way of flying by with no results of any kind. Before we knew it 2 years had gone by and nothing had been done! So I started working on it”.  It was up in front of a few A&R execs at the beginning of the promotion, but they all said “nothing special” or something similar.  So Jeff figured he better learn how to promote it on his own. He sure learned a lot from this in preparation for the third disc, “Still Standing”.

In late 2007 the band started in on “Still Standing”.  The working name at that time was “Problem With Authority”.  In early 2007 some desktop wallpapers/pictures were released with the concept art and this name on it…a collector’s item if you can find it (I know where to get some)!  Stan Engelage had left the band due to time constraints and Paul Larsen joined up in November 2007. Colin Murphy had also left the band as he had another band he was playing with and TLA became second to what he was doing with them. The band brought a guy onboard to sing after that for 6 weeks but it was determined he was not a good match for what TLA was doing.  Same day that decision was made (and executed by asking him to leave), Jeff got a  call from a young guy who was a singer/guitar player looking for a band. There is quite a story around this, but we’ll call it fate for this tale.  The guy was Jason Turnbull, and a week later he was the front man for TLA. What sealed the deal was after giving him the music for “Is It True?”, the guys asked him to take a shot at melodies and lyrics. And he came back with what’s on the CD now, lots of the harmonies and everything.  Pretty impressive.

:: To be continued next week!  Stay tuned! ::

— Janet Sawchuck,
Writer for TLA and TLA Web Admin

‘Dated’ versus ‘Old Skool’

// February 18th, 2011 // Comments Off on ‘Dated’ versus ‘Old Skool’ // Uncategorized

Jeff and Megadeth 2006!

This topic is pretty confusing for a lot of people, and rightly so as these terms are often used interchangeably…but according to us (TLA) they shouldn’t be! Therefore I wanted to give you all my (our) viewpoint on it and hopefully add some definition to this area because people sometimes get confused as to what we are doing here with TLA. So here we go a defining dated versus ‘old skool’…

First, let’s define what TLA means by ‘old skool’. By ‘old skool’ we mean REAL hard rock. The kind of hard rock that has no era. The kind that could be dropped in today and would fit. Granted it would probably be a little different than it was when it was released given the influencing forces in music at any given time, but all in all it would be the same.  Bands like Black Sabbath, Led Zepplin, the Who, old Rush, etc. In other words the kind of hard rock that was being created when hard rock and heavy metal meant pretty much the same thing: hard, heavy, and timeless.

We look at dated versus ‘old skool’ when writing. The main features we are looking for when defining whether or not something is dated versus whether it’s ‘old skool’ are a few of these kinds of items:

• Are there new/modern elements in the song? These must exist, and be quite prevalent. Otherwise the song will be dated.
• Could the song be dropped into an era (80’s, 90’s, 70’s, etc)  and fit perfectly?  Does it sound just like the music of that time? If so, it’s not ‘old skool’ but clearly dated.
• Is the song off doing something new and exciting to the point of experimental? If so, it’s probably not rooted in ‘old skool’ rock. Could even be jazz…you never know…
• Is it heavy?  If so (and we wrote it), it’s probably hard rock. It may even be metal or have metal tendencies (think ‘Habitat for Insanity’), which is awesome!
• There’s probably more…but that’s all I got for now =P  And it’s good enough to make a quick distinction.

TLA’s philosophy when writing is to hit the target of ‘real’ rock. We strive (very hard, I might add) to add the newer elements of rock, try to define our sound to be as unique as possible, and to keep the songs fresh and with a good deal of “TLA flavor”.

We are not trying to recreate or do what has been done before; not at all. We are trying to stay true to the hard rock genre, keeping the songs as close to what we define as the genre’s true nature as we can. So when people say that TLA has an ‘old skool’ sound,  we feel these kinds of comments are pointing at that…the ‘trueness to form’ as mentioned…albeit painting everything we do with the same brush.  So in the end, TLA can probably be described in a sentence or less as:

‘old skool’ Canadian Hard Rock that’s original, new and fresh, with a ton of great melody.

There. That was easy right?  Anyways, I hope this week’s installment helped clear things up for some folks. If not, well, we’ll have more tunes coming soon so you can probably figure out what we are doing for yourself.

