Interviews
Vigilantes of Love at Cornerstone 92
by Joe Kirk
The Cutting Edge, Fall 1992
This article originally appeared in The Cutting Edge in the fall of 1992. It is a transcription of the Vigilantes of Love press conference at Cornerstone 92. I didn't know most of the press people in the room, so I referred to all of them, including myself, as Press Weasels. We have included it here because it documents the concert that brought the Vigilantes to the attention of many of their current fans.
Every Cornerstone seems to have one band that almost nobody has heard of who creates a sensation and begins to gain a real following. Years later, people still say they heard them at Cornerstone first. I predict that Vigilantes of Love will be that band for Cornerstone 92. On Friday morning, shortly before opening for Over the Rhine (the Cornerstone 91 new sensation!), they spent some time with a trailer full of press weasels. A few of us had heard of them because of their association with Mark Heard. But I seriously doubt any of us had heard their music yet; I know I hadn't. I found them to be gracious and entertaining. Their show that afternoon was very energetic and moving. I review their new album, Killing Floor elsewhere in this issue. It will be in my list of the ten best of 1992. So, if you didn't see them in Bushnell, remember that you heard it first in The Cutting Edge! (Joe Kirk)
Press Weasel: What instrument do you play?
Billy Holmes: Predominately mandolin and electric guitar, some keyboards. We have an elusive fifth member and when he's not around, like today, I play blues harp. And I do backup vocals. I'm sort of the utility guy. For songs that have several different overdubs on the records, I end up switching around from one instrument to another.
Press Weasel: Where are you guys from?
Billy Holmes: Athens, Georgia, but don't hold that against us.
Press Weasel: One of the guys from REM did some production work on the album. How did that come about?
Billy Holmes: Bill Mallonee, who's the singer/songwriter (he's out looking for the other guys right now) and I are longtime friends with the REM guys. We were buddies with Pete Buck before there was an REM. I used to hang around with Bill Barry and Mike Mills. Athens is a small college town and most of the musicians know each other. I think Pete just ran into Bill at a taco joint or something and said "I'm bored, can I produce your album?"
Press Weasel: How long have you guys been around?
Billy Holmes: Bill and I have played in bands together for seven years. The Vigilantes have been around about three years. (Bill, Travis and Dave walk in) Oh here they come now! You take this up. You're better at this than I am.
Press Weasel: We were just asking how you got Peter Buck involved on the album.
Bill Mallonee: Peter's been a friend of Billy's and mine for years in Athens and we've followed their music even from the time when he couldn't make an E chord. We asked him, just as a friend, to come in because he knew acoustic instruments real well. We're hopefully an acoustic based band at our best, with a lot of passion behind it. We asked Pete if he'd come in and do these tracks. We had a narrow window because they're still recording a new album and he said "Sure, I've got a window in January for one week." We talked to the folks at Fingerprint Records and they said to consider it done. Checks were cut, words were spoken, deals were made and we went in and did it in ten days or so.
Press Weasel: How did that work, having him and Mark Heard both? Did they work together, did they do individual tracks?
Bill Mallonee: That's a good question. We did half the session with Mark at another studio and then Mark engineered for Peter as we did the remaining tracks on Killing Floor. Peter was great. He was pretty directive about the whole thing. He had some great ideas. We thought he was just going to sit back on the couch with a Budweiser and go thumbs up or thumbs down. But he was great. He had some judgment calls that we wouldn't necessarily have made. He took a song that was sort of a Stones kind of thing and made it come out TNN fodder, sort of country, because of a pedal steel part. But it was great. It was a good call for the record. It was a great experience.
Press Weasel: How did you come into contact with Mark Heard?
Bill Mallonee: I had known Dr. Long, who's the executive producer for all Fingerprint's projects, for twelve years. Mark's a southern boy. He's from Macon, I think, which is down in the sweaty south. I had known of Mark's work so we got in touch through Dr. Long. And Mark likes a lot of funk on his records, so there was kind of an instantaneous bonding.
Press Weasel: Do you all have other releases before this?
Bill Mallonee: Yeah, we were on a "secular" label out in LA called Core Entertainment. We released an album about a year ago called Drivin the Nails, which did pretty well in the Midwest. At that time it was just Billy and me and whoever we could pick up. It did all right but all the profits went up the owner's nose, so we never saw anything from it. We also had an independent release about three years ago called Jugular.
