Tag: Vandoliers

Vandoliers Find Liberation
in Life Behind Bars

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Vandoliers are doing their part to keep the spirit of alt-country alive with their raucous blend of punk, country, and mariachi. In other words, they’re the quintessential Texas dive bar band.

They’ve long been outspoken supporters of the queer community, going viral for protesting the Tennessee Drag Band by performing in dresses as a protest; that was when lead singer Jenni Rose realized that she may be a member of the LGBTQIA+ community herself. And so, the band’s fifth and newest album, Life Behind Bars (released June 27), finds the Vandoliers exploring the wild desert landscape of the heart: sobriety, grief, gender dysphoria — and joy in liberation.

Good Country spoke with group members Rose and multi-instrumentalist Cory Graves in early June about collaborating as a six-piece band, working with producer Ted Hutt to push the band to ever-more lyrical honesty and musical proficiency, and the profound impact Jenni’s sobriety and coming out has had on the band.

The album’s title track, “Life Behind Bars,” deals in part with frustrations of life on the road – but Vandoliers are known for bringing the party. How do you balance these two realities?

Jenni Rose: I couldn’t be a lead singer of this band unless I got sober. I tried really hard to be the party person and be the lead singer and be able to do this hundreds of times a year. I just couldn’t do everything. Put the party down for a little bit, and that brought up so much in my life. It made the shows exponentially better. It made me a better singer. On this record, you’re really hearing me processing this new identity, this new life unfolding. It starts with the question, “Why can’t I get sober?” and then it’s like – “Oh my God, I’m in the wrong body.”

I was dealing with a lot. Cory was dealing with a lot, the whole band was dealing with a lot. We have made four records of us asking, “Where am I at in my life? What am I going through?” We’ve been able to conquer the humorous and the serious, so we weren’t really out of our comfort zone by talking about big feelings, but they’re in this album for sure.

The song has four co-writers: you two, Joshua Ray Walker, and John Pedigo – Texas royalty for sure. While it’s common for pop country songs to have many writers, it’s a bit unusual in the Americana world. How did you all even find yourselves in one place together?

JR: Josh Walker and I are really close. I was with him a lot during his cancer diagnosis. We were catching up and we were about to go to Sonic Ranch to record. I suggested we just go write a song and call up John, who used to produce our records. He pretty much has a co-write on every Vandoliers record except for the last one. We love writing together.

Josh Walker brought up the frustrations with touring and we were talking about how we can keep doing it. Then we thought, “Let’s say we didn’t do it. What else are we gonna do? What kind of jobs are hiring 40-year-olds for entry-level positions?” Cory and Josh had been talking about this line “life behind bars” as a double entendre for years. We all related to it and everybody just started throwing out lines. And then by the end of it, we were all screaming the hook and we had a song.

When you began working with producer, Ted Hutt, he said your songs were “superficial” and pushed you to go deeper. How was it to hear that feedback?

JR: It was wonderful. That conversation was like a year before we got to the studio. So I came in with like 40 tunes. Cory came in with like six or seven. Ted really took the time to listen to our writing and pick the songs that were right for the record. He pushed me so hard with my lyric writing and my vocal performance.

I was writing and rewriting things, clarifying, digging deeper into what I was trying to say and that opened me up to a lot of emotions. I knew I was gonna hit gender dysphoria, but I didn’t know I was gonna hit it there. Then [the] Pandora’s Box was completely opened.

Cory Graves: We’ve always craved a producer that would come in and be like a seventh voice in the room, like a tiebreaker voice or someone who could come in with other ideas. We’ve gotten that a little bit here and there in the past, but never as much as I think some of us wanted. He was heavy-handed, like suggesting we change a song from a punk song to a country song or changing the key.

We all knew that we wanted that. Going in, we all agreed that if Ted wanted to try something, everyone would just be happy about it and try it. That’s exactly what happened. It always worked out for the better.

What lessons do you think you’ll bring with you from this process?

JR: I’m already better at being fully vulnerable when I write. Life Behind Bars is me opening up, whereas some of my writing right now is pretty brutal. I’m excited about moving forward being fully aware and shameless in my writing now.

The band itself is so collaborative, by nature of the kinds of sounds you make. How does the band work together?

CG: We all have so many different influences. None of the songs ended up sounding like the demos. They ended up sounding like a piece of everyone. My song, “Thoughts and Prayers,” was more of a punk song, but ended up as a rockabilly song. “Life Behind Bars” started as an emo song while “Bible Belt” was kind of like a Green Day song. Now it’s like The Cars meets, like – I don’t know. So many different things. There’s a twang to it, but also ’80s rock, because Dustin [Fleming], our guitar player, was in a Cars cover band. So he’s got that in his blood.

