The Power of Perception with Tim Tronckoe

 

Welcome to the Metal Maven Podcast, where we explore and discover the process and passions of artists in the Metal music and art community.

Metal Maven: In episode eight of Metal Maven Podcast, I’m joined by Belgian international music and portrait photographer, Tim Tronckoe. Welcome Tim, how are you?

Tim Tronckoe: Hello there. I’m very good and you?

Metal Maven: Oh, I’m excellent now that I’m chatting with you. The last time I saw you was 2016 at Epic Metal Fest in Tilburg.

Tim Tronckoe: OMG, that’s a long time ago!

Metal Maven: It’s been quite a while, so I’m thrilled to catch up with you.

Tim Tronckoe: Likewise – absolutely. Always thrilled.

Metal Maven: So let’s dive in and discuss your new book PORTRAITS, which has been very well-received. All pre-orders are sold out, so congratulations.

Tim Tronckoe: Yay, thank you!

Metal Maven: I know, right? That was quick. What was it – three to four weeks and you were set?

Tim Tronckoe: Yeah, it was even a bit less than three weeks I think, which was incredible. I could never have anticipated that. I was like, “What just happened?” So it was just amazing. But all the other people involved, they were also very supportive. They also shared the shit out of it, so that helped quite a bit, of course.

Metal Maven: Oh, of course, it does. So for those of you listening who don’t know, PORTRAITS is Tim’s first-ever, limited edition coffee table photography book. It’s 180 pages of classical portraits featuring renowned Hard Rock and Metal musicians. Tim, conceptually, what was the idea and inspiration behind this project and how did it manifest into this brilliant thing?

Tim Tronckoe: Well, it all started actually because of my love for classical art, mainly, and the Hard Rock and Metal scene. I love both those worlds. People always consider it to be a big contrast, like classical art is old and boring, and then you have this Hard Rock scene, which is very, very mature and very, very hard, and very to the core, to the bone. But actually, I love both worlds because I think both have their aspects that are very interesting and they all go back so many years, and ages, and centuries.

So, it all started about three years ago when I was just walking through a local exhibition of classical portraits. And I was there with my boyfriend, Simon. We were just going through the exhibition and when we almost reached the end, we were both like, “Hey, why don’t we combine Tim, your work field with this kind of work – like, all these classical portraits – and turn your portraits, the work you do with the artists in the Hard Rock scene, why don’t we combine this and find a beautiful symbiosis for this?”

I was like, “Oh yeah, this could actually work.” So I did my research and I was very careful, of course, I didn’t want to share anything at that time and I really didn’t know what to expect. But then I just wrote to Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge and Michael Starr of Steel Panther, just to give them the idea, and to ask them what they thought of it. And why did I choose them? Because I knew they were going to be in the area in a few weeks from then and they were open to the idea, and they welcomed me to their show in Belgium, in Brussels. And they told me, “Tim, we can give you 15 or 20 minutes just before the show to shoot the portraits.”

And when we had taken those images, and I sent them to them, they were so enthusiastic about them and they both said the same thing: “Tim if you give yourself enough time for this, and then if you turn this into a book, this might be such a unique thing – this might be such a huge success.” So that was exactly what I did. And I didn’t share this with anyone who was not involved in the project. Three years later it proved to be a huge success and everyone wanted to be involved in it as well, so. Yeah, but the basic idea came from my love, my passion for art, art in its purest form, like the paintings, the music, combining everything. And of course, I wanted to do something greater than myself – I wanted to exceed myself – so that’s when the good cause came along as well.

Metal Maven: So you also with this project wanted to emphasize the way we perceive and view musicians and artists. You know, in a way we – there’s this admiration and worship, and also seeing them as, you know, rock ‘n’ roll royalty.

Tim Tronckoe: True. Well, yeah, indeed that’s true, but that idea only came after a couple of months. I think during the first year of shooting I realized that when I had done the photoshoot with Tarja, I think, where we had portrayed her as Anne Boleyn. I saw the pictures, I was like, “Actually, we are portraying these artists as the way we perceive them, as the way we look at them. We put them on a stage in front of thousands of people and we admire them just like a King or Queen would, back in the days, or even nowadays, show themselves to the audience and everyone would be in awe looking at them.” And actually, it’s a bit the same way – the same distance between that person, who is just a human being, just like anyone else, we put them on a stage and they become this public property almost that we admire, and we find inspiration in these people.

