They say we all have to start somewhere. Dave Munro started with a four track recorder and some time on his hands. Serving as an air traffic controller with the US navy, the Boston native used his downtime to craft a string of catchy, disarming alt-pop songs, which would eventually form the backbone of his band, you guessed it, Air Traffic Controller.
Now a six-piece, they’ll release their debut UK single, Hurry Hurry, on December 9 and follow it in the new year by rolling out ‘NORDO’, their second full-length, on these shores. On November 26, they’ll make their London bow with a show at Buffalo Bar in Islington.
“The navy has airports, so I was working in the tower or radar rooms,” Munro said. “Whenever I was off I would just be in my barracks or my room, military housing and stuff like that. Somebody sent me a four track recorder and that’s just how I started making songs. At that time it I’d only been messing around with cover songs and I brought my acoustic guitar everywhere with me, but once I wound up alone that’s when I really started getting inspired.”
Once Munro was back home, things quickly snowballed. A small following had sprung up after demo tracks filtered back to friends, meaning that Air Traffic Controller, with the help of a little DIY, quickly became a tangible thing.
“People in my hometown just expected me to come out and play when I got home, which was great,” he said. “I did a little bit of that, just on a local level, but I always had like dreams of doing something bigger. My brother, my drummer, had a space in his basement that we soundproofed, put up walls, a glass divider and built a real recording studio in his house, started bringing these songs to life.”
The next step for the band was serendipitous, and involved Munro’s songs getting through to Bleu, an in-demand pop songwriter and producer who was immediately keen to work with them on what would become their debut, ‘The One’.
“One of our friends just sent it off to a producer, a guy that we really liked, just to see what he thought. It was Bleu,” Munro said. “He heard one or two songs and wanted to produce them. At that point I was back in the States but I was doing some more air traffic control stuff out in Oklahoma. I got the call from Bleu about recording with him and I was travelling back to Boston, just doing pre-production over the phone. I didn’t even have a band at the time.
“When we got in the studio I basically just called everybody that my brother and I knew that played. We tried to get all of our friends on the record. When we released the album they played some shows with us but some more experienced players came after that and this record [‘NORDO’] was more of a collaborative effort with all the members.”
At the heart of ‘NORDO’ is Hurry Hurry, a pop song that is both light and searching, with a bouncy melody and infuriatingly catchy chorus. The track was something of a departure for Munro, who was tasked with writing something that could stand alone.
“We had most of the album recorded and Bleu was telling me, ‘I really want to hear a song that’s a single,’” he said. “We were pretty psyched about what we’d already recorded and he kept pushing me to record something that was upbeat and serious, and not a love song. That was actually a lot of pressure for me.
“I usually don’t write anything on command. The songs just sort of happen to me in life and I just start writing them down. For him to say, ‘go write a song’, it was a lot of pressure. That really came across in the lyrics too, it’s about being under pressure and trying to do everything at once. Making the record was stressful enough and then having the pressure of trying to make it better was more stress. I started thinking about everything around me that I had to keep up with.”
Air Traffic Controller UK & Ireland Tour Dates are as follows
Tue November 26th 2013 - LONDON Buffalo Bar
Fri November 29th 2013 - LONDON Dublin Castle
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