Interviews
Vigilante Voice
by Brad Caviness
Shout! Magazine, September/October 1996
"To people who are deaf you have to shout and to people
who are blind you have to write your letters largely."
— Flannery O'Conner, Mystery and Manners.
"A lot of people think their sickness is the common cold when, in fact, it's cancer. The code is blue and all that kind of stuff," said Bill Mallonee, singer, song writer and band leader of Vigilantes of Love, a group that is quickly taking on underrated legend status among both christian and heathen music fans. "I think that's why in the past I've gravitated to using medical and military analogies in our songs. Stuff that's pretty rough and violent. That's where a lot of my music sort of lies."
Mallonee's blunt descriptions seem at odds with his current setting. It's a warm summer night, cicadas sing in the trees and his two sons playing in a newly installed swimming pool in the back yard -- an idyllic family evening. But like the Flannery O'Conner quote, Mallonee's songs, filled with caustic images of confused, torn and broken characters, sung with the spit fire delivery of a young Bob Dylan, writes with large letters that the world is desperately sick. And the Vigilantes' ragged rootsy rock music shouts out the cure at cathartic, redemptive volume or in a tender whisper that sends shivers down the listener's spine.
Over the years, Mallonee acknowledges, VOL has tended to be known and appreciated for its lyrics more than its music, a fact he says he feels "really good about."
"I like what I write," he said. "One of my motivations for starting to write in the first place is I wasn't hearing what I wanted to hear in other music. I just got tired of buying stuff and being disappointed. I thought, 'I can do better than that'."
And if critical accolades are any indication, in the six years since Vigilantes of Love recorded their first independent record, Jugular, Mallonee has indeed done better than most at creating music and words that are literate, spiritual and passionate. Commercial success has not come as easy as critical success, but VOL has managed to build a core audience in both the christian and mainstream markets, eager to buy the band's records and attend their concerts.
In the past, Vigilantes of Love have concentrated on working in the secular market place, taking advantage of the greater opportunity there to reach all music listeners. But with the release of their sixth record, V.O.L., a compilation of 12 past favorites and four new songs, the Vigilantes are set to make a name for themselves with the christian record buying public. And although he wasn't overly familiar with the whole christian music scene before he started making records, Mallonee now sees some differences between christian music and general market performers.
"In some respects, the christians are without the same alibis that maybe the general market has," states Mallonee. "And to qualify that, if a person isn't professing faith in Christ, they're going to write their world view. They're going to write from the inside out. It may not be neat and pretty, but it's probably honest. And a lot of the christian music that I've heard, and I don't want to make any blanket or sweeping statements, isn't really honest.
"What it sounds like to me is that a band is going after a certain sound or image because that's what MTV told them to be like, and the lyrics are kind of tacked on as an after thought. It's almost like whatever they're saying becomes secondary. They're not very artistically challenging, it doesn't hit me in the heart. Now, I don't care what you're playing. You can be playing on a kazoo, just make me believe it and move me.
In light of such feelings about most christian music, it may seem surprising that Mallonee felt the time was right to release a Vigilante record to the Christian market.
"Barry Landis and all those guys over at Warner Resound have been aware for a couple of years of what was going on with us over in the general market," explains Mallonee. "At Capricorn we are unfortunately hampered by having a label that's really great at getting us on the radio but not at much else. Their distribution is a terror.
"Part of our problem, also, is that we headline probably 90 percent of the dates we play and we should be trying to get on opening for like Matthew Sweet for 20 dates or with R.E.M. for 30 dates. But, because of the pecking order or whatever, that just never materializes. So we've kind of become this real scrappy three-piece band in a van.
"It's a real pioneer, heartland kind of thing, just driving all over America and playing gig after gig," he continues. "It's not a lot of money, but enough to keep it going. And we felt like over the last two years that was what we were supposed to be doing. Just take the music and put it in the hands of the people and maybe win the world one person at a time. Warner Resound has kind of picked up on that spirit and was open to us go back into the studio to do some new tracks for the record."
It's a record Mallonee has taken great pains to produce.
"I made a list of the songs I wanted on there and sent that to our manager, Dan Russell at Fingerprint," Mallonee explains. "Dan also made his own list and got together with Barry Landis at Warner Resound to kind of flesh out the final song order.
