We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rob Carty and Guy Nunnellee (known professionally as the Semitones) a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Rob and Guy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about the best boss, mentor, or leader you’ve ever worked with.
Rob Carty: Since we’re a duo, it’s only fair to nominate the one boss who both of us worked for: the great Audrey Baker. Because she’s the only one who fits the description, she’s also technically the worst, but she was so good that we’ll suspend that unfortunate quirk of logic and just label her as the best—especially since we were such terrible employees. This has nothing to do with music, though.
Guy Nunnellee: Well, it does, a little. This job helped us finance our equipment in high school. In addition to being in bands, we both worked summers at the Spring ISD textbook warehouse, along with four or five other young students. We’d go to schools in the district, retrieve boxes of textbooks, take them to the warehouse and unbox them, and bates-stamp the inside covers with serial numbers using those fancy mechanical ink stamps. Then we’d box them up again, and ship them to different schools. Audrey’s job was to keep us on track. Sometimes she succeeded, but mostly she didn’t.
Rob: We were nice kids, but we tormented this poor woman in the most loving and respectful way.
Guy: The job involved a lot of cardboard boxes. The bottoms of these boxes were lined with heavy cardboard rectangles. Man, those rectangles could fly! Audrey walked in on us one day. We froze, as if to hide what we were doing. And we’d have gotten away with it, except these rectangles kept falling out of the air. She turned around and left.
Rob: Then one day Guy went to the hospital because we were riding to the dumpster on the back of a friend’s truck. Guy fell off and collected gravel in his scalp and back. His day was ruined. I’m sure poor Audrey was just thinking about workers’ comp and how the work-safety sign would have to be reset to “zero days.”
Guy: There was also this truck driver named T-Bone. T-Bone kept us laughing because he was unbelievably vulgar. Like when you asked him how he got his name.
Rob: But still, Audrey figured out a way to love us all. She’d take us out to sumptuous lunches. She didn’t have to do that, and heaven knows we didn’t deserve it. I remember a place called Ma Goodson’s in Tomball, Texas. Chicken-fried steak that drooped off the edge of the plate.
Guy: French fries, too. My mouth still waters.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Guy: Rob and I are a two-man band called The Semitones. We mainly play two-man versions of songs we’ve heard throughout our lives. If you own a venue or are planning an event that needs a fun vibe where people can mingle in a relaxed environment, we can give it to you.
Rob: We’ve done it all: wineries, wedding rehearsals, and all kinds of parties. We even played a car show on top of Canyon Lake Dam.
Guy: And we livestreamed a set from a sailboat on Lake Somerville.
Rob: We’ve been working together for so long that we just click instinctively. The groove is easy and fun. The harmonies are tight. Folks have a good time when we’re doing our thing.
Guy: Our current set list covers a lot of ground. We play everything from the Beatles to BadCo, the Eagles to Extreme, the Foo Fighters to Filter, Colin Hay to David Gray, Supertramp to Squeeze.
Rob: And all points in between. Even a little Ted Nugent. But don’t let that scare you—it’s an acoustic rendering.
Guy: Our list changes over time, but we can fill about three hours of playing time.
Rob: Fun fact. Satchel from Steel Panther has called us “the second-greatest band in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.” We have the video on our socials.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
Rob: Man, we can’t even spell NFT.
Guy: You mean my doodles can be a currency? My youth was wasted.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Guy: The very fact that we’re still playing music together after more than 40 years is a monument to resilience.
Rob: Outside the Rolling Stones, it’s hard to find guys who’ve kept a partnership alive for this long.
Guy: Our story spans four decades. Rob and I met in high school. I played piano, he played guitar. Rob taught me a few things on the six-string. I’d already had ten-plus years of piano training, so I picked it right up.
Rob: Our first band was called Blue Gypsii. Yes, that’s the correct spelling. We played it all. If it was on KLOL-FM, it was in our set list.
Guy: Then college happened. We went to different schools that I won’t name, but we both transferred to UT Austin. Together again. In 1985, The Interns were born.
Rob: We played a lot at the Beach Cabaret just north of the UT campus. Spin Magazine’s Michael Corcoran recently called the Beach part of the “Angel’s Triangle of ‘80s indie rock bands,” along with Liberty Lunch and the Continental (https://is.gd/MCArticle). It’s now known as the Crown & Anchor Pub. We also played at the South Bank down on Barton Springs Road, which later became Zax and closed a few years ago.
Guy: After college, our jobs took us to different places. But we never lost touch, and we never stopped playing. Fast-forward about three decades. Rob moved to Canyon Lake, and I was in Cedar Park. We got together one weekend and brought out the guitars. After a few beers, The Semitones came to life.
Rob: This wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t resilient. And sympatico.
Guy: And patient as hell.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/semitonestexas/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SemitonesTexas/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCZTat2U7qSTLK9rsIXtqEQ/videos
- Other: Email: [email protected]