Else Powell interviews Trenton Smith of Hobart band The Trolls.

This is it, your first chance to write a feature, and you can tell it will be brilliant, even before the interview.

Hungry to capture the story of Trenton Smith, your hopes rest unflinchingly on an eighteen-year-old boy with a bass guitar, and a gut feeling that Trenton Smith, basest for Hobart band The Trolls, is every bit as unconventional as the rhythm he produces. 

Trenton sits, back resting against the hectic mural of Hudson’s Coffee Shop wall, fingers drumming lazily on a sticky table with the easy comfort that occurs only in a workplace that has now become a second home. A first glance detects that uninterested, crumpled, half-asleep look of most boys his age, the look we all have before our first coffee. Yet Trenton’s already had three. You swallow your disappointment and, crossing your fingers around the handle of your own mug, pray that his coffee will kick in soon. Because there’s nothing quirky here yet, just a mellow boy with an immunity to caffeine.

You ask why he likes the bass and slowly a grin stretches itself across his face. Caffeine induced or not a buzz is now evident behind Trenton’s eyes. An original take on the ska and reggae characteristic of ‘walking bass’ allows Trenton to make his playing “a little bit funkier” than your average bass player. He starts explaining the ‘walking base’ jargon but quickly gives up, humming it instead in an eclectic rush that can only come from love, not three tall, skinny, extra shot cappuccinos with butterscotch. In any case you’re drawn into his passion for a rhythm you can’t quite understand.

There’s something contradicting about the casual mannerisms of the boy opposite and the highly charged rhythm behind both his eyes and guitar. Taroona High School teacher Michael Powell recalls The Trolls returning as old scholars to perform at the school. You ask of Trenton’s stage presence predicting the music to bring out in him a frenetic, caffeine-rush style of dancing. Instead he’s described as self contained, relaxed in his own world “as if in a trance.”

“I’m just in it for fun.”  Trenton’s early musical endeavours show fun really is the basis for his quirky sound. At the tender age of nine, Trenton won the Mt Nelson talent show with his musical ‘ear farting’. But similar stage quirks from the somewhat mature Trenton are too frequent to be recalled. “That’s the problem,” offers band member Jason Graham “he’s like that all the time.” Suddenly it hits you. There is an inbuilt weirdness to Trenton that, combined with a self assured nature and an off hand sense of modesty does not need to be on show. “We don’t try to do weird stuff, we just sort of find it works.” Trenton explains, “It sort of reflects our personality.”

“I’m surprised he’s not a girl,” sister Morgan Smith confesses to the childhood sin of inflicting fairy costume dress-ups on her brother. Tou-tou shoved firmly back in the closet, The Trolls often support acts that dress one way in a rehearsal only to change completely for the show.

“We just don’t feel the need to. Metal bands, ‘emo’ bands: it’s all about the image. But with our sort of music I think it’s more about the music cause we’ve got no image at all.”

Minus an image and in abundance of weird songs, The Trolls seem a perfect metaphor for their basest. Trenton has an obvious dislike for artists who use music to express strong political or religious views. “They could play good music but when you start singing ‘praise Jesus or you’re going to hell’, I dunno, it starts getting sort of…” I think the word Trenton is looking for may be pretentious. Because there’s one striking thing about Trenton: he’s had ample experience in an ostentatious industry and pretension escapes his personality.

Ignorantly, you congratulate Trenton on The Trolls being part of ‘Triple J Unearthed’ and are informed immediately that anyone can upload their songs to the website. He pauses before sneaking a sly smile because “some person” (he can’t remember who) gave them four out of five stars “they liked our stuff… I was pretty happy with that.” Finally, you think you’ve pinned his casualness down to vagueness. He tells you he finds being recognised awkward; “they come up and go ‘oh you’re in The Trolls,’ like you don’t want to go ‘oh yeah I am’ cause it sounds really up yourself.” You realise you’ve mistaken vagueness for modesty.

Trenton tells you he’s recently had a bout of “throat cramp”. Morgan tells you he’s a hypochondriac. Regardless of who is right, there’s no doubting the strong friendship behind the playful bickering of the brother and sister. As Trenton retreats to singing along to the Hudson’s soundtrack Morgan laughs, “You know all songs, even the ones you hate.”

A family befitting a muso, all The Smith’s (except Morgan), have played either bass or drums at some stage. Trenton himself started playing an acoustic guitar but became bored of it. Upon finding his Dad’s old bass guitar Trenton “whipped that down and got a few lessons… it was excellent.” The chemistry of the three ‘Trolls’ benefits greatly from this early discovery although Trenton stresses “If you can’t connect as friends there’s no way you can connect as a band.” Despite having only known his band mates for three years, Trenton rarely sees anyone else “it’s kind of depressing really” he laughs but there’s no doubting these guys are “friends first, band second.”

Now working as a full time supervisor at Husdsons, Trenton completed grade 12 at Rosny College last year. Plans to travel at the beginning of next year are well underway for the Trolls. Trenton tells you he, Troll brothers Jason and Corey Graham and “whoever wants to come” will travel overseas to “relax, play a few gigs round the place. I dunno, just get out of Tasmania for a bit.” Momentarily his hands rest open palmed on the coffee table, marking his assurance that their motivation is “not to try and get big or anything, just to have some fun.”

It’s the absence of an image or the need to self promote that disguise the quirky in Trenton Smith. You write one hundred odd drafts, all trying to capture the weird, the mellow, the coffee and the music, none of them work. He may not have an image but there’s nothing average about the guitarist who prefers the more unusual Trenton to Trent.

“Gotta make up for my last name!”

By Else Powell

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