The History of TLA
// February 25th, 2011 // 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
