The Motor Tom are Nick Schupak, Andrew Henry Harding, Luca Bertaglia, and Chris Agar. Some think they are the best band in the world. Others haven't heard of them.
The band's fourth record, "Waterfall World," drops September 28, 2020 on Hard Pack Records.
A number of talented chaps have been, at one time or another, members of The Motor Tom, including Anthony Formichella, Jon Merkin, Dan Kirschen, Alessandro Inolti, JJ Lindenthal, Alex Bradford, and, every now and again, Mr. Doug Berns. The final and ultimate form of the band - no disrespect to any prior members - includes the aforementioned Schupak, Harding, Bertaglia, and Agar. And, yes, Oxford commas are the law of the land.
In 2011, Nick was managing a bunch of bands, among them The Shake, New Madrid and WALNUTS. Having proved a manager incapable of helping his clients find stardom, but established himself as an above average drinker, smoker and denim-donner, Nick asked The Shake's lead chap, Jon Merkin, to play some songs with him at Pianos. Exactly one fatherly compliment later, Nick altered his focus from managing bands to playing in one, and within days had tapped WALNUTS guitarist and songwriter Andrew Henry Harding. Andrew had also been a longtime friend from Syracuse University, the institution which fostered artistic luminaries as Lou Reed, Vanessa Williams and Mary Karr, a poet who, wittingly or not, played muse to David Foster Wallace as he wrote Infinite Jest. Anthony Formichella, the bassist from New Madrid soon joined the band and an outfit originally called Clean and The Motor Tom had been officially organized.
During a rehearsal on Jon's parents' house in New Jersey, Jon's dad told Nick, "Nick, you're a smart guy, and I don't mean to step on your toes, but the name of your band fucking sucks... Just get rid of the 'Clean' part." And so, on whatever day that was, one which shall live in comedic infamy, Clean and The Motor Tom became The Motor Tom.
In March of 2012, Anthony, Jon, Andrew and Nick would team up with friend and producer, Gregory Lattimer, to record their first EP, "Meet The Motor Tom" at Albert DiFiore's studio, The Rumpus Room, in Brooklyn, NY. The initial release of the record, under the title of "Tracks," featured four songs: "Subway Tracks," "Late," "Elizabeth Browning," and "Winter Love." The EP would be re-released by Hard Pack Records in 2016, this time under the title of "Meet The Motor Tom."
That same year, 2016, the band, which now included Alessandro Inolti on drums and JJ Lindenthal on keyboards, as Jon Merkin departed to start a family, once again teamed up with Lattimer to record what would become "Super Sexy Space Station." Unlike the more traditional approach of recording "Meet The Motor Tom" in a well-tuned professional studio, "SSSS" was recorded in a barn in Stone Ridge, NY. While the haphazard environment contributed to the spirit, soul and other indefinable, indiscernible characteristics of the album, it required the band to record extensively in living rooms, closets and other made-at-home studio spaces throughout the summer of 2016 before the LP could be considered complete.
Released on Hard Pack Records in March of 2018, Super Sexy Space Station would receive tens of plays throughout the Americas, Europe and what are referred to as the Steppe cultures. Among the notable features of the album's release was a gorgeous music video for the single "Left Out" produced and directed by THEM.TV, a video which has, to date, attracted nearly 100,000 views.
In early 2020, The Motor Tom released the first of what is anticipated to be five EPs, loosely affiliated with one another by cover art and titles that harken back to 90s video games. The lead single off of the first of these EPs, "Weight Off," off of "Lava Land," was described by British magazine Come Here Floyd thusly:
""When you listen to this single ("Weight Off"), you feel you’re just out on the middle of the Sahara desert, and you scream out your grievances to the setting orange sun over the horizon. Relieving and satisfactory, in decadence – the pot marked and riddled world, melts away."