Five Questions with Tonk

October, 13, 2009 , by Karen

Chances are, you know someone in Tonk, because between them, these guys have been in approximately 700 bands and have played everything from metal to bluegrass to hip kids’ music. But none of those bands has sounded like Tonk - or at least none of them has sounded the way Tonk has been described. Not only has Tonk not yet played live, they don’t have any music out there for listeners to sample. Your first chance to see them live will be this Saturday at the Cooke Street Carnival. That makes Tonk the first band with whom we’ve done a “Five Questions” interview without having actually heard them first. Based on the individual band members’ reputations it should totally rock, in a theoretical way at least because they’re actually a honky tonk country band. Plus they’ve worked the Lowenbrau theme into one of their songs. They get an A+ for that alone.

Bass player Ben Barwick (Mommie, The Ashley Stove) answered Five Questions for new Raleigh in advance of the show. The band is scheduled to go on around 5 p.m. Saturday, but you should be there all day anyway because the whole event looks like fun. Oh, and if you simply must hear them before the show, they’ll be on WKNC this Friday, Oct. 16, at 7 p.m.

1. Who and what is Tonk, and what do you guys sound like?

Tonk is Graham “The Night Honkey” Fry on the vocals and acoustic guitar, Lin Peterson on Telecaster guitar and vocals, Ben Barwick on bass and vocals, Bo Taylor on drums, and Shepherd Lane on the pedal steel guitar. We play country music the way God intended it to be played, that is, country music pre-somewhere-around-1978. Heavy on the Ray Price shuffle-walking-bass-line sort of thing, but bleeding into a Waylon / Paycheck harder honkey tonk style. You know, anything before the Eagles and Pure Prairie League bent country music over a barrel and had their way with it.

2. Do you do any covers? Which ones and why did you choose them?

We have a mix of covers and originals. We are working in more originals as we have time. We want to get the theme from Lowenbrau worked in there, “Here’s to good friends, tonight is kind’ve special, the beer we’ll pour, must say something more….so tonight, let it be Lowenbrau…” We like Wynn Stewart, Buck Owens, Johnny Paycheck, Charley Pride, of course Waylon Jennings, Doug Sahm, the Louvin Brothers. We do, in fact, play “Night Life” by Ray Price. So watch out for that.

3. Ben, Shep and Bo play together in Mommie, and when I first heard the name “Tonk” it made me think of a Tonka Truck. Will your music be appropriate for kids too, or is this strictly adult?

Tonk is not necessarily strictly only for adults, we wouldn’t think it would damage children badly if they heard us, but we are more aimed towards a crowd that would be awake late at night doing things children don’t normally do. Or course, we consider Mommie our sister band. But the members of Mommie don’t really think of themselves as strictly a kid’s band either, so…I guess as long as we’re playing good, either band could get along with either audience.

4. You guys haven’t played a show, and don’t have any recordings, and yet you already have 184 friends on Facebook. How did that happen?

Tonk likes friends, but nobody ever partied or cried or sang a song on Facebook, so our Facebook friends are going to have to come meet us at our two shows we have coming up: Sat., October 17 at the Cooke Street Carnival, about 5:30 pm and also at Seaboard Station, with Mommie, Fri., October 23, at 6pm (http://www.seaboardmusic.com/news.html). Tonk is going to be on the radio (WKNC 88.1) Fri., Oct. 16 at 7pm.

5. How do you guys have time to be in so many bands?

We don’t! But you can’t stop Tonk. Or Mommie, or Leadfoot, or Old Habits, or Bandway…it just really won’t stop.