"I picked the songs I did because I thought they were very focused on what I want the christian listener to hear," he continues. "And then I also wanted some things on there that were a little bit more artistic and challenging, like "the Glory and the Dream" or "Undertow." I wanted a little bit to sort of stretch the boundaries. There's all these multiple snapshots being thrown out there and you have to look at them real quick or you'll miss something. I actually wanted some more of the scary stuff like "Bolt Action" or "Offer," which is very gospel oriented, on there. But that would've made the cd too long and skewed it a little too heavily toward the Capricorn stuff.
"The four [new] tracks we did for this record, I wanted on there for two reasons: One, I think they're great songs and they compliment the record. And, two, they're sort of a flare or an opening salvo for where the band is going," Mallonee continues.
Interestingly, the new songs are more gospel-oriented than most of the Vigilante's previous work. "Yeah, and it's funny, they're all in 6/8 time, too, which is a great hymn signature," he laughs.
In fact, the plaintive "Double Cure" echoes the melody of "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name."
"I love 'Double Cure,'" Mallonee says. "We've been playing that song for about two years now. It's really a great song to play because there's so much room to emote in it. I sing it different every night. And the band has really gotten into playing it dynamically -- that is loud and then soft. To me, it sort of feels like a hymn when you listen to it. I'm real happy with how it turned out.
"[Recording 'Double Cure'] was the first time that Tom (Crea) and Chris (Bland, the new VOL rhythm section) and my self have been in the studio together," he continues. "We had, like, two days to do these songs. And John Keane (Indigo Girls, R.E.M.), who worked with us on the last record, was right in the middle of doing R.E.M.'s new live record, but he took some time off. We went in and had a lot of fun setting up the mics and just having at it. It was all done pretty live -- I think I did maybe one harmonica overdub and added a second guitar somewhere. But it has a nice raw feel to it."
Raw describes much of Mallonee's work. "A lot of the lyrics on the record have to do with coming to grips, sooner or later, with the fact that you're not ever going to be perfect, and you're going to have to struggle through," he says. "Some of us never seem to get enough poop off of our shoes. But God's grace and mercy become just that much more astonishing because of that faithfulness.
"It's amazing to me, the idea of the vessel being broken, that you go through this period of 'how, why or in what capacity could God ever use me?' Then you find out he's used you in some sort of way, and you just sort of think, 'He's amazing. What in the world did I do to deserve that?'"
Mallonee pauses to take in the evening and reflect on his last statement.
"I've tried to take that back in a more mature way as I look at our music over the years and think, 'You know, we really deserve nothing.' We could be bitter and lament the fact that we made great records and they never got distributed. But we had a soapbox to stand on almost every night of the year we were playing, and whether there was five people there or 500, we got to talk about the Lord.
"I didn't start playing guitar until pretty late. I developed a lot of open and altered tunings just 'cause I didn't know any better.
"Early songs not quite there. Now I try to make sure all the acoustic songs are kind of fragile and vulnerable, the kind of stuff that sounds scary at three in the morning. Or it's just big, loud garage college rock. I try to navigate on both ends of that spectrum, because it seems that's where the mainstream is and I kind of like that.
"I did the Mr. Mom thing for the first four or five years I was writing and just before Vigilantes of Love really started to break. Now the band is full time and then some. It becomes, because it's not your basic 9-to-5 where you punch a time clock, it becomes all consuming. It's not only your job, it also becomes your identity. Without over-spiritualizing it, it's also your ministry and what you're about. It really becomes almost everything after a while.
I'm really glad people are buying (Driving the Nails) anyway. We're never gonna see anything from it.
"That's what the whole lyric was in 'Real Downtown' about 'Possession is 9/10's of the law.'
"I'm really grateful. We're actually talking to Warner about signing directly on, but they want to see how this record will do. We've had some good offers.
"That AAA format seems to be where we've found a good home but it's time to get out of that. It's funny, people have always said the band sounds rawer and more emotional on stage, and I think that's true.
"Let me tell you, I do live to launder. I do about two loads of laundry a day.
"I'm called an 'Elder-at-large' now which sounds like a convict. It's a small house church recognized by the Presbyterian Church of America. It has a mission church kind of status. It's about 20 years old and never serves more than 80-100 people on a given Sunday. We mostly minister to campus groups at the University of Georgia. In the early years, it was heavily influenced by Francis Shaeffer and the whole L'Abri movement, and still is to a certain extent.
"Occassionally, I think I have a lot of sympathies for high church and liturgy and things like that. But I keep coming back to the simpilicity and what C.S. Lewis would call the 'mere Christianity' of University Church. It's kind of humble and unadorned. But the truth is preached and people are nurtured and encouraged. And at the end of the day I think that's what it's all about."
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