And along the way while shooting these portraits, it was a big contrast for me, because actually by doing that, by portraying them as royalty in a way, I kind of wanted to get away from the idea, maybe make people realize that “Hey, I am portraying them as royalty, the people we look up to, but actually, they’re just human beings of flesh and blood.” And, along the way, I realized that that was a cool contrast that I was implementing into the book because we also have some very stripped down portraits like more the Caravaggio and Rembrandt – they are a lot more modest, and a lot more sincere, and a lot more open and vulnerable. So it was my challenge to combine both these worlds a bit and I think we succeeded quite well in this project.

Metal Maven: I could not agree more. Everything I’ve seen, so far, looks beautiful.

Tim Tronckoe: Thank you.

Metal Maven: You’re welcome. Let’s transition to the physical, the actual act of creating this. As you said, it was a bit of a secret project, about three years in the making, is that correct?

Tim Tronckoe: That is correct, it was quite a challenge.

Metal Maven: And obviously involved a lot of planning and close attention to detail. I mean, you had set location, artist scheduling, custom couture design, and then on top of it, you had video documenting and so much more. How did you manage such a large scale project, especially in regard to your own work schedule outside of this with clients as well as teaching?

Tim Tronckoe: Yeah, I am quite a bit of a control freak myself. But what I love about the things I do, is I always surround myself with a team that I can totally trust. And I rely on that team as much as I can, and that helps a lot to just get rid of all the stress that I have around it. But still, I am a control freak and I want to have my planning there, I want to schedule everything myself, I want to choose my team, want to choose who I work with. And keeping it a secret, of course, it’s very important there because that’s why I wanted to work with people I have already worked with. So, I was still working for my clients, of course, the bands who wanted their band pictures for the new albums, like Tarja, like all the other bands.

That was also a very good thing because I got to work with new people there and then I could also test them a bit like, “Hey, would you be up to work with me for this project?” And sometimes they accepted and sometimes I was like, “Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t ask this person because maybe they won’t be able to keep their mouth shut about the project.” So I had to take care of a lot of things and make sure that I surrounded myself with a good team of people I could trust. And that was my starting point. And then, of course, like you said, it just came down to arranging everything from the smallest detail because people don’t realize, it’s not just pushing a button, it’s arranging everything from location – “Do I have a location? If I don’t have a location, I need to make myself a location. Do we need to find that perfect makeup artist for this, the perfect hairstylist for this, the perfect person who can arrange styling and wardrobe for this project?” Because for the big photo shoots with Agnete from Djerv, with Simone from Epica, Sharon from Within Temptation, and so on, we wanted to make everything from scratch ourselves.

So what did I do? I just, the first thing I did was months in advance, sometimes even a year in advance, I already went to a show of them or I asked them, “Could you please take your measurements?” Or we sent someone to a show to take their measurements so we can design their outfits from scratch. So it was actually a bit of couture that we were doing. They’re not really couture couture, like every detail hand-made, but as much as possible, self-made and made custom, made for that one vocalist, for that one singer, because I didn’t just want to go to a dress-up store or a carnival store and I just go like, “Hey, we’ll just rent a bunch of outfits that 100 people have already been wearing and just try the best one on these people.” I wanted to do this the best way possible, and the most authentic way possible, and I wanted this to be unique, and I didn’t want to cut down on anything. Some people were telling me, “Tim is this is getting so expensive, you must be spending so much money on this.” I was like, “I don’t care. If I do something, I want to give it the absolute best that I can and I don’t want to look at the cost of it.”

Metal Maven: Well, it obviously worked out fantastic because everything looks amazing and your pre-orders sold out, so…

Tim Tronckoe: Yeah, that’s the proof of all the hard work. Yay!

Metal Maven: Exactly, I know, right? I want to transition into talking about who you are outside of the music industry and I did want to talk about your work as a teacher. Most people view you as only a rock photographer, that’s all they know you as, but you also work as a – I’m assuming it’s the photography department, right?

Tim Tronckoe: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that’s it exactly.

Metal Maven: It’s a secondary education arts school in Ghent.

Tim Tronckoe: Yeah. It’s actually VISO, actually, that’s the way we say it.

Metal Maven: Okay. Reading VISO’s mission statement, the goal of the school is to create confident individuals who can cope with the constant flow of information in our rapidly evolving world. You mentioned in your explanation of PORTRAITS that you’re seeing more and more students struggling with mental health, and because of this, benefits from this project will support PsychoseNet.be.

