History
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Vigilantes of Love History, Part 2
July 15, 2000
Well, I've already been corrected...I was told by a reliable source that it was Nov. of 1990 (not 1991) that Mark Hall and I played VOL's first show at the subterranean Downstairs' cafe on Clayton street in Athens, GA...this clearly is not good news because now it means I've got another whole year to remember and re-construct...
Shortly after this, Mark Hall and I and the infamous John Evans (harmonica) a dear friend and professor of English Lit. at Univ. of Ga., began recording what would eventually be our first release, JUGULAR...it was done over the course of 3-4 days in a small utility shed about 12 miles outside town...mostly done "live" around a couple of mics...we had rented a good mic for vocals and instruments and began piecing together our first homespun record......those tunes and about 8 others which were in the set list but never recorded were our prototype for this new, more intimate but still rev-ed up thing that Vigilantes was becoming...shows were becoming pretty tense...lot's of folks and new faces and we tried new material out all the time..i remember doing songs the day I wrote them with Mark and John and I getting together in the alcove of the wig shop above Downstairs Cafe and then trying to remember the changes as we previewed the tune that night......the energy was, to us at least, intoxicating...suddenly more shows began popping up, audiences got bigger, local press was good and a bit of a "buzz" developed...But JUGULAR: it still feels pretty organic, first take, and quaintly inspired in several places...perhaps a bit over-sung in places...it was really just a snapshot of what we were doing at the time...I still love to listen to it...almost all the tunes felt like they found a mark...the sparse arrangements and plaintive voice along with Mark's French-Impressionistic accordion parts still sound unique and fresh...there was certainly a chemistry about it...it was urban folk, some blues...and smart-aleck college band bookishness wrapped around spiritual questing.....
Influences? At home I guess it was (apart from good lovin') equal parts Joy Division, Woody Guthrie, Dylan, the Clash, REM, the replacements and Violent Femmes...This was what was spinning while I was raising Joshua and Joseph...Brenda and I (married in 1981) had decided that someone should stay at home and that large amounts of beans and rice, beer, wine, fruit and cheese, good friends......and a whole lotta love could carry the day, you know.....and so it did..i was "Mr. Mom."...We were living in a little cottage towards Jefferson,Ga. at first and later on when Joseph showed up, were able to move to the neighborhood near downtown Athens where we live till this day...it was years of high-pitched, crazy-young love, creative intensity and risking taking as we sort of carved out our "style" of life together...I don't think I'm over-romanticizing it...clearly there was a price to pay during those days on one lowly income (hers primarily) and my spotty contributions while I did the house-dad/band on the week-end thing...but years later upon comparing notes, I don't think we would have traded it for anything...sometimes you get a sense that you're where you're suppose to be and doing what you ought to be doing...and the early input into our precious sons young lives was working in reverse...actually transforming us. When the kids were old enough to do school, I went back to work having previously taught emotionally disturbed kids in a public school setting...this time I got a great job in an adult psychiatric hospital...it's where tunes like Vet and Deep End and Sympathy and Undertow, and Bolt Action came from...you scratch below the skin and all kinda 20th century demons show up...Mark and I continued our few shows a month...working with an upright bass player here (Bob Goin), a small-kit drummer there...a stomp-board when the drummer was absent...and then a milestone: Enter Billy Holmes, one of Athens finest players and a fella who was to make huge contributions to my songs came on to play mandolin, some guitar and bass...Billy always came up with really creative parts...we became this little rag-tag-jug-band on speed sorta unit...I think my writing and performing was becoming more self-assured... We wound up with this weird little deal in 1991, through a small upstart label called Core Entertainment...in hindsight, it seems we were young, green and a bit too eager perhaps...we signed and 6 months later we were getting out of the same deal that was fraught with...well, it was the record "biz."...up yours and personal, you know?...what can I say? Our superb attorney, Lee Beitchman, a close friend, had taken it upon himself to suss out this fella, whom we shall call Keith, and then built some legal roads out of the forest, so to speak, should we need them later...we did...but not before making and releasing our first national record: "DRIVING THE NAILS", in 1991...it was a record that had it's moments...most folks don't know that Billy and I recorded the whole thing in two weeks and that Billy's bass parts and my drum parts were erased and then re-recorded by two fellas by the self-appointed producer (let's call him Keith) brought in later...much, much to Billy's and my chagrin...although I liked my drumming, I was willing to defer to the fine work of B.B. Queen on the record who was the drummer for the Atlanta soul-funk band "mother's finest" and later on...(don't laugh) Molly Hatchet...
Driving the Nails?...I listened to it this morning while writing this...in fact lyrically, for me it was a bit of a tour de force...I was trying for melodic, in your face, Americana...machine-gun cadences, militaristic/surgical images...and a raking ones shitty-guilty-lying-self over Isaiah's coals of grace....in spite of the fact that the acoustic guitars now "float" a bit due to the redone bass and drum parts it seems to have some nice touches...BUT, I think we were just happy to get the heck away from the situation (let's call him Keith.)...we were very unhappy with the general dynamic going on in the studio, let's just say...
Still, songs like Casualty, Driving the Nails, Lady Luck, Odious, Sanctuary, Just Going Blind, Running Scared, Don't lose Your Guns and Brenda...still rate really high on the emotional scale for me...I guess it was the acoustic driven, with a touch of the garage-trash ethos that felt like I was finding a sound...it had a worldly, urban sort-of charm too....at least that's what people tell me...it made me sound smarter than I am...I know some folks love the heck outta that record...for where we were at...it was pretty much what I wanted to say...I think if you dropped the last two tunes it might be better... At the time, I was glad just to live in the illusion that a record deal meant something...possibly a stepping stone to something else...It suggested for me that just maybe I was one the right track...it was a coming into my own as a song-maker-upper I suppose...feeling pretty cool about having a sound, a record, a bit of a "buzz" etc...
It was not without it's setbacks...Mark had gotten married to sweetheart of a girl and had to make plans for a real career....and then I lost Billy...and that was a huge blow...Keith's heavy-handedness in the studio caused him to lose interest and he left shortly after we finished the disc...Fortunately, later on, Billy came back around to lend his considerable talent on another batch of songs I was working on...(later to become to become KILLING FLOOR...)...but for the moment, everything that had functioned as a major component in the band's sound was gone...the whole sort of "acoustic-instruments-on-11" thing was over...
As a band we toured a bit more behind DTNs...about 4-5 months that year...it was a lot of non-strategic dates...play hard, go broke...and we became demoralized quickly...I think the record attracted some good reviews...but I've lost them... I do remember one though....and it ran something like this: "Bill Mallonee and Vigilantes of Love, after leading off with a chainsaw attack on "Odious," lapse into various Christian coffee-house quandaries for the rest of the album..." Now you gotta love that...
We more or less disbanded in the summer fall of 1991...the van died, always symbolic I think...I think it's now bridge piling somewhere on a river in Kentucky....we were glad just leave it all behind, feeling a bit wiser perhaps but still pretty beat up by the whole experience.... Me? I just wanted to tidy up this batch of new tunes, flesh them out with Billy some...and maybe put them on tape somehow, some way...and then, in a chance meeting, Peter Buck (REM's brilliant guitar player) said he might be able to help us out in Jan of 1992, having just toured behind "Out of Time" and the huge video hit, "Losing My Religion." I wanted to work with John Keane (stellar producer of almost all the Athens bands that meant anything during that time period and who for years was sort of the 5th REMer) and Peter...so in keeping it tune with the "make it up as ya' go along" philosophy.....I made a phone call to friend...
Thus endth the 2nd part...
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