Trin Tran

Trin Tran, the one-man band project of Steve Coombs, came about after the dissolution of Coombs' mid-'90s group, Xerobot, a local staple of the small-town scene in their hometown of Madison, Wisconsin that packed up for San Francisco in 1999 and broke up shortly thereafter. Coombs, who had been drumming for the band, returned home to Madison, motivated to make music but not eager to collaborate. Based in part on an emphatic belief in live, computer-free performance, Coombs started the all-live, no-overdubs project in 2001, singing and playing guitar, drums, and keyboards simultaneously, working out a rugged post-punk sound owing much to Devo, the Fall, Klaus Nomi, and the more explosive rock influences that guided Xerobot. Coombs worked on Trin Tran in his limited spare time, lots of his days being committed to work and a growing family, but he slowly built an archive of basement-recorded material while playing occasional local shows. Recorded output existed mostly in the form of home-burned CD-Rs and a 7" or two until the release of 2007's larger-scale full-length Grows a Rose. Sometime in the early 2010s, popular garage rock icon Ty Segall discovered Trin Tran and became a massive fan, going so far as to reissue older recordings on his Drag City spinoff imprint God? in the form of 2012's Dark Radar full-length. This was followed by an EP of new material in 2014 entitled Far Reaches, this time released on Castle Face Records, the label of another noted Bay Area garage rocker, Thee Oh Sees' John Dwyer. Trin Tran played more shows in support of these releases, expanding from the one-man band format to a full-on trio, including Coombs' son on guitar.
© Fred Thomas /TiVo