Tim Tronckoe: Yep, Correct.

Metal Maven: My next question would be why this charity specifically, and also, why this cause for you personally?

Tim Tronckoe: Well, I chose this cause – from the start, when I started the project, I had no idea what kind of good cause I wanted to support. I was still thinking about, “What is my main interest? Where do I find myself the best?” And along the process, I realized that me as a teacher actually, because I, like you said, as a teacher, I see so many of my students, or my pupils, struggling with finding who they are because they are 12, 13, 14, 15-years-old and they’re in that process of finding themselves, discovering themselves. “Who am I? What do I want to become? What do I want to achieve in life?” And for some of them it’s easier than for others and, those who are struggling, I see it as my responsibility. For my colleagues, I see it as our responsibility to – not to choose it for them but just to guide them the best way possible and to help them overcome maybe their anxieties and their struggles, and not maybe have them solve that, but support them in that, and guide them along that way, because it’s a long way when you’re at school. Most of them are at school more than they are at home. So it’s a very big responsibility and it’s sometimes overlooked a bit, but the responsibility that teachers have nowadays with all these different media and all these different impulses that all these young kids get, it’s not easy to be a kid nowadays. So, I see it as a very important role that we are playing in our modern society, not only to stuff them with knowledge, but also to get them to where they should be, as a stable person in a not-so-stable society, which is such a big challenge.

So when I was thinking about that, me as a teacher and as a photographer, because I have a very big role in there as well, maybe not as big as in being a teacher, but I really wanted to support what was very close to heart and it was something in mental illnesses, and mental stability, and in mental healthcare. And then along the way I was looking for the best organization to support because I didn’t want to support an organization that’s already getting a lot of governmental support and money, and finances from the government. I didn’t want to go for that. So PsychosisNet – “PsychoseNet” as we say in Dutch, was, to me, the best organization because they are totally independent. They don’t rely on the government – they are just a team of people who are directly from the field, who are experts in what they do. There are family members of people who have been through that process. So, to me, that was the best organization possible to support. I felt so much at home there because to me, I’m sometimes also struggling mentally, maybe not as heavily as some of the people that are at my school, but I find myself so familiar in this work field that there was no hesitation whatsoever to start supporting this.

Metal Maven: Well, I understand too, and maybe what prompted you to look more into this as well, is that while working on this project, you lost a very close friend, Jill Janus of the band Huntress.

Tim Tronckoe: Yeah, true, unfortunately.

Metal Maven: She suffered from mental health issues and took her own life and that must have been an awful day.

Tim Tronckoe: Yeah. I still remember that day so well. I was sitting behind my computer, I was just working on some photos and all of a sudden that news reached me. It hadn’t been online I think yet, but I don’t really remember how it reached me. And the first thing I did, in true disbelief, I sent a WhatsApp message to Jill. I was like, “Jill, this cannot be true. Come on, respond to me now.” And the response never came. About a half an hour later, the news was spread on the Internet, it was everywhere, that Jill Janice was no longer amongst us, that she had taken her own life. And that was while I was finding the right cause to support with this book, with this project. It made me realize even more that that was the decisive moment for me to go for this field to support. And it was such a horrible day for me. Emotionally, I was devastated, but it had a double feeling. I was devastated on one hand, but on the other hand, I was like, I had made up my mind, this is what I want to support and nothing else.

Metal Maven: What I would like to know is, if you were able to have another day with Jill and photograph her for PORTRAITS, how would you have portrayed her?

Tim Tronckoe: Well, it was all actually already in my mind for like two years that I would like Jill in this book. And so that made it even worse to me when when I got the news, because now I knew, “God, she’s never even going to make it to the book,” which, it’s not that important that she’s not in the book, but to me it was like, “Damn.” I mean, she could have maybe had her moment one more time in this book and that might’ve been – what we could have done. It’s all still a big question mark to me. How could we have portrayed her in the most beautiful way possible? And I think for her, I probably would have portrayed her as, not really as a Queen, but maybe as still a strong woman, but as a nowadays woman, maybe stripped down just a little bit more, and more to the core. Maybe a very dark portrait of her, like I made the portrait of the guys in Slayer, of some other people in this book, and just maybe make a very stripped down, dark portrait of her where she would be recognizable still, but with some mystery around it. And I think that would have been the best way to portray her because she was full of mystery. When she was still so open, when we met, she was still such a good friend, so I would try to find that balance somewhere and just make a portrait, like that represented Caravaggio a bit, where he showed people for what they are: very dark, very dramatic, but still this mystery and still this personal connection with the portrait that he made. So I would probably have had her portrayed that way.

