Author: Emma Loggins
Date: 2008-08-20


Interview:
We had the pleasure of sitting down with Tony Lucca at his gig in Atlanta, GA to discuss his career, his time on The Mickey Mouse Club, and his future. Here's what he had to say:

After you finished doing The Mickey Mouse Club, how did your career take shape?

T.Lucca: Well, there were a lot of people that were working down there that were from Los Angeles, like the crew and the various producers and people that were involved in making the show. So I got to know a lot of those people and make relationships with them. After talking to some of them it was obvious that I needed to get out to L.A. and see what I could get into.

I had a lot of people that were willing to represent me, management, agents, the whole nine. It was kind of an obvious choice. I decided to go out to L.A. and I moved when I was 19. I started auditioning for commercials and TV and film. I got a couple of national commercials then pretty much jumped right onto the Malibu Shores NBC series.

From that of course, you go from being in the general auditioning populous of L.A. to the list of working actors that get called in on auditions a little sooner or they go right to producers or you get requested to come in and read for projects. So, from that I got a couple of independent films and a movie of the week. I didn't realize but that was my friend Ron. So, yeah, after a couple of those, basically the momentum kind of wore out, and I got back to not really enjoying the auditioning actor life. It's not very fulfilling. It's very difficult, you have to really be cool with rejection, and I am to a good degree. It wasn't a matter of having my confidence shaken it was just a daily dose of bad news that I just didn't really want to deal with anymore. So, I decided to go back to what I initially loved as a kid and what sort of got me on the Mickey Mouse Club to begin with, and that was my music. So I started playing the guitar again and writing songs and I decided that I had more to say and felt more fulfilled artistically as a singer/song writer than I would as some pin up poster child for some, you know, television series or a good blockbuster movie.

I still love the craft of acting and the collaborative process of film and television but I would certainly prefer to go back after solidifying myself as a music artist, and that is where my energy lies.

Is that something you might do one day?

T.Lucca: Yeah, I mean, you know, if I were to, or once I achieve a certain amount of accolade and prominence as an artist to where having an appearance in a movie would be something that people would sort of chat about or maybe a significant cameo or something. But to try and go back and audition for shows that might strain my effort to make music full time, not gonna happen, no.

Understandable. So now that you've done a number of albums. Tell me how the latest EP is different from the other ones.

T.Lucca: Well, the last EP that I did, EP being like a 5 song thing, is the acoustic one and that's something that people have been telling me that I should do and asking me to do for a number of years, and that's just me and the guitar, to break it down and to tell it how it is. I didn't set out to make a record when I made that recording, I was just at a studio, checking out the studio, and the microphones and the acoustic in the room. We just recorded a hand full of songs and it turned out to be a nice listen. So, we made it an EP.

But that was just sort of in the mean time of my full-length which I just finished making and have put out now.

That's my fifth full-length album. It's called Come Around Again and is definitely a step in another direction for me. It's sort of going back to my original roots of being in a garage band and turning the volume up and playing the electric guitar and rocking out. It's a big rock and roll record and it's got a lot of classic element to it, but it's definitely not what my fans are used to, so we'll see how it fares with them. I ended up making a lot of new fans that's for sure. So, instead of going on tour by myself with an acoustic guitar, I'm actually out with a band and we are rocking it out. So, yeah I'm real happy with it and proud of the record. I'm real excited to be out on the road with a band, and turning it up.