History
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Vigilantes of Love History, Part 4
August 19, 2000
In the spring of 1992 i was blessed with the most solid line-up of players i ever had up to that point...Newt Carter was and is one of Athens' most gifted guitarist/songwriters and singers. He had been part of the Driving the Nails band...he was and is a good man and friend...Rock drummer extraordinare Travis McNabb and i had been introduced through Billy Holmes...Billy left and Travis enjoyed the tunes enough to want to stick around and see what developed...when you're a drummer, he'd say, who doesn't necessarily write his own tunes, you wait for the next step up the ladder...Travis, for the record, has had overtures from The Counting Crows, The The and Better Than Ezra, whom he now plays with...so you gotta understand just what a monster player he is...
VOL was getting a good bit of national buzz and shows in the area were packing out...Newt's pal, David Labreyere joined in early spring of '92...he's an incredible player...it was a rhythm section full of groove and punch...they were nurtured on the sounds of George Clinton, Parliament, the Meters, the Neville Brothers...tres New Orleans, David and Travis' hometown...David joined right before we played South by Southwest....i had written the better part of the Struggleville record that previous winter along with some of the tunes that had to wait till Blister Soul...we began to adapt it to the strengths of that particular rhythm section...it certainly was a departure from Killing Floor...sort of a folk-rock-with-a-blue-groove-preachin' is what i would call it....the songs "Struggleville" and "Glory and the Dream" were written during the pre-production of the record as i moved out of that "phase" and tried to get back to a sound that i felt that was less "affected" ...and more the "real me"...and with that i've given you a confession...but more on that later...
off to Austin, Texas where we played SXSW to a full house at a club called the Jelly Club on 6th st....Athens greats "5/8" played with us that night...i can still see Mike Mantione standing there in that sweaty room in shorts with his hooded sweatshirt on, hood pulled over his baseball cap and shouting out opening lyrics to "Weirdo" off mic to the bewildered crowd...pretty amazing stuff...
Rolling Stone was there...called VOL "scrappy, literate folk-rock."
OK...whatever...we were whisked off to a hotel with Capricorn records who was sufficiently impressed with it all to offer us a deal...of course we were pleased with our collective selves....we thought maybe we were on our way...whatever that was...
Personality-wise, as a band, I suppose, we were somewhat thrown together...i say this because things were happening pretty fast...i think i was, on hindsight, hoping an emotional chemistry would develop...but for two years i ended up feeling like the odd man out of my own band....it was a nutty and complex situation.....over the years i have tended to appreciate the emotional connections that happen within bands among bandmates of similar vision as much as their playing ability...and while the four of us in the S'ville band were generally united in the immediate musical purpose (which naively, was to secure a deal, tour and record) there were other "loose ends" that were a bit like a fuse waiting to be lit...all that to say, in many ways we were quite different and our varying points of view were significant enough to make a break-up almost inevitable...but looking back on those two years with Newt, David and Travis i think i (wrongly) placed unrealistic expectations on those friendships/relationships...they sacrificed huge amounts of time,energy and goodwill to do this thing...we never made more 200 bucks each a week and that was only when we were touring....it was never the small change that bothered me...it was the lack of emotional cohesiveness...i certainly made my contributions to the negative side.
Perhaps i was working it out what it even meant to actually have a band...was it a singer/songwriter with a back up band? Or was it a democracy in process where i would give up more and more creative power? More than likely VOL was always to be a vehicle where my songs were being done by good hearted fellas who simply wanted to be part of it....and i would give them all the room in the world to express themselves musically/creatively...and if there were any spoils of war, we would divide them equally...thus was my unspoken plan, i suppose...but at that point i think i played both sides of the fence just to know my own mind...so, at that time the questions were never settled...i avoided them...i lived in denial...it's what i do best...i just have tendency to cut bait and run when the pain threshold gets too high...so after two years of strugglevilling it, when we had rubbed enough road salt in each others wounds to rust paint and dim the chrome....i left...there have been forgiveness' and bridges built since then with each other....but it was after some time...i still feel weird about it...almost to the point of where i regret it completely...the record, the band at that time, the relation with Fingerprint Records...there was so much of it that wasn't me...(but then that's a shadowy notion)...we gave it our best...every one did...but it didn't work...there were some great moments and, as i said, it was a great "live" band,too...but for the most part, due as much to the "biz" relationships as anything else, it died...as i remember it, it was a taxing, dis-satisfying, emotional mess...
