Slay and Boles: Music royalty

Like many other bands in the modern technological era, founding members of The Royal Tinfoil, multi-instrumentalists Lily Slay and Mackie Boles met each other online after a lengthy search for finding fellow musicians.

"We ended up finding a whole bunch of creepy people on there, and when we met each other, we decided that we weren't too creepy to play together," Slay said.

The founding members of The Royal Tinfoil have been touring and playing the Lowcountry music circuit for more than two years as the only two steady members of the band.

On tour, their shows are played as a two-piece or supplemented by guest musicians.

Charleston shows have a more consistent line-up for the band, which features Brad Edwardson on upright bass and Tim Edgar on ukulele.

The band's musical styling is of a vintage nature, recalling imagery from 19th- and 20th-century America and keeping a nostalgic feel with throw-back riffs and a combination of several different renegade music genres.

"We call our genre, 'drunken gypsy sex,' " Slay said. "We've got a sound that's very folk-Americana with a punk-rock attitude and blues-driven guitar. We've got a rotating line-up. Mackie and I are The Royal Tinfoil and we play with whoever we want. "

Over the past year, Boles and Slay have taken the act on different tours of the Southeast.

On their last run of road shows, the band made it as far north as Milwaukee, where they said they were very well-received.

Slay wants to continue to tour the country over the next year in order to keep the momentum of the band moving forward. There is a tour scheduled for summer that will start in the Southeast and extend throughout the Midwest.

"I'd like to tour at least half of the country two more times (in 2011), and hopefully, if it's not a pipe dream, we'll go to Europe in 2012," Slay said.

The Royal Tinfoil has a live album that was recorded at Kudu Coffee downtown that can be accessed through their myspace page (www.myspace.com/theroyaltinfoil). The lo-fi recordings capture the band's nostalgic genre.

There are talks of The Royal Tinfoil recording a short release at Charleston Sound before the summer tour. Information will be posted on their Myspace page as it develops. Information about upcoming local performances will be posted on the site as well.

Slay said that the band's mission statement is about maintaining an air of professionalism while filling the role of the starving artist. As a self-proclaimed drinking band that started playing family gigs two years ago, this attitude only seems fitting.

"The idea of The Royal Tinfoil is being fancy and poor simultaneously," Slay said.