A Little Bit of Me, A Lot of John Vanderslice

The second part of this blog post should have been written sometime last week, preferably at the start of the week. That was not to be, because of what I'm going to talk about first. 

This past Saturday was the double record release show for an album by my band the Harry Von Zells, and a split single by Creedmoors and Pink Gin Marimbas. The days leading up to the show were filled with rehearsals, when I wasn't working the closing shift. The latter two bands also made their performance debuts that night, since the songs on the single were the work of solo artists in their basement. Now they are real bands. 

The Harry Von Zells haven't played a show since October 2021, which is right around the time I started recording tracks for the album. As I've mentioned in a few previous posts, I was sort of at the end of my rope around that time, feeling like maybe it was time to stop trying to get band practices together and to stop booking shows, two things that didn't always reach their potential, with or without the looming pandemic. But I was determined to get some songs recorded so even if I never performed live again, the songs wouldn't just evaporate into the ether.

Turns out the songs sounded really strong. Further, when you make a record, it's a good idea to stage a release show so people will know about it. and maybe buy it. The Harry Von Zells got resurrected with a lineup that is still solidifying. But the original four of us also played together on Saturday too, and it felt good. 

Before we played, Creedmoors opened the show. The center stage guitarist, Joe Tarowsky, is the one responsible for the single, "Rosie Jean," and a few other cool songs that can be found on Bandcamp. Mike Athey is on bass. Erin Dawes (who played with me in the Love Letters) is on drums and Tammy Wallace is on guitar. (A link to the music is below.) They sounded really tight, and when all four of them sang it once, it felt like a choir. Beautiful stuff. The surprising thing is the band came together really quickly, in a space of about two months. 

Pink Gin Marimbas played next. I don't have an action shot because I'm part of the live version of the band. (In case you don't know, I'm the second from the left). I play drums for them, though it's not my usual instrument. Rob Rayshich (far right, guitar) did the recording and his adult kids Max (far left, guitar) and Charlie (keyboards, main vocals, second to right) round out the band in person. I too was wearing a pink shirt during our set, but switched out for the Harry Von Zells set. This photo was one of our candid, outtake shots, outside Government Center, the record store/live space/coffee shop/bar where we played. 

The Harry Von Zells album can be found at this link. 

Creedmoors and Pink Gin Marimbas can be found here. Please give both of them a listen and maybe take a piece of us home with you.

I don't particularly feel like reporting on the Harry Von Zells set because it's my band. What I do feel comfortable saying is that the turnout at the show on Saturday really blew me away. Government Center isn't a huge place but it's not tiny either, and the place was packed, even before things started. It was so great to have so many people come out for the show, especially folks I didn't really know who were friends with the other bands and who hung around the whole night. That really felt good. 

While I don't want to talk get indulgent about the band itself, there is one song of ours that could use a little explanation and will act as a good segue into the second part of this post. Back in the early 2000s, John Vanderslice released his album Cellar Door and I listened to it constantly. Several years earlier, my band the Pundits opened for John's band MK Ultra, who I really liked. I had heard some of John's solo albums and thought they were good, but Cellar Door really blew me away. It was full of stories about people who were just on the brink or weren't tightly wound and the blend of lyrical plots and music was great. I still think it's one of his best albums. 

Somewhere around that time I decided to write a song about a guy who's obsessed with a musician, and I wanted it to sound like a John Vanderslice song. As I wrote it, I created something like a story arc in my lyric book. The first verse came pretty easily but I had to figure where it would go from there. And I also had a chorus ready, with the first line: "But now I'm cold/so cold from crying..." 

Nothing creepy happens in the song. It's more about building up expectations way too high about how things will go, only to see them fall apart. 

But, to be clever (at least in my mind), I titled it "Dear John." Even though the musician in the song could be anyone.

When John Vanderslice played a show in Pittsburgh recently, I pondered telling him about the song. I didn't have the records in hand yet, or else I would have given him one. But I couldn't do it. He was so warm and friendly to everyone that night, very appreciative that we were all there, so I couldn't jeopardize that good feeling. I mean, he told me loves me. And he wrote that on an album I bought from him. 

When Vanderslice tours, he doesn't play clubs anymore. Instead, he's part of a network of acts that play house shows. The last time he came to Pittsburgh, he played a house in Greenfield, a really residential 'hood very close to where I grew up, which is funny because the dudes in that area would've beaten up guys like John or me (we're the same age) if we looked at them. 

On April 22, he played at the Bantha Tea House which sometimes hosts shows, but the aura felt similar to a house show: a small (maybe 30 people) but attentive audience, who all seemed to know his songs. (It really sounded like people were singing along at various times.)

Storytelling was as much a part of the show as the songs. In fact there might have been more talk than rock. Before the set started, he asked the audience to submit questions on slips of paper, which he would answer throughout the night. But John is a great talker anyway so the heavy talk ratio didn't really matter. I would have preferred that he didn't ask the management to turn off the ceiling fan about 20 minutes into the set, because it got a bit stuffy after awhile. But not stifling. 

Bantha has a piano that is reasonably in tune, so the evening started with "Farewell Transmission," a tender ballad from the Pixel Revolt album. From there, he stuck to his acoustic guitar for the rest of the night, never needing a microphone. The set list spanned a wide gamut of songs, which makes sense because he's released a lot of albums (counting live albums and remixes, the number is around 13). 

Vanderslice only played one song from his newest album, Crystals 3.0 because, presumably, it's the only one that can be recreated with just an acoustic guitar. A lot of his work over the past 10 years has veered away from indie rock (if you can use that label for Vanderslice's songs) toward more electronica. Some of the stories he told between songs tackled that subject, pointing out how hip hop and electronica acts often release several things in the space of a year while indie bands take forever to make decisions and obsess over how much effect to put on their guitar in the studio. "Bands are in a stylistic prison," he said. He admitted that in 2013 when he was trying to work on a new album, he couldn't come up with anything when approaching the music as more straightahead rock (my term, not his). When he started using more electronics, things took shape. 

He also talked about being interviewed on the TrueAnon, a politics podcast, with a left-wing analysis, or as its creators put it, "a show about your enemies made by your friends." Vanderslice explained how, when being interviewed, it's easy to put your own spin on a story to keep it interesting, which gets spun even a little more when a producer shapes that interview into a story. 

Throughout the evening, Vanderslice came off as a guy who still gets excited about things on a regular basis. About a week before the show, someone broke into Tiny Telephone, the recording studio he runs in Oakland, California, and a lot of equipment was stolen. As he talked about it, Vanderslice focused less on the shock of the robbery and more on how touched he was that so many people rallied their support online to help the studio recover or try to find the equipment. That support seemed to give him the motivation to continue the tour and not go home to try and deal with the loss right away. (In the week since that show, Jack White alone donated $15,000 to a gofundme campaign for Tiny Telephone.) 

Vanderslice also seemed eternally grateful that we were there for his show. (Things were supposed to end after 75 minutes, but when he finally called it quits, he had been going for nearly two hours.) He tried to pass on his positive disposition too, espousing things like the pleasure of packing a peanut butter sandwich and a thermos of coffee and going on a 10-mile hike. 

And then there were the songs. "Exodus Damage," his first person tale about a fragile character who is caught up in 9/11 conspiracies and devoted to another such believer; "When It Hits My Blood," a tale of someone with bad habits; "Too Much Time," which always seemed like his closest shot at a pop hit. 

After the set, he worked the merch table, giving everyone time for chatting and pictures. I took two because I wanted make sure "I Love Cats" was legible in one of the pictures.