Metal Maven: I’m sure she would have loved it. And I’m glad that you’ve been open to discussing this because I know it’s not something that’s easy to talk about, especially when it hits so close to home, so thank you.

Tim Tronckoe: No, you’re welcome.

Metal Maven: You’ve had the privilege and opportunity to work with amazing artists and create wonderful memories with them, not only for yourself but for fans as well. How did you get to this point, Tim? Why photography as your medium to perceive the world around you?

Tim Tronckoe: Well, as a kid I’ve always been fascinated by imagery. First of all, by videos. As a kid, I used to love to make videos. I loved to draw. I was always – because I didn’t really get it from my parents, because they are not that arts-oriented, but I don’t know where I got it from, but I just loved looking at things, and just making and turning them into my own, and showing people what I was thinking about, and what my inspiration was, or what I saw through my eyes. And because sometimes it was very realistic, sometimes it was not realistic at all and I just love to combine these things. So it started with, and then all of a sudden it started evolving into music. I got into music, I started listening to Rock, to Pop music, to Metal.

And then all of a sudden, when I was 16, I started combining photography because when I attended my first concert, I took some crappy pictures, but still, I loved it. And I didn’t really like the pictures at the time, but I just loved the process of looking back on to something that had just happened the night before. And then looking at it again, and reliving that moment. So as of that moment, I just started going to concerts, taking live pictures. But then I was intrigued by what was going on behind the scenes because everyone can see obviously what’s happening on the stage. All the photographers are taking the same pictures. So I was more intrigued by, “Hey, what’s happening behind the stage? Who are these people? Can I get to know them? How are they, and who are they? How are they personally one-to-one?”

So that’s when I decided to dive into the field of taking that portrait right before stage time and having this short connection with that artist. And that opened my eyes and, because of my work, that opened so many doors. Labels and managers opened doors to me and they welcomed me amongst their band to spend some more time with them to choose their pictures. And yeah, I was able to sometimes just get carte blanche and they came to me like, “Tim, we need new pictures. How would you see our new imagery? How would you see our new pictures?” And it’s so cool to be part of that. And the biggest example of that is the new pictures that I was able to do with Tarja. Tarja is such a great inspiration to me, but last time we saw each other, she mentioned that I am a great inspiration to her as well.

And that moment that made a little click in my mind like, “Hey, I am an inspiration to someone I’ve been looking up to for so many years.” And that was so cool because she was actually listening to me and to the ideas that I had. And it made it such a great turning point in my career. Like the new pictures we did for her new album, In the Raw, we had been talking about this idea for such a long time and I was so proud that we, as a team, were able to pull this off actually because if we discussed the idea where we’re like, “Hey, we’re going to shoot in a cave.” The main thing I was thinking about, “Okay, how do I need to put the lights in?” I mean it’s a cave. “How do I want to portray her in this cave?” Because it’s such a stripped-down situation, such a stripped-down scenery, and I want to portray her the most beautiful way I’ve ever portrayed her.

And in the end, we were able to succeed in doing that and it all came together. And when doing that, I realized that “Hey, as a kid of 10, 11- years-old, how would that kid have reacted to that idea? Like, “Hey Tim, when you are going to be 28, 29 you’re going to be doing that kind of project.” I would probably have lost my mind back then because I could not have imagined it. But because of the process that I’ve had throughout all these years, that had led up to that moment, I realized I needed those years to evaluate my own process and evaluate my own way of thinking about things and seeing things. And I think when I see the results, I’m just so proud of it.

Metal Maven: Well, see how far curiosity can take you just experimenting with things, and evolving, and trying to understand how other people live and how other people, in your case with musicians, perform and who they are backstage? It’s really, really interesting to see where you began and where you are at this point.

Now that we’ve discussed the past, let’s talk about the future. There will be a public exhibition of your work for PORTRAITS as well, beginning the day after this podcast is released on Saturday, September 28th. Now, I don’t want to botch the pronunciation of this, so I’m going to let you say it. It’s in your hometown of Ghent.

