History

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Vigilantes of Love History, Part 5

January 3, 2001

We went into he studio to cut our first record for the then Nashville-based Capricorn label in the winter of 1992...we were pretty heady with the kind of excitement that a new road of new possibilities offers... I reread part 4 of the history...it's been a couple months since I've had a shred of time to write more...and I'm pleased with the tenor and the tone of it...what I delineated there was the feel and cast that seemed to suffocate our energy and innocence almost moments after we signed with Capricorn...I promise I will do everything I can to keep myself from ax-grinding bitterness...I believe that to be harmful ultimately in light of grace...that's why writing these early sections has been a bit of an emotional trial...New business relationships...people doing things for you and on your behalf...a partnership of hard work on both sides: at the onset there were bridges built and walked over, friendships born, pledges and vows taken and acted on...all in good faith on our part and full of the wide-eyed innocence, determination and enthusiasm that young bands come to the table with...4 records and 4 years later all of that was in ruins and we were numb, battered and stupefied... I can say honestly we never saw any of it coming...not initially....some of those friendships born at this time that didn't survive the 4 years are still tentative to this day...("business" has an ugly way of giving one a 100 alibis to "lose track" of someone.)

We went into Trident Studios in Atlanta in Winter of 1992, with Jim Scott at the producer's and engineer's helm...Jim is a master, a genius, and one of my favorite producers...I don't know if he has a web site...but his credentials read like a who's-who if rock and roll...at the time he was engineering the Tom Petty "wildflowers" album which Rick Rubin produced...Jim had about 6 weeks off the project and was available to work with us...this was something Dan Russell at Fingerprint arranged...we tracked the basic rhythm parts in Atlanta in a nice big room...David and Travis were delivering bass and drum parts in spades...it was tight, defined, "big" sounding and grooving...it was a trademark of those three (Newt included)...I have yet to hear a band that grooved as well as they did...I had consciously been writing to that strength for a few months...I think I did it to keep them happy now...I have the record on in the background...almost everything on it rhythm-wise is full in infectious grooves, thoughtful drum fills and wicked guitar lines...Newt told me shortly thereafter that when he joined VOL, he never had any idea that he'd be playing so much lead guitar! We did his overdubs here in Athens at Fullmoon studios...and he was amazing: Newt would sit in the room and deliver a scorching solo like the ones on Sympathy, Runaway Train; the glorious melodic lines on Welcome to Struggleville, Cold Ground and Glory and the Dream; the funk-in-the-pocket chunks on Resume, All Messed Up, and I Can Explain Everything and the ala Keith Richard's inflected solo on Last to Know...everyone a winner...and then Newt, in his characteristic humility, after having burned our ears with solo after solo...would sheepishly ask, "Is that sorta what you're looking for?" while we sat stunned in the control room...much magic, much magic that boy has in his fingers...

Jim, a good drummer himself, kept us on our toes...he was completely into this organic thing the record was becoming...For myself, I suppose, I was having a bit a self-doubt...Vigilantes of Love had, in the space of few short months, transformed into a different animal...I believed (and I still do) that giving good players wide berth in their creative input will make not only for good record...but create a great chemistry...and chemistry is the thing you can't necessarily create by having the best-of-the-best in a room...i.e. one can have all the studio "cats" with all the chops on a record...and it'll still sound soulless...because it's lacking a certain chemistry...I'll grant that it's a hard concept to define...but it is what makes for passionate and great rock and roll...I felt we had started the record with that approach...and it had served us well...we were creating a pretty unique piece of work...but it now began to feel, to me anyway, that maybe it had moved very far afield from what I had expected...VOL was at this point, a real rock band...gone were almost all the vestiges of the acoustic strumm-y garage folk rock we had been on the previous Killing Floor...only the recently written songs, Struggleville and Glory and the Dream, were reminiscent (at least to my ears) on the "older" sound of VOL...

