Anthonie Tonnon

Anthonie Tonnon

Anthonie Tonnon is a New Zealand indie pop and indie rock artist from Dunedin, and he records and performs both as a solo act and with the band Tono and the Finance Company. He moves from the city’s outskirts in childhood, spending much of his early life in Fairfield and Chain Hills, and later becomes closely associated with Dunedin, Auckland and other parts of New Zealand’s live music circuit.

Early life and musical formation

Tonnon is born in Tauranga and moves to Dunedin as a baby with his family. He grows up at some distance from the city’s musical centre and gives up formal music lessons at 16 after reaching Grade 6 piano in the Trinity system. He then teaches himself guitar using his sister’s instrument and a chord book from the Mosgiel Public Library, and starts writing songs after realising how songwriting works as a combination of chords and melody.

He teaches himself to play David Bowie songs on guitar, then develops his songwriting at Otago University, where he studies History and wins a scholarship in his first year. He also takes Graeme Downes’s rock music degree course, plays his first show as part of that coursework, and writes a large number of songs during his first year there.

Tono and the Finance Company

While at university, Tonnon starts performing solo in Dunedin and then forms a band. The name Tono and the Finance Company is taken from the flood of finance company advertising in New Zealand before the global financial crisis. The group plays alongside acts including the Biff Merchants, Haunted Love, Baraka and the Finish Hims.

The line-up expands from a solo project into a band by the time the debut EP Love and Economics is recorded in 2008 at the former NZBC studio in Albany Street, with Stu Harwood of the Tweaks producing. The group tours the South Island and plays small shows in Wellington, Raglan and Auckland. The EP is released through She’ll Be Right Records, run by Jody Lloyd, and this helps Tonnon connect with a wider network of musicians, including Delaney Davidson, Marlon Williams and Brooke Singer.

The second EP, Fragile Thing, is recorded in Dunedin and includes Barry Smith of Hamilton, Tonnon’s first significant song to gain attention, performed from the point of view of a Stars in Their Eyes hopeful. By this time he has settled in Auckland and is also playing with Panther and the Zoo.

Move to Auckland and solo work

In Auckland, Tonnon becomes involved in the city’s music and arts communities, especially around K Road and Elam. He also works as a tour guide, writes for Real Groove, reads news on 95bFM, and later makes features for RNZ National’s Music 101. He then works at Golden Dawn as a bartender before moving into a more front-facing role in his music.

A turning point comes when he begins touring with Artisan Guns after taking on a South Island tour-managing job. He meets guitarist Jonathan Pearce, who joins a new five-piece version of the project and helps Tonnon shift from being both singer and guitarist to focusing on fronting the band. Tonnon sells his guitar and amplifier, learns stagecraft deliberately, and uses a mirror to practise performance skills.

Pearce also plays on Tonnon’s first album, Up Here for Dancing, which is produced by David “Tex” Houston. Although recorded in Dunedin, the record reflects his life in Auckland, including songs about possible futures and the experience of being drunk and thrown out of flats in Grey Lynn, such as Marion Bates Realty.

Work under his own name

After a support slot for Beirut in Auckland brings a burst of attention, Tonnon starts performing under his own name when he is told that Tono and the Finance Company will not suit the American market. He then tours in the United States three times as a solo artist, plays regularly in Australia, and tours Europe with Nadia Reid. His live style develops further on these tours, including audience singalongs that become part of his shows.

His first album under his own name is Successor in 2015. The song Water Underground, about then-government minister Nick Smith’s interference with Environment Canterbury, is nominated for the APRA Silver Scroll Award. He also signs to the US independent label Misra.

Technology, themes and later projects

Tonnon builds a low-tech live system using an iPad, a matrix mixer housed in an old VHS case, and modified guitar pedals, after taking a pedal-making night class with the experimental musician and composer Pat Kraus. This setup allows him to rework songs from Successor as a solo performer and leads to Two Free Hands, a song built around a beat. He later switches to a Synthstrom Deluge, a New Zealand-made synthesiser, sampler and sequencer.

He continues developing themed performance projects. A Synthesized Universe, an astronomy-based show developed after an invitation from the Otago Museum’s planetarium, is taken up by the Auckland Arts Festival and draws sellout audiences at the city’s planetarium. He then creates Rail Land, a series of shows built around rail-accessible venues, with rail travel sold as part of the ticket. These performances lead to the EP Old Images/Songs from Rail Land in 2019, which includes new songs and a cover of the Chills’ Submarine Bells, along with singles including Two Free Hands and Mataura Paper Mill.

Mataura Paper Mill addresses environmental damage linked to waste from the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter in Southland, continuing a line of socially focused songs that also includes Water Underground. Tonnon also composes music for the RNZ podcast series The Service.

Public transport work and community role

Rail Land also leads to Tonnon’s involvement in public transport advocacy. After a 2019 Rail Land show in Gonville, Whanganui, he meets the city’s mayor and is later unanimously appointed as Whanganui’s representative on the regional transport committee. He describes this as part of a wider interest in public transport that grows out of his music projects and practical experience of connecting audiences with venues and travel.

Recent album work

Tonnon and Jonathan Pearce continue working together on a third album, Leave Love Out Of This, which brings together singles released after Successor and new recordings, including the title track. It follows the same careful approach to performance, promotion and touring that shapes the rest of his career.