There are different things that we each bring out from our past into the tunes.

Jenni, it sounds like for a while you isolated yourself socially from the band a bit. How do you both feel things have changed since you’ve come out?

JR: When I was trying to quit drinking, I changed all of my habits just to make sure that I could. It would have jeopardized my career if I kept going the way that I was going. I didn’t wanna do that, ’cause it’s not just my career, it’s everybody’s career. So I started going to the gym after the shows and then journaling during the day, having a ten-minute free write, word-vomit of poetry that I would send to Ted. I would do this every day and that would take me three hours – most of the van ride. So I’d be in my headphones, dead silent with everybody, and I was cocooning. I was going through a lot and I was trying to heal while in motion.

So everybody got to live with a hermit, essentially, for three years. I know it wasn’t cool, but I had to do it. I’m writing these songs. I’m reading every fucking self-help book I can possibly grab to figure out why I’m an addict. The dysphoria is starting to pick up and ramp up, because I’m starting to understand my emotions instead of dull them and ignore them. I am becoming more in tune with my body at the gym and noticing the dysphoria there and starting to understand myself better and better and better. While all of this is happening, I’m on fucking tour all over the world with six other people.

They’re watching somebody change the way that they eat. They’re watching somebody change what they do during the day. They’re watching my social life become pretty much non-existent. … Everybody becomes [at] arm’s-length on the road for a couple years. And then at a Taco Bell, I tell everybody I’m a trans girl and it’s like I’m right back to the party, I can like hang out again, I can go out after the show, or I can skip the gym. … I’m existing as my highest self after years of searching.

It sounds like your coming out has been a fairly positive experience so far.

JR: I saw immediately how quickly my relationships have been healing since coming out. Each person I told – before coming out publicly – it was great. Now I just get to be in a band with my friends again and they get to know me fully without me being scared of rejection.

I can’t manipulate anybody into accepting me. I can’t control how they feel about me. There’s nothing I can say that would make them either love me or not love me. You just kind of get to figure out who’s with you or not. I am so blessed that the people that are around me are at such a high quality. I think it’s a testament to just my exquisite taste in humans. I’ve been so blessed.

Everybody around me loves me and wants me to keep going and wants to keep being in my life, which is not what I thought that they would do. I assumed that I would be abandoned by everybody, because that’s the narrative that we’re all used to, but it’s been really beautiful. I’m really glad I did it.

Your coming out process has been very public. Your band went viral for protesting the Tennessee drag ban the day it was passed by wearing dresses on stage. And now, you’ve come out in Rolling Stone. So, how are you doing?

JR: Wearing the dresses was Cory’s idea. I have worn so many dresses behind closed doors. No one knew this side of me. When we went shopping for dresses, we all were having fun. When I put it on I was so nervous, but I was also really comfortable. And then we went out and played and I twirled. I had a great time. I thought only like 80 people were gonna see this, that I’d wear a dress for this one show and that would be it. Then everybody saw it.

That was kind of when I realized I had this aspect of me. It was the first time anybody had seen it and everybody kind of saw it at once. It made me wanna drink again, ’cause I didn’t want this to keep multiplying because I was scared. It wasn’t the first time I’d worn a dress and I knew that that wasn’t the first time that I felt comfortable doing so. I didn’t know if I wanted to accept that, or think that it was anything more than a kink or whatever. But I was sober and I did have to deal with it, and I did have to talk about it with my family and my wife.

If anybody’s reading this and they’re questioning if they should come out, you should. It’s good for you.

What are you each most excited about getting the album out in the world and touring it?

CG: I’m excited that people are gonna hear a little bit of a different side of us and to see what they think of it. I think more people are gonna be aware of us than ever, and I’m excited to see how people react to that.

Also, I’ve been doing music for, I don’t know, 20-something years. I’m 41 years old. I’ve never sung a lead vocal on any record in my entire life. I’m just excited for that [“Thoughts and Prayers”] to be in the world. That’s a big accomplishment for me, personally.

JR: I’m glad you sang it. You sang it much better than I was singing it!

I am most excited to be seen as 100% me on the road and to see what that does. So far, it’s been really magical. I think it’s been really positive. As I’m out and I’m playing, these bars or venues or theaters or little music series or festivals, they’re gonna see a trans person in a band, maybe at a country festival, maybe in a small town, maybe at a place that they wouldn’t usually see a queer person, and they’re gonna have to figure out how they feel about that.

I think the thing that I’m most excited about is posing that question to people and giving them a chance to react. I have faith in our fans, but I also have faith in our country, too. I don’t think hate has as much of a stronghold as we might think. It’s there for sure, but I think there’s a lot of love too.

