History

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Vigilantes of Love History, Part 1

July 5, 2000

This will be the first of a few...installments, shall we say, of the history of VOL...at least as I remember it...which at this point spans somewhere like Nov. of 1991 to the present....it won't be exhaustive (exhausting perhaps)...and it won't necessarily make any claims to be absolutely completely factual...because I've done this too long under strange conditions without a lot of sleep over the years for me to swear to it's complete veracity...but I promise I'll do my best...I'll really try to tell it as honestly as I can recall it......for anyone who even cares about where my band, some of my ideas, and our approach to "doing music" originate from or how we've gotten to where we are at present...maybe this will shed some light....

Perhaps it'll even generate some discussion as to the "real" story from the collective memories of particular folks on this list with whom I've bared a bit of my soul and thoughts over the years of this little journey...but...maybe a story, if left alone, will mutate into some strange urban legend full of wild rumors, regrettable excesses and sentimental reminisces...that will only be stripped away...when you put the records on...in the end that's all I have to say, preach, stand on and pronounce...

the stuff of songs?: some of it is truth as it strikes me, reduces me and even saves me...some of it is truth I'd like to really believe and be embraced by, some of it is outright lies and play-acting....most of the time I can't tell which it is.....it simply becomes a matter of wishing to wish a certain thing was true for you... It becomes the stuff of tunes...or what I make up.

I write this...partially 'cause it'll be good for me to re-examine some of the clutch moments...then again, maybe you can get a sense of the present by knowing the past and maybe it'll lend to the appreciation of what has gone into the music and our lives...and too, some of you from the list, have expressed an interest in some info from my personal experience on these matters of writing, recording, touring, music business-y sort of stuff...nuts and bolts....I suppose that's flattering..... But back to the history...

hopefully, it won't be some VH-1 pseudo-journalism formula that eliminates the complexity of issues...and also not some giant egomaniacal exercise in self-aggrandizement...or some giant infomercial...God, forgive me if it lapses into such drivel...

Where to start? What can I say about the history of this little pipe dream my wife (Brenda) and kids (Josh and Joe) let me chase around the block each year? Well, it was and is all pretty much made up on the spot...that is the dynamic...to think on one's feet, take it as it comes...find some goodness in it all somewhere....there really was no vision or lighting bolt type epiphany that occurred that gave me "marching orders", a "calling" , a "mission" or a battle plan....but rather the life of VOL through 11 albums and 10 years has always been a "we saw this...so we done that" sort of approach...a a lot of "seize the moment" dynamic...even when all we grasped at times turned out to be wind or ashes...because the only common denominator in my life as an artist and as a band member has been this: "you make it up as you go along." ...that, and you try to enjoy the moment as a gift from God and let the chips fall wherever they happen to be fallin'.....

It's not that "strategy" is a dirty word to me...(or any of the folks that have "done time' in VOL)......No, it's more about the fact that because what we've done as a band has fallen outside the boundaries and superstructures of life-sucking corporate rock...and even further outside (at times) the boundaries of particular sub-cultures (that have made overtures to us due to the way I write, think, speak and believe about certain things...we might call these religious issues)....I say, it's more about the fact that what we've done has been so outside the throw of the two above mentioned "entities"...that being left without resources and thus to one's own devices, we were able to grow up and sustained ourselves with NO thought as to how it was created, played, perceived, enjoyed, or marketed...never a thought as to who the "audience" was... we just assumed that if we were digging it (and we do) because it moved us...then perhaps it would move others too...and all that I think is divine luck...lucky to be ignored, even hated....lucky to be misunderstood...and blissfully unaware that all the time, at least to some, (metaphorically speaking) our flies were down, with applesauce on our cheeks, and toilet paper training off one shoe as we walked down the long, ill-lighted corridor of the music industry...knocking on a few doors...learning a few good lessons in the process....

...It seems a bit grandiose (and would be an outright lie) to foist upon you some impression that we adhered to some magic formula that issued forth in this success or that good fortune...that somehow this pain equaled such and such a gain...because it just has never worked that way for us...

It's been a bit of a break-through but, I've finally figured out that I don't really "write" songs...(that seems rather a lie...a bit too much self-inflated)...I think what I do is sort of not think about it at all...that is I sort of make things up...that's really closer to the truth...I make up these bits, these words, these little snippets I pull out from journals I keep and whatnot...and then I string them together and hold them up to the light a bit...it they shine a bit they can stay...if not I forget them......but to "WRITE" something like say, a song...well, that seems too much like I have a plan, a goal...a way I'm trying to make you feel...an agenda, a point I'm trying to get across...and I don't have any of those things in mind when I make up stuff...to "write" a song...is too much like trying to sell you something...and I don't think I'm trying to sell you anything......

Context...very important in understanding my head on these past 10 years...I do want to say from the outset that we are a band from Athens, GA....I consider that to be a blessing...a real music scene...(not a commercial superstructure driven by imaging and market demographic targets...although I suppose even "cool" is done to death these days)...

