“Be yourself and do what you love. It might not take you to the moon, but at least you’ll find your people and where you belong.”
Photo by Kati Baldwin
Opus & the Frequencies is genre-bending band lead by Tony “Opus” Williams on vocals, piano and guitar with Steven Tapia-Macias on bass, Jesse Tortorella on drums and Kirk Barnes on guitar. Their fun high energy live shows, and eclectic set list that is the perfect mix of originals and covers, has positioned them to be a Columbia favorite.
JASPER: How did Opus & the Frequencies come to be?
O&TF: Tony describes it as a heist movie, when the lead thief has to assemble a team, each brings something unique to the table. He first met Steven, bassist and social media guru, and Joud, our future sound man and equipment extraordinaire, at jams in his off-campus apartment while they were students at South Carolina. Tony had known Jesse, the drummer man, from some other gigs around town and he was the next to be collected. Then when he was working at Campus IT, he had a co-worker whose boyfriend played guitar. He went to meet him, and check if he was really worth a damn since everybody plays guitar, so Kirk was the last of the Frequencies to be brought into the fold.
Since Tony briefly thought he was a Pokemon trainer, and he set out to catch ‘em all, with the group originally having several different members and line-ups before finally settling into Opus and The Frequencies.
JASPER: What does your writing process look like?
O&TF: Everyone in the group is different, but we’ll focus on Tony since he writes the majority of the lyrics. First, he’ll have an idea that basically starts worming its way into his ear. Then settling into humming and singing melodies and different instrumental ideas before going to the piano, or occasionally guitar, to play around with it until something more occurs to him. Once settled on things like melody and chord progression, he’ll usually use fill-in, “dummy,” lyrics until he can sit and have some time to flesh out the lyrics seriously. For F.A.M., we have a very early recording, probably the first day we had been messing with it so all it was a guitar riff so Tony starts to sing “I’ll Make a Man out of You” from the movie Mulan, for whatever reason that was what spoke to him the most in that moment. As for the whole group if we’re doing group writing day or something to that effect, we all bring our own individual ideas, but just jamming on something, liking it, and then running with it is our usual M.O.
JASPER: You guys, Tony specifically is all about conveying honest emotions on stage. Can you talk a little more about that and how emotion fits into your music.
O&FT: Honestly, it’s mostly about being human, and being accepted for that. Things in life are rarely easy, but doing what you love and having people not only accept that, but really vibe with it as well, is incredibly fulfilling. For “Jesse’s Song” specifically, Kirk wrote the music years ago on his own, and he didn’t even realize or set out to give the song the vibe it has, but for whatever reason I (Tony) picked up on that immediately. I really bonded with the feelings it produced, and combined with things my own personal life, everything just fit together perfectly. When I sat down to write the lyrics, they turned out to not only fit the tune, but some of the feelings he had when he was originally writing it.
JASPER: When do you know if something is done?
O&FT: Nothing’s ever done! Or at least it doesn’t feel like we’re ever finished with anything that we’re doing. Things percolate and get refined and eventually settle into the established order. We usually either run out of time or we’ve got nothing left, and then we’re “done” until our next great idea.
JASPER: Who inspires you?
O&FT: We’re a pretty eclectic group, and we pride ourselves on being diverse musically and personality-wise. Some specific artists who inspire us would be Bruno Mars, George Daniel (The 1975), Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Fela Kuti, as well as the musical community here in Columbia. There are so many artists and friends doing so many incredible things that it’s hard not to be inspired.
JASPER: What motivates you?
O&FT: As cliche as it sounds, it's all about having fun and a good time, for us and hopefully the audience. There are all these different energies and “frequencies” coming together, not just between the guys, but also between us and the crowd. When that comes together it’s really an incredible feeling. The band is a melting pot, and Columbia is too, so you get this really crazy, beautiful mix of music people and experiences.
JASPER: What gets in your way?
O&FT: What gets in anyone’s way? The usual stuff: someone’s having a bad day or in a bad mood, we forgot some piece of equipment and we’re 2 hours from home and an hour from the venue, Jesse losing his glasses. Having fun is essential, but it can also distract you. The usual stuff.
JASPER: What is your favorite or least favorite show you’ve played and why?
O&FT: We’ve had a lot of great ones, including one last year with Kirk proposing with a song he wrote. We had a lot of friends and family there so that was a special one. But overall, we’d have to say our show this past summer at Music at Midsummer, a festival hosted by Valley Bear Collective. We really swung for the fences by adding in 5 other musicians, including horns and background vocalists, in addition to our core four. It was almost too much, but somehow, we pulled it off with the great people at VBC and our honorary Freq’s.
We got to see the glory of “The Tentapolis at OpusCity” which was our campground set up. You really can’t beat spending a weekend up in the mountains with a couple hundred awesome people and just rocking out for 3 straight days. Especially when there’s great music and company all around you.
JASPER: Do you have any kind of pre-show rituals or traditions?
O&FT: As we get closer to showtime Tony will start to do his vocal warm ups and meditation, to really get in the zone. Then we get the group together and have a stretching session just like back in gym class. Some hype-up stuff goes on, a little bit of light ragging each other and joking around, and then we’re off. Occasionally Kirk and Tony sing “Ironic” by Alanis Morisette, but not for anything other than fun and because that song rocks.
JASPER: What do you like and or dislike about the Columbia music scene?
O&FT: We've briefly touched on this previously, but you can boil it down to the community and camaraderie you get with other artists here in town. There is a ton of cross-pollination happening with genres, bands and community. People show up and support each other! There are just so many people out here trying to take Columbia’s scene to the next level. You see it in sharing news of friend’s upcoming gigs, and raising money for local causes and you can’t help but be in awe of it.
JASPER: What advice do you have for other artists?
O&FT: Be yourself and do what you love. It might not take you to the moon, but at least you’ll find your people and where you belong. You’ll probably learn a lot about yourself along the way.
JASPER: Anything else you want readers to know?
JASPER: We’ve got a saying we like to live by: “All Frequencies (Freq’s) Welcome!” It means that you are welcome in our community, and we want to bring people and good vibes together
Opus & the Frequencies are releasing their new single “Jesse’s Song” and a music video for “Survivor” on October 20th. They also have an EP on the way soon. Come see them play live October 21st at Jasper Project’s House Show with Death Ray Robin and Joseph Hunter Duncan at
You can also check our their website for upcoming shows at opusfrequencies.com and follow them on instagram and facebook