Photo Credit: Vincent Monsaint

Vandoliers Drop the Banter to Develop a Sound Shaped by Country and Punk

Posted on by Editor

Right now, no band is blending country and punk music better than Vandoliers. Although that mash-up has been attempted for decades, it’s rare to actually find a band that disregards the rules completely and still sounds like they just might belong in a late-night honky-tonk. For years and years, that’s likely where you would find this Dallas/Fort Worth-based band. And if you’re gonna play in Texas, as the old country song goes, you’ve gotta have a fiddle in the band. While that instrument does provide a definitive fire to their show, it’s just one component to an invigorating sound that sets them apart on the local landscape.

However, the band has tapped into a market well beyond Texas, hitting the road with artists like Flogging Molly, Lucero, Old 97s, and their own personal heroes, Turnpike Troubadours. When the group’s European tour kept getting delayed during Covid, a disc jockey in Spain kept playing their songs anyway, and by the time they wound up in Madrid, they were selling out clubs to crowds who knew every word. Beyond just singing along with “Every Saturday Night,” which they’d heard on the radio for years by this point, the Spanish fans were almost certainly responding to the blasting, somewhat unexpected trumpet solos that punctuate anthemic songs like “Before the Fall.”

Most impressive of all, they managed to bottle up their on-stage energy and inject it into their first album in three years, The Vandoliers. While the band had a day off in Lawrence, Kansas, lead singer and principle songwriter Joshua Fleming filled us in about their first time at the Ryman Auditorium, kinda learning how to play guitar, and the unmistakable influence of country star Marty Stuart.

BGS: When I saw you at the Ryman, what struck me the most was your showmanship. You guys were full throttle from the moment you walked out there. What does it feel like in those moments before the stage lights hit you?

Fleming: We play this song [backstage] called “Urban Struggle” by the Vandals, and it’s an old punk song from the ‘80s. Evidently there were two clubs — a punk bar and a country bar — that were right next to each other, and that song is about the fight that would ensue because of that. Every time that comes on, we all just get super excited. It’s really those moments of excitement. Like at the Ryman, I had a moment where I went out back and hung out in the alley where all the musicians hung out before the show. I’ve been doing this thing where I’ve been writing a tour journal, and I wrote a little paragraph. Instead of posting it on Twitter or Instagram, I have this little book that I’ve been writing in, just trying to gather my thoughts, because there’s been those moments.

Like when we first started, when people would tell us we weren’t country enough, which they were probably right, you know? But we love that music so much and we love that heritage and we love that legacy. This is just how we get to be a part of it, by sounding like this, because that’s just where we’re from. I’m not from the hollers or the hills of Kentucky, or anything like that. I’m not from Nashville, Tennessee. I’m kind of stuck in the middle between Fort Worth and Dallas. … That’s where I grew up, so this is just the sound that I love, and these are things that remind me of Texas and where I’m from. When you get to play at the Ryman, especially for a band like Turnpike, who’s been a massive influence on us, and being accepted by your peers after seven years of kind of being the red-headed stepchild, it’s really surreal!

Do you have any influences in terms of the way you present yourself on stage? Did you ever see a band and say, “THAT’S what I want to do!”?

All the time! We’ve played a lot of empty bars and had to get people out of their chairs to get the excitement. We’ve also gotten to learn tricks from Old 97s, Lucero, and Flogging Molly, and those bands kind of taught us and showed us the ropes of how to put on a show and get people moving. When I was out with Flogging Molly, Dave [King, the lead singer] just completely commands not only the crowd’s emotions, but also their bodies. He can get their hands up, waving, and they can get people moving. And with Lucero, every Lucero show is just the crowd singing Lucero songs with Lucero. I saw that and I was like, “THAT’S the kind of show I want.” What I really want is a cathartic release and if I’m lucky enough to write some songs that people want to sing with me, that means a lot.

This was my first time seeing you and I noticed you don’t spend a lot of time on stage banter.

Oh yeah. I hate banter! I come from the Ramones school of “1-2-3-4, ‘Good night!’” I want every song to sound like they run into each other. I don’t want that energy to stop. I don’t want to shut the crowd out; I just don’t want to turn it into this soapbox because I want to play as many songs as possible.

I was very surprised that Turnpike gave us an hour at the Ryman. I had [prepared for] a 45-minute set so I actually got to add songs instead of take away, and that was super fun. But I shoved 16 songs into an hour. I think I gave myself three minutes to say our band name. And tune. [laughs] And to say thank you to Turnpike because they’re the reason we were there. It was really great that they allowed us to be a part of their coming back. We played their first two shows at Cain’s and those were amazing. But playing the Ryman, I mean, it was their first night at the Ryman, too, so we got to share that feeling together. That was such a cool bro thing to do. [laughs]

I read an interview where you said Marty Stuart was the reason you started the band. What did you mean by that?