Athens, Ga. a music scene....one that was pretty untamed.....a pretty organic one at that, very vital, very, very dark in some ways...but always interesting and, at least in the early days, full of new ideas and new ways of doing things... some components....it was about questioning and confronting the norms...but mostly just IGNORING the prevailing trends in stagnating rock and roll...

what were we surrounded with on radio before 1977?....Lame top 40, bonehead heavy metal, redneck rebel flag waving southern-rock, stoned out pretentious hippie jams, art rock, fusion-rock, disco, weirdo-pop crooners......all the flotsam and jetsam that sullied the airwaves in the late '70's and early 80's...pre-Sex Pistols, pre-Television (I mean Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd), pre-Patti Smith, pre-Talking Heads, pre-Clash, pre-B-52's...if there were others "out there", (of course there were), forgive me if I fail to mention them...but these come to my mind...stuff that trickled into our little alternative record store "the Wuxtry"....

we were a scene of highly intelligent, smart-aleck college kids with too much time our hands...and a desire to just tinker with used instruments we got from pawn shops...as I said it was about ignoring radio altogether, much less the corporate aspects of an "industry".....you formed a band and it was do it for fun...drink cheap beer.....break all the rules...a lot of the early Athens, GA bands that Brenda and I use to go and dance to were out of the art school here in town...a lot of energy....some were pretty bad as I remember (we certainly made our contributions after we started!)...all of them were interesting...

But it was a good time to be here in Athens...in the mid-80's you could see it on the 40 Watt playbill in the space of a month: the likes of The dB's (Peter Hosapple, Chris Stamey), Mitch Easter's Let's Active, R.E.M., Pylon, the Replacements, Uncle Tupelo, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Meat Puppets, Flat Duo Jets, ..and of course great local acts like Limbo District, the Side Effects, Oh OK, the Little Tigers, the Squalls, the Woggles, Chickasaw Mudpuppies, Dreams so Real to name a few I loved...I mean it was pretty heady stuff...

I played drums initially in a band called The Matching Fibers...later to become Shelf Life...honest to goodness it sounded very similar to Morphine's first record...sort of punk-jangle lounge-lizardy stuff (we had this killer sax player)...with and edge...we use to play a cool version of ("Round Midnight")...and this 'round 1984-85...I also played in other groups...my drummer Dad's early training making me somewhat in demand...a drummer who could play in time...what a concept?!!!...

but after awhile I got tired of only playing drums (all respect to ex-VOL drummers Travis McNabb, Tom Crea, and Scott K.)...so, I borrowed a friend's 4 track one summer ('84)...and wrote about 10 songs...a couple of friends of mine from church who were old-school, country rockers extended to me volumous amounts of patience and goodwill as I tried to learn guitar and hammer the first batch of songs into submission...these fellas were Lee Moody (still a dear friend), Scott Moody....together we became Bed of Roses (other band names came and went)...

I imagine we recorded about 25 songs out of the 100 or so I wrote...some were really good...I suspect Lee has 'em in his studio somewhere...it was the old barn I refer to in Drivin' the Nails...it was "wood-sheddin' "in the truest sense...we'd play our 6 to 8 shows a month...rehearse 3 nights a week..Lee was the singer...me? I was just trying to not look at the fret board too much...! Had some interest from Capitol and I.R.S. at certain points...nothing solid...so we just sort of kept plowing on each year...I was teaching school and our sons showed up...I did the house daddy thing and count it as one of the greatest blessings I've ever received...my writing was taking off a bit, more label interest, more shows...a lot of rice and beans...Brenda worked for the state of Ga. as a social worker....we were (and still are) hopelessly in love and we made a lot of sacrifices to raise these little gifts God had given to us...it is always worth it...

This mode of raising a family lasted 4 years...I sort of found a singin' voice about that time and started singing my own songs...pretty scary...the tapes have been destroyed so you'll have to take my word for it...when we mutated into Cone Ponies, a band part-time fronted by Alice Berry, a gifted country singer from Austin, TX. I had just asked Mark Hall to play keyboards...and accordion...it was band that had it's moments....good tunes...good playing...and also where I first started to feel really comfortable singing...and like I had something to say even....a bit of a local "buzz" developed. But by this time the hassle of booking, rehearsing and maintaining a 5 piece band was wearing me down...the beer politic was taking a strong hold here in town...and we couldn't put enough hard drinkin' fellas in the rooms...so, Mark and I worked up a set of acoustic tunes I had written, ummmmm "made up" that is, about 14 of them became Jugular.

So, sometime in Nov. of 1991(as I remember it), at a small club called the "Downstairs Cafe," located on Clayton street, in Athens...we debuted the stuff in front of about 20 people...(played the same set twice because the drummer in the band we were opening for was late to his gig!)...we were pretty excited. One, because I saw how folks reacted to lyrics that we're actually heard and Two: it was certainly not lost on us that getting two guys together and playing was a whole lot easier than maintaining a whole band...Mark Hall was (and is) such a gifted player that, with the addition of my guitar, stompboard and rack harmonica and Mark being able to handle both bass and melody lines off the accordion...it became a case of "less is more."...we still had a full sound but....less people, less gear...and all of a sudden: more places to play...

we soon found a number of "listening" rooms, Eddie's Attic (formerly the trackside tavern) being the most prominent...here we learned how to deliver something of a heart-on-the-sleeve-performance, be transparent, fall on our faces...and enjoy people....and I began to "own" my songs in the sense that they were me and I was them....it was at this time that I stopped writing for a specific audience and just let what ever was rumbling inside...emerge....

Eddie Owen, the owner of the Attic, is someone I will always be indebted to...he was (and is) a man among men, an inspiration...he gave me and my changing, rag-tag line-up, a chance to grow and change and mature...I have always felt that a little bit of nurture goes a long way to those who are humble or starving...I guess we were... Eddie Owen's nurture?...it has made all the difference in my world, inside and out... And me? I get to look back on the moment of our history with fondness and joy...and I can truthfully say that had it not been for Eddie's good will and his heart of gold, there might never have been a Vigilantes of Love...

Bill Mallonee

 

 

 

 

 

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