Keep it heavy…and Up Yur Act!

–JL

CD Easter Egg Contest

// February 17th, 2011 // Comments Off on CD Easter Egg Contest // Uncategorized

And we don’t mean the kind you get at Easter!

On the CD artwork there are 3 hidden items, aka Easter Eggs (version 2 of the disc only…version 1 — aka the Collector’s Edition — only has 1). These were “funnies” or oddities that were intentionally put in to provide some entertainment for those fans who wanted to take the time to hunt for these things.

So we’ve made a contest out of this!

The first 3 people to correctly find the 3 Easter Eggs and email what they are to info@thelastact.com will win an “Ultimate TLA Fan Kit“!

This kit includes:

Basically every product that TLA currently has. All valued at over $120.00!

BUT in order to get in on this you need a CD! You can get one easily through the main TLA website by clicking here or you can get one from CD Baby by clicking here. If you don’t have a credit card or paypal account, you can always walk into your local CD store and ask them to order it from their catalog (a service provided by CD baby…Bless their hearts)!

Contest will run until April 1, 2011 (or until we have 3 winners)

Jeff’s Take on the Guitar Part II

// February 11th, 2011 // Comments Off on Jeff’s Take on the Guitar Part II // Uncategorized

This is part II of the article started last week by Jeff Larsen of “the Last Act” (again, what other band would it be? =P):

The next step was adding guitars to my collection. And I must admit, I am seriously picky about what guitars I want in my collection. At that time, I had no idea what I was looking for. This was in the latter part of the 90’s. At that time I had heard that Jackson had a good rep and I wanted to check it out. I went to the store and I found a flat black Jackson designed by Marty Friedman, formerly of Megadeth (he was still in the band at the time). This guitar had a real Floyd Rose, played like a dream, and it was built for speed. I got that guitar 30 minutes after I tried it.  I have added a couple of more Jackson’s to my collection since then, but I also added another Dean. I went back to the same guitar store that I bought my first Jackson from in 2007 and was just in there to fool around on the guitars and see what was there. I saw a Dean Razorback, Dimebag Darrell edition. I thought “ok, whatever. Just another hyped up guitar. I’ll try it”. I tried it and immediately I discovered that this guitar was going to introduce a new playing style to me and it also played just awesome.  Welp, the decision was made and 24 hours later I had that guitar. And based on the crunch and drive of the sound, I use that guitar mostly now, although I still love the Jackson’s for the ease of play, and the beauty of the play of the Gibson (which honestly, I don’t play as much as I should anymore).

My configurations and settings for things have changed a bit over the years, but I finally settled in on D’Adario .10’s for my strings (on all guitars) and .46mm Jim Dunlop vinyl picks. I like my floating bridges a hair ‘loose’ to remove space between the strings and the fret board (improve the action)…but not enough to make the strings buzz. I use my Peavy head for distortion…such a fuller, more real, overall better sound than a pedal (WAY better sound). All EQ’ing is done on the head, and the Transtube setting is turned way up. I use the onboard switch from the Peavy head to turn on and off the distortion when playing live. The guitar I used on that disc was the Dean Razorback…nice and crunchy.  A good example of the resulting sound is off the last CD “Still Standing”. The sound of the guitar on that disc is almost completely unchanged from the way it sounds live. The Boss ME-8 pedal is used for effects such as flanger, harmonizer (live), and delays.  In the past year I have added a Sennheiser ew 172 G3 Instrument Wireless System, and this thing is incredible!  I love how it’s easy on batteries, and I also like the onboard sensitivity settings, cable length emulation, and tuner!  Great stuff! And last, but not least, a ‘Steve Vai’ passive volume pedal with a stopper (actually a rubber door stop) glued in so it won’t go more than ½ way down to zero. I use it for when I need that extra “punch” during leads and such.

Maybe some of this will help someone in their quest to find the perfect setup. All I can say is, try, try again until you get it sounding just the way you want it to!  I always thought “real” is better than “processed” (i.e. pedals and preamps), but that certainly doesn’t mean I’m right. It’s one big experiment! So good luck and I hope you all that are searching for the “grail” find it!

–JL