The expectations?...well, i was intensely busy trying to figure out how to walk that delicate razors edge of being a touring musician, songwriter, dad and husband...it was a terrain that was very unfamiliar and frightening to me anyway...so much of rock and roll is total BS...it's all smoke and mirrors and posturing...i wasn't going to sacrifice integrity, my marriage, my family on the altar of music...and become an ass in the process (although that's really up for debate) Thank God that the Athens DIY vibe mitigated against us from getting sucked into it too far...
But when we entered into formal relations with Capricorn (with Fingerprint Records configuring themselves firmly in the middle), clearly there were new issues for us as a band to deal with...and i think we were all unprepared....for my part i was probably too immature to see what was going on...my memory of it all was that it was a confusing unhappy time...
Meanwhile we were trying to mesh musically...most of the stuff on Struggleville we were playing along with the material from Killing Floor...on stage the chemistry was scorching and things were getting very....well, muscular and authoritative...i still have people come up and tell me how much the "live" shows that band then did affected them...
But i think the chinks were already in the armor...
And then there were the different "camps" of influence competing for my allegiance, too...without sounding bitter about it (which i'm not aware i am) Fingerprint Records had re-framed and wrongly (we believe) forced us to sign a deal that escalated into far more than we'd ever agreed to before Killing Floor was made...when the goals and contours of the verbal deal changed and it came time for them to be formalized in a written agreement...well, that was our first mistake....it had all operated as a handshake deal between me and the three execs of Fingerprint...
It was all goodwill and good intentions initially only later to discover that when it was convenient to alter things when necessary it was done so quite easily...and Capricorn made it necessary, i guess...and to us it seemed, these alterations never, never benefited the band.....it's as if we were lured with promises that none of them could fulfill...and we fell for it hook, line and sinker....after the Core and Fingerprint deals i have always found it hard to shake the notion that bands and artists will ALWAYS be at the end of a long food chain...now, i don't think labels can help it...Dan Russell, as pres. of Fingerprint, worked tirelessly and diligently for VOL for 7 years ...He was certainly "there for us" in many ways...He was (and is) a visionary as much as anyone i have ever met...still, i think that at the level we were scrambling at, and what we needed to make a mark, we were forced to make too many long-term commitments with too little promised or delivered in return...to the point where (or so it seemed to us) the record company's potential losses were always padded and all risk on their side was removed...and the other side of the coin is that the band always bore the brunt of whatever failure possibly lay ahead...all the risk factor was removed from the label's side...but then they're more than willing to own your rear on everything you generate that could possibly allow you to establish a livelihood.....it was never partnership...this was complicated by the wearing of too many hats...Fingerprint was a record company, management, sometimes booking agent, distributor and publisher...so there were definite conflicts of interest...almost everywhere you turn...wherever there was pie they had a piece...and for me it became constricting......they did as much as they could do in some ways...but even if that rant is all negated by the notion of "perspective", still, when it came down to the bottom line of every year, it was we who were typically left doing things like digging out of deep debt, replacing disillusioned bandmates and licking our emotional wounds after countless non-strategic tours...with zero label support...and trying to figure out what went wrong...all the while the records never made it into the stores and the ones that did never got heard very much.
i don't think you're allowed see this kinda stuff at the out set...most artists are forced to work out the details of the business end of the "biz" on the other person's court...we're generally so vulnerable to the "oh, we love you baby" lines and want to believe the best about everyone's intentions that we are easily seduced...and that's how accidents happen...there are some really fine folks out there...they just usually don't live to tell about it...
You may wonder why i spend a bit of time yappin' about the "dark and seamy underbelly"...maybe it's just a caution to younger bands or artist to exercise some caution...find new ways to do your music with out the illusionary notion that you have to have a record deal...
Here's Bill's bottom line on that: you don't need their permission to do what it is you do...just do it to the best of your abilities, tell your story as honestly and as artistically and as wisely as you know how, and i believe you will find a way to make a living...
These negative experiences with the industry were to later have a profound effect on an aspect of my writing...and not necessarily in the ways you might think are obvious...but more on that later...
I'll get into the nuts and bolts of the making of the Struggleville record and "what it does for me" in the next installment....for those that care to read this stuff: thanks for bearing with me on this little jaunt through early VOL history...i know it's long and maybe even tiresome...but it's good (if somewhat painful) for me to pull this stuff together from memory and "official-ize" it...and there's always the "return" button...
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