Tim Tronckoe: So it is in Ghent, where I live – because I wanted to do it here in my hometown. The location is called the Drongenhofkapel, which is just a chapel, which is called the Drongenhof because it’s a medieval chapel, totally stripped down. There’s nothing, there are no facilities. So that was very cool to me because so many of the big photoshoots for this book were all done in my hometown because again, it’s a medieval city. It’s one of the oldest cities of Belgium, if not Europe, which still has a big medieval castle right in the city center. It’s actually very close to the castle.

I did the photoshoot with Charlotte of Delain, I did in Ghent. I shot Agnete from Djerv in Ghent, in the photo studio then. I shot Alissa from Arch Enemy in Ghent. So, it was so meaningful for me to do it in my own hometown. And I found this location which was so stripped down, so, naked actually – it’s like a blank canvas, which I was able to just put everything in there the way I wanted and I could just decorate it the way I wanted it. So I wanted this old environment, this old location, with this very modern exhibition in there. So, a very big white wall with all the works and that contrast to me was so striking that I was like, “I need to go for that one. That’s going to be the location and nothing else, so I can just make it my own.” So it’s starting the 28th of September, and we start on the 27th with a big launch of course with the press, and the people who I’ve invited who have been part of this project. And then the 28th we’re starting and it lasts up until the 12th of October, so it’s not that long because I wanted to make it short and fierce, but it’s going to be really beautiful. So people who come to the exhibition can actually make a full day trip out of it because Ghent is such a beautiful historical city which has so much to offer.

Metal Maven: I understand that there’s going to be life-size versions of your photographs and it seems like you found the perfect canvas to display them on. Now that I know more about the location, you know, it’s very personal for you obviously because it’s in your hometown, it has this medieval setting which pairs well with the theme of the work. What should people expect to see when they visit?

Tim Tronckoe: When they enter, I think they will be blown away basically by how big the location is and what I’ve done with it because I don’t want to make it like this very theatrical exhibition, I just want to bring it down to the core and here are the pictures – just look at them, look at the life-size pictures and just absorb what they tell you, what these images are telling you. And I didn’t want to add too much text to it, I just wanted to let the images speak for themselves and I think when people will see the actual exhibition, they should all be, I think they will all be, a bit in awe. But I just wanted it be a very personal experience, and I want everyone just to experience it in their own way. And I think if somebody exits the exhibition and tells me, “Tim, I’ve been able to see something which I’ve seen in the book, but also something which was not in the book.” If they recognize that, because that’s going to be the case – there are going to be things, elements, pictures that are not going to be in the book and then when they get the full package, I think that’s going to be my biggest success.

Metal Maven: That’s interesting to know. I didn’t realize it was going to be other photos that weren’t included in your book. So, all right guys, you got to get there if you’re in Ghent – it’s a must visit.

Tim Tronckoe: I hope so!

Metal Maven: Another question I have for you is, and I know it can be a difficult one because I know you love everybody that you work with, but, do you have a favorite portrait?

Tim Tronckoe: Well, I’m just moving through my own hallway here of my home because we have everything displayed over here like in small size, how the exhibition is going and what the exhibition is going to look like. We have it all over here. I just put everything on the wall here, like smaller. So I’m just looking at the images right now and I’m just looking at them, I’m wondering which of the photos shoots, like the light, which photoshoot did it all come together that I have the feeling like, “This is it. Here, we have exactly what we need.” And I have a couple of examples, I think.

I think Mina from Life of Agony, when we shot her pictures it was like in 10 minutes at a festival, but she has this one picture where she’s just portrayed so beautifully, you can still see the veins on her arms, in her hands, and then she’s got this very, very sincere and very, very serene look in her face. And when we shot that picture and when I put it on my computer and I printed it, that was the first image where I was like, “God, this is such a cool, picture, which tells such a cool story, which is such a personal picture.”

But then when I’m looking further back, I see the picture of Alissa in her beautiful blue dress. It’s one of the last pictures that we made during the one-day photoshoot where we just went up to the Chinese salon of this beautiful Rococo house here in the city of Ghent, and it was the last picture that we took of her in front of this beautiful wallpaper. And that picture just pops. She just like jumps out of the picture, it’s unreal when you look at it. So it’s going to be one of the central pieces in the exhibition as well.