I mean, I’m constantly learning and there’s so much music I don’t know. And when I found Marty Stuart, it was this perfect time. Hank III was on his show and I just gotten into Hank III. Marty Stuart is a Hall of Famer and absolutely brilliant but he wasn’t quite as in-your-face as other artists I had seen and heard all my life. So, when I discovered him, it was through The Marty Stuart Show. I watched the episode with Hank III, and I was like, “This is RAD! This is rockin’!” There’s an electric guitar up there and he’s ripping — Kenny Vaughan is up there, just crushing. And their harmonies were perfect. Harry Stinson is of the best singers ever while also being one of the best drummers. It’s really unfair that they’re so talented!

My wife and I, one of our favorite bands is T-Rex, so that glam rock thing was very fresh in my mind at that time, because we had just met and I was showing her these records. We walked down the aisle to The Slider and “Metal Guru” was the song. I really love glam rock. So, anyway, I see the glam in Marty. I see the talent. I see the stories. It was everything that I loved from all of these different genres, and also very traditional and amazing.

So, I run in to find my wife, who’s a huge country fan, and I’m like, “Look at this guy! He looks like a country Marc Bolan!” She’s like, “Oh, that’s Marty Stuart. He’s awesome.” And goes back to bed like it’s no big deal. [laughs] I got obsessed and watched every episode of that show and bought records and tapes and CDs. And one day I got to open for him, going out with them for three shows with him in Texas, and he was one of the kindest people in the world. He is so cool and everybody in that band is the coolest. If Marty Stuart can accept me and be kind to me, then the sky’s the limit, right?

When did you learn to play guitar?

I started banging out chords when I was, like, 11. I wasn’t very interested in being a virtuoso, like a guitar-solo guy. I was more into that outlet to speak and write my feelings out. And I also really liked the idea of being in a band. I played sports but there was always somebody on the bench. No one’s on the bench in a band. Everybody gets to play and it gives you a little bit of a social scene, too. Those were the things that I was really interested in at the time. I started my first band when I was 12. I played roller rinks and movie theaters and little DIY shows for all the kids in my middle school. And then I moved to high school and I played all-ages clubs and theaters with my ska band. Then I moved into cutting records and learning about recording and going to school for recording. It’s been a long journey.

So, did I “learn guitar”? Kinda. I learned how to write a song and I learned how to be in a band — and it’s been great! I think that’s why I liked punk in the beginning because it made me feel like I could do it. I didn’t have to worry about having some pedigree. I didn’t have to be the son of some famous dad. I was from a small town very far away from L.A., Nashville, New York, and Chicago. It was more of just me being able to have a little place in my social scene and it kind of grew from there. Then I started touring and traveling.

Is that where the song “Sixteen years” comes from?

Yeah, that’s actually exactly it. You can take it any way you want, but in the song, story-wise, my dad’s not a preacher. That’s actually referencing one of my songs from my punk band, The Phuss. Like, “A poor man’s song that no one wanted to hear” was “Bottom Dollar Boy,” which we re-recorded for Bloodshot, but it came out on our first EP that didn’t sell very many. [laughs] I wasn’t famous because of that song but I really love that song. It’s just referencing trial and error, trial and error, trial and error. And it’s not about being successful. It’s just about doing it. So, even if it takes me forever, I’m still going to do it. And even if I don’t even make it, whatever that means, I would still do it. I love it so much.

Photo Credit: Rico DeLeon

LISTEN: Vandoliers, “Tumbleweed”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Vandoliers
Hometown: Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas
Song: “Tumbleweed”
Album: Forever
Release Date: February 22, 2019
Label: Bloodshot Records

In Their Words: “I wrote ‘Tumbleweed’ for my father. The poor guy’s has to watch me struggle for a dream he doesn’t really understand — I travel too much, and I know it affects my health and my family. When I get home I’m a wreck most of the time; I’m tired from the long drives, late nights, and spending a month in a different bar or festival every night. But it’s a necessary evil when you’re a mid-level band that’s still cutting its teeth. The album Forever starts with a feeling of wanderlust in the lead track ‘Miles and Miles,’ about a dream of leaving my home town in hopes that I won’t be stuck in the same place the rest of my life. ‘Tumbleweed,’ then, is my return home song — but told from the perspective of my Dad, opening the door to see his son for the first time in months, beat up, broke, and tired from a long adventure. ‘A littler older and no wiser for the wear.” – Joshua Fleming, lead singer/guitar

Photo credit: Mike Brooks