Timber Timbre

Features On the Cover Apr 2011

By David DacksTimber Timbre are happiest when visually represented by spooky, blurry and otherworldly images that evoke their music. But as their popularity grows, demands like photo shoots increase, so the band have taken a break from rehearsals to convene in the faded 19th century glory of Toronto's Great Hall for a new photo session. Everyone is affable, but no one is particularly comfortable. Front-man Taylor Kirk fidgets with his shirt and both he and lap steel player Simon Trottier seek tacit approval from violinist Mika Posen before posing in front of a slate backdrop. The sharp focus of the scene elicits an "oh my god, this is painful," from Kirk. Timber Timbre's magnificent new album Creep On Creepin' On will see the media's glare bear down harder than ever before, again and again requesting insight into how an enigmatic, highly personal project has become amplified and diversified by its metamorphosis into a full band. Timber Timbre is experiencing growing pains, but they're all in this together.

The photo session isn't the only source of bewilderment today; rehearsals are also a new concept for Timber Timbre as they try to translate their new record live. Kirk remains front and centre as supernatural raconteur, but the band's finely nuanced experimentation is like a kaleidoscope of grey. Though Creep On Creepin' On suggests a prom night in hell circa 1956, influences of eerie film composers Angelo Baladamenti and Ennio Morricone are more pronounced than ever. "Suddenly I feel a certain amount of pressure to recreate to some extent what that record sounds like," says a typically introspective Kirk. He's not fretting openly but his apprehension is clear. "A lot of these songs are really weird to play. We're just now trying to find some time to sit down as a group and play these songs. I don't know how we're going to do this."

Mika Posen and Simon Trottier joined Timber Timbre in 2009; she comments "it's still pretty new for [Kirk], playing with a band. The last record was still mainly Taylor's project and was put together as a live band afterward. With this record it was the first time we're sitting down together and trying to figure out how to do things for a live show."

Both she and Trottier speak of Kirk protectively, respectful of the strength of vision bound up in Timber Timbre as a solo project. Though guest musicians have graced most of Timber Timbre's records, the essence has always been Kirk's personal vision, which evokes the many moods of rural, if not necessarily beautiful, settings. Comparisons have been rightly made to painter Andrew Wyeth and author Flannery O'Connor's unsettling natural abstractions. Kirk was raised near Brooklin, ON, and though he's no farm boy, he admits an affinity with natural themes so common in Canadian singer-songwriters. "The nature thing," he deadpans. "Rural spaces can get really romanticized. For me it just goes back to my childhood, then living in the city and missing that space. I think that a lot of people who are in Toronto that aren't from Toronto [miss it too]."

Kirk spent his first few years in Toronto (and has since relocated to Montreal) as a drummer and guitarist in various bands without a burning desire to start his own. Timber Timbre came about after an extended stretch in a cabin in the woods. "When I started to write, I was looking at recordings of old folk music and kind of imitating that songwriting. I've tried to move away from relying on that sort of thing." His first album, 2006's Cedar Shakes, yielded a deeply introspective but not melodramatic soul whose music had a strong back porch vibe. Back in Toronto Kirk found himself associated with a collaborative scene of recombinant players preoccupied with nature and spirituality that would produce Ohbijou, Ghost Bees (now Tasseomancy), Forest City Lovers and most notably Bruce Peninsula.

Bruce Peninsula is where Daniela Gesundheit met Kirk. She's the front-woman for Snowblink, who will be touring with Timber Timbre this spring. "I moved here in 2008 from California and [Bruce Peninsula] were an immediate portal to the Toronto community. We all had gone up to a cottage to work on songs," she recalls. Kirk, she says "was a little shy, but we had a nice rapport from the beginning."

Gesundheit describes the growing mystique of Kirk's Timber Timbre persona, which by then was starting to inspire ardent admiration from friends and fans. "He's really attuned to his surroundings. Some people dance, some people get a little teary, often people are totally entranced and really, really present which is really rare. Sometimes people are at a show and they're daydreaming. That's not the case with him."

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