And when I saw the picture, it just shows everything that I wanted to show in this portrait, like the classical way that Alissa is in the picture, but still, she shows who she really is. She doesn’t lose her true identity. She doesn’t lose who she is, she doesn’t lose what she stands for. And I think that is a very striking picture because the light, of course, has to be perfect. The outfit has to be perfect, the pose has to be perfect. And I think in an image like that, everything really, really came together.

I’m just looking at the other pictures that I have and they all have this element because when I was choosing these pictures, I had about 100 or 200 pictures to choose from and it’s like I needed to bring it down to like how many pictures? About 60 or 70 pictures for the exhibition. So it was like killing my own children.

So I had to go for these pictures that were striking to me in one way or another. So I think they all have that. But I think that picture of Alissa and that picture of Mina have that – I don’t know if I look at it, I just keep looking at, even a year after we’ve made that picture. And we also have this picture of Simone. Simone is in this very big, Elizabethan white dress designed by my wonderful boyfriend, by the way, I have to give him some credit. And she was in this big cathedral here in Ghent, and in this one picture we just put her in front, not in the actual cathedral setting, but just in front of a beautiful plain blue canvas, painted canvas, and she’s just looking over her shoulder a bit into the camera. And that was the most striking image, which is so cool and which is a bit weird because we are in this beautiful setting of a cathedral and then we put her in front of a blue canvas and that’s actually the best picture of the entire setting, stripped down again, just Simone, as she is, looking at me in front of a blue canvas and nothing else. So image to me is also very, very striking. But I have a couple of them, so if you want to see them, you really have to see the exhibition where all the images are going to be life-sized. So that’s going to be very spectacular.

Metal Maven: I know, it’s very different looking at photos in a book versus in-person and bigger than the normal size, like full-size. It’s a lot to take in and you actually can get close and see detail. Everything looks stunning from what I’ve seen Tim. Your work is always very inspiring and executed meticulously.

Tim Tronckoe: Well, thank you.

Metal Maven: A little side note. I work with your band photography all the time in my work. I wanted to thank you for creating such beautiful art to integrate into my designs. It makes my job easier.

Tim Tronckoe: It’s all my pleasure. Yeah, I’m happy that you say that because there are so many, and I don’t want to talk shit about other photographers, but there are sometimes magazines who come to me like, “Hey Tim, we’ve just got these new press pictures of this band, but we can’t do anything with it because they don’t work for our publishing or for our graphic design. It just doesn’t fit the article or it doesn’t fit the cover. What can you offer us? Which pictures do you have of this band?” And it’s always something that I try to do. I always try to not only focus on, “Okay how can I make this an artistically interesting picture, but also how can this reflect and how can this work on paper and magazines and not only in a beautifully designed booklet of an album?” So that’s what I always try to do, so I’m very happy that you say that I make your work a lot easier. Not easy like, “Hey, you don’t have to do anything anymore.” But still I make it a lot more challenging, and a lot more cool, and cooler for you as well to really show what you can do as well.

Metal Maven: Yeah, I mean that’s the brilliant part of it for me because you make your photography very accessible for other artists to work with. And I think it’s also, the photo is still very powerful, but again, it’s that stripped down – you see the personality of the band instantly and that’s the visual impact that I want to be the forefront of my design work. And you know, every time I get a photo from you I’m like, “I know what photo I’m choosing, I know what I’m doing with this.”

Tim Tronckoe: Okay, cool. Teamwork, yay!

Metal Maven: Collaboration, it always works out great. Well Tim, I wish you the best of luck, though everything seems to have already gone great so far for this project, and I expect a wonderful turnout to the exhibition launch party.

Tim Tronckoe: Oh, thank you.

Metal Maven: Yeah. Well thank you so much for taking time out of your day to talk with me and share your vision.

Tim Tronckoe: Really my pleasure. It’s always cool to share some of my thoughts and it’s always cool to just talk to a friend who I haven’t seen in so many years.

Metal Maven: I know! I hope the next time we chat it’s in person because it’s been far too long.

Tim Tronckoe: Indeed.

Metal Maven: But, you know what, I’ll take today, you know? That’s good that I can chat with you.

Tim Tronckoe: Absolutely.

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For more information on Tim’s PORTRAITS project and his exhibition in Ghent, Belgium, open to the public with free entry beginning September 28th until October 12th, visit timtronckoe.com.

Visit metalmavenpodcast.com for links to Tim’s social profiles, photos, videos, and read the full transcript of this interview. Thanks for tuning in, and be sure to subscribe to Metal Maven Podcast on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, and Google.