Press Weasel: Billy, you grew up in Augusta, Georgia didn't you? Tell us about growing up with James Brown.
Billy Holmes: I never actually met James Brown. I got to go in his house once when a guy at his guard gate let me go in while he was gone. He had a room that was nothing but sequined high heeled shoes. He used to open up his gates at Christmas time and let folks walk around his yard. It was the tackiest Christmas light display in the history of mankind. I remember all the figures having black skin and afros.
Press Weasel: Is Fingerprint going to release your album alone?
Bill Mallonee: No, it's being shopped to national "secular" distributors for fall release. You can get it from Fingerprint and in Athens right now.
Press Weasel: What's it called?
Bill Mallonee: It's called Killing Floor. Another white boy rips off Robert Johnson. Robert Johnson was probably one of the greatest blues players that ever lived.
Press Weasel: Where did you get the name for the group?
Bill Mallonee: I stole it off a New Order album. Joy Division was one of my favorite bands and they had this song called Love Vigilante. I thought that was kind of neat, the juxtaposition of something aggressive and something sweet.
Billy Holmes: Like Iron Butterfly!
Press Weasel: Are you full-time musicians?
Bill Mallonee: We're not doing this full-time, we're like one-tenth speed. We take what we can get in the region.
Press Weasel: Do you guys play clubs around Athens?
Bill Mallonee: Yeah, we play clubs.
Press Weasel: Mostly secular clubs?
Bill Mallonee: Yeah, totally. If there are any Christian clubs in the area, I don't know about them. That would be selling us short. I've just never felt compelled to talk to the converted.
Press Weasel: How do you feel about playing here?
Bill Mallonee: I like it, I've only been here six hours but there's sort of a vibe here. You know, there's two kinds of Christianity, in terms of the external working. You've got the Mother Teresas who are out there getting their hands dirty. Then you've got drawbridge Christianity, where you run inside the fort and pull up the drawbridge and you paint for one another, and play for one another, and sing for one another. You get inbred, and you know what happens then.
I'm not trying to sound pompous about it, it's just that the bands that have moved me have more often than not been "secular" artists, but they were reaching back for something with some feel and some soul and some passion behind it. Not that there's not great music being done out there, but I think there's sort of a subculture where the labels themselves know their markets and say, "here's the arch typical buyer, and it has to have this said so many times and it has to have the string section here and nice little bells there." They make very generic sounding records. We all have records like that in our collection. And so you get strapped.
Press Weasel: Are you concerned about that for VOL, being on a Christian label now?
Bill Mallonee: Fingerprint has been trying to shed that ever since they started. The whole idea behind it was to get Mark's material into the mainstream. He just doesn't play that game. He's been a real encouragement to us.
Billy Holmes: I don't think in terms of Christian or secular. Christ hung out with prostitutes, drunks and tax collectors; and so do we. We're just a band that plays in places. Sick people are the ones that need to hear about healing.
Press Weasel: Aren't you tired of having to talk about that issue?
Billy Holmes: We don't talk about it that much because usually we're in bars with a bunch of people yelling, "hell yes!"
Bill Mallonee: Freebird! Freebird!
Press Weasel: So do you get to do a lot of ministry to those people in the bars then, opportunities to share the gospel?
Bill Mallonee: There are opportunities if they come and ask. If people want to know what's going on behind the music, I'll give an account for the hope that's within me.
Travis McNabb: At every show, Bill will say, "if anybody is interested in hanging around and talking, we're interested.
Bill Mallonee: What's been kind of neat for us in the Athens/Atlanta circuit is there's been sort of a ground swell of support from the churches and people who are willing to come into the clubs and be there for us. There's probably ten or fifteen people like that. Just people out there living their lives as people should and making an impression. And that goes down a lot better with people who are really hungry.
Press Weasel: What are you trying to do lyrically in your music? I've not heard it yet, so I don't know what to expect.
Bill Mallonee: It's stuff from the inside out. I'm a big Dylan fan, I like being able to turn a phrase here and there. I'm trying not to ram the truth down anybody's throat. I think Jesus is exactly who he said he was and that changed my life when I was eighteen years old, although it's been up and down a lot since then. I'm really not sure what it is. I don't like putting my music in a box.
I guess recently I've felt comfortable with the idea of being a confessional lyricist. There's a group of poets in English literature known as confessional poets. John Donne, Hopkins. It's kind of like speaking from the inside out. They had their own ministry just by saying that, their own struggles with the flesh, struggles with their desires to be true to the faith. So I feel comfortable being a "confessional" writer. I get more inspired out of reading than listening to other stuff. I don't listen to much music. Flannery O'Conner is a big influence, Walker Percy, Thomas Merton.