Now, we had honed and fine tuned the whole thing to another level...clearly it was doing some fine damage in the "live" settings: they were sweaty, organic energy driven affairs...we had become (I think) a great "live" band...now here it was fleshed out on 2-inch tape...and I began to wonder if I was up to the task of simply being: a "rock" singer...in what heretofore, had been something, a little "softer" around the edges...I could hear in my head singers like Joe Cocker doing killer takes on these tunes...musically, I had written songs that David, Newt and Travis had infused with a type of roots-blues meets urban-soul-groove...lyrically I suppose, I was reveling in rapid-fire images of the emptiness of worldly pursuit and debauchery, a doctrine called "total depravity" and street-corner preacher religion...all served up on a piece of southern corn bread....well, somethin' like that...but now the dilemma was more "how" to sing it...how to deliver it honestly and with "believe-ability" (to quote Mark Heard)..and to be honest, I really wasn't sure I was up to the task...but only because the sound of the band had changed from it's humble acoustic beginnings...I really wonder if I had the "voice" for what the record had become....I remember doing the vocals in a dimly lit room just to get "into character." I always go for first takes...even on the "scratch" tracks...sometimes when you push it you discover something cool about the tune or your input on it...and that's exactly what happen on Struggleville...a real effort was made to sing as if it was the last thing I'd ever sing...to put some desperation and conviction into it...and I think it worked...there are a few places where it sounds strained (I was suffering with sore throats and sinus problems during the sessions.)...but on the whole, I think, the idea of method-singing," worked really well...it came with certain affectations...I tried things like imagining I was a simpleton (which doesn't require much acting on my part) viewing things through a hard lens of truth...and seeing what resulted as he spat it all out in a therapy session...or so I imagined...it was a method that I carried onto the stage every night...I rarely sing with my eyes open...I think I slip into some kinda zone that is separated from everything except the moment...sometimes I forget where I am...not an altogether unpleasant experience...but all that to say: it was something that showed up in the Struggleville sessions in a little more intense way...and it got me through it and into thinking about "character voices" and how confession artists and their performances always have a bit of a "lie" that one willingly buys into...

Welcome to Struggleville was released to a good bit of critical acclaim, the title single finding a strong home on the then-emerging Adult-Alternative-Album format (AAA)...not even two weeks after we had finished the record (and before it's release) we were told that Capricorn was losing it's distribution through Warner Bro.'s, one of the reasons we'd signed with them to begin with...instead they would be using a company called RED, a significantly "lesser" able distributor...and, ironically, the very same one we had just left after releasing Killing Floor, on the local Sky Records label...in the end, we had made basically a lateral move in terms of what we could expect from retail...and that's why the song was all over the AAA radio format...and in the stores the record hardly to be found... I remember we were playing a club in Philly at a time when "Welcome" was all over the local WXPN...we walked out the door and down 2 blocks to a Tower Records, expecting to find the WTS...Over The Rhine's wonderful and newly re-released "Patience" had just come out on IRS and we were happy for them...there their poster was and the record in the store...We inquired about the VOL record: "no copies, never heard of them" was the response after the clerk checked his inventory...it was a pattern that was to repeat itself all through the Capricorn/Fingerprint relationship...it just took me and a lot of my bandmate friends 4 years of something like indentured servitude to get free...in spite of the hardships, I am grateful in many ways...I got to eek out a living playing music...learn the road, bond with my friends and write...but it also began a ritual of a lack of strategy and a sort of throw-it-on-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks way of releasing records and touring...that in the long run burned us out...later on, I think our manager had to lie to us; that is keep the ugly truth from us,...just to keep us going "out there" and not caving in to the lack of attention the records were getting from the label...so bandfolks came and went...and this was where the light starts to go backwards, to my mind, anyway...And if it sound trite or even grandiose, so be it: a little part of something died inside me during this period...it was much, much more than a lack of commercial success...that was really a small part of it...it was more a gnawing confirmation of what I'd always read about and known of (and subsequently feared) in realm of creative circles (be it literature, film, painting, music or whatever)... It is a simple lesson: and it is that you can give it your all, confess your heart, (and all that may entail) yea, speak your piece...and still remain (nearly forever) misunderstood, obscure and unnoticed...(accountants are always there to reframe your worth in terms of soundscan reports and "marquee value")....and this whole process, these 4 years, forced me to ask things I had never asked myself, like: how far do you trust someone? is this person good-hearted? am I good-hearted? why do I do this? what am I about? is it worth it? what am I gaining? what am I losing? do I have something to say? what am I seeking? ...and why did I expect people to do what they said they would do?...answer any of these, in a particular way, and you're on the road to a life of gratitude, humility and joy...or, if in another way, a road of bitterness and heartache...

All of this was thrown into sharp relief by these events that started with Struggleville...it was an ironic title...more than we ever knew at the time...And stupid me: I chalk it up to immaturity (spiritual and otherwise) that I didn't figure it out, reckon with it...and embrace it sooner...

 

 

 

 

 

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