Press Weasel: Have most of you guys been Christians for a while?
Bill Mallonee: The Lord reached into my life when I was about eighteen, I don't have an exact time.
Billy Holmes: I grew up in the Baptist church, was saved and baptized when I was eight years old, rejected the whole notion when I was sixteen, went out and became a drunk and a dope fiend for about ten years until I lost everything I had and decided to come back the other direction.
Travis McNabb: I guess I'm similar to him, only I had a lot less time in-between.
Dave C: Billy and I were drinking buddies and we basically ruined our lives. You get to a point where it's like drink and die or find help. For me that was finding a higher power. I'm in a twelve-step program, AA, and if events eventually lead to accepting Christ, I can see that happening on a daily basis. Right now that's kind of where I'm at.
Press Weasel: Are you pleased with the sound you got on the new album?
Bill Mallonee: Yes, very much so. Well actually I'm probably more pleased than Billy. But that's because I like really nasty sounding records. Mark brought in a bunch of 1940's gear that we ran the acoustic guitars through. It's a real warm sound. As a matter of fact, there was a microphone I think was from a German radio station in 1945. It's a tube microphone. It makes the vocals real warm sounding, like they are right there in your living room. It doesn't have that digitized inoculated sound we are so used to these days. Major labels that listen to it say, "we've got to re record it."
Billy Holmes: We started to call this album Thank You Very Next. Mark and Peter would say, "why don't you pick that up over there and play a part." I would say, "I don't have a part." They would go, "well, just play something." One take. I'd be making something up while the tape was going and I'd say, "that was horrible!" Mark would go, "No, it was great! Had a good vibe to it. Thank you very...next." That's the way the whole record went.
Travis McNabb: There was a song or two that Billy and I had not even heard. Bill would say, "here's another one I've got if you are interested." I'd hear it once and go in the drum booth and start cutting it.
Bill Mallonee: There's a song on the record called "Keep Out the Chill". David Fricke, who's a big rock journalist, was in the room talking to Peter. REM was getting ready to go to Paraguay to buy some rain forest for some displaced tribe. (laughter) Seriously. So anyway, they were there interviewing REM while we were cutting the track to a song we've never heard before with David Fricke standing by.
Billy Holmes: I was a nervous wreck. Here's this big rock journalist who had the power to write, "Billy Holmes' bass playing stinks!" And I'm playing bass on a song I've never played before.
Press Weasel: How long did the album take?
Bill Mallonee: We did eighteen tracks and mixed half of them in less than two weeks.
Press Weasel: What is Mark like as a producer?
Bill Mallonee: What Mark wants on a record is honesty. If he got a track he wanted, there may have been a misplaced breath because I got too close to the mike, Mark doesn't care. As long as it's got what he calls "that wonderful love vibe."
Billy Holmes: Somebody asked earlier how long the band had been together. That's an interesting story. Bill had another band that was an electric band that he played electric guitar in. He started Vigilantes on the side with a couple of guys from his church. One was an accordion player and one was a blues harp player. They started playing coffeehouses for fun. The other band broke up and the Vigilantes, which they had no idea would go anywhere, took off.
Bill Mallonee: We got that record deal out in LA. We weren't even looking for it, which was great. I think the principal behind that, without trying to overspiritualize it, was that there is a fair amount of passivity in these matters. I think God is calling me to that. The doors are going to open or they are going to shut and you're going to know if it's the Lord or not.
Press Weasel: Do you guys try to utilize unusual instruments in your sessions?
Bill Mallonee: Billy plays sitar on "Undertow", which will be the album's single. I played a psycho-uke solo. At the very end of the record we had these four measure snippets that needed another instrument. There was a banjo-ukulele and other weird stuff laying around the studio so we used them to make those fills.
Billy Holmes: "Keep Out the Chill" is a song about a mental ward. Bill used to be a counselor in a mental hospital and the song is about his experience. We were ready to mix the song and I said, "there's no solo on this track!" We were in such a hurry that we forgot to put the guitar solo on the track and there was this gap. Bill grabs this banjo-ukulele, doesn't even tune it, and plays this bizarre thing that sounds like a mental ward. It turned out perfect.
Bill Mallonee: It's kind of Violent Femmish. I like it.
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