Backstage With Vintage Trouble

While Pollstar was visiting Quebec for the Festival d’été de Québec, we met with three-quarters of the band before their set – singer Ty Taylor, guitarist Nalle Colt and drummer Richard Danielson. We began the Q&A by chatting about another festival. Vintage Trouble had a lot to say after headlining the Montreal Jazz Festival a few days earlier, playing to the largest crowd of their career.

The following interview – which was spirited, so it became long – includes some good advice for those artists who would someday love to be at their level, which is climbing every day.

What was your experience headlining Montreal Jazz Festival?

Nalle Colt: It was surreal to say the least. We headlined the Montreal Jazz Festival, the main stage. The paper said 100,000 people but an official there said 65,000 to 70,000. They might still be exaggerating that. But there were probably no less than 50.

How was the reaction? How were the merch sales?

Ty Taylor: The merch sold out in seconds. [As] a band, you just want the biggest platform possible to see if what you do works. What was really cool is I do this little bit where I go out into the audience, and it’s a good tester to see how far people have gone. I go out into the middle of the audience … and ask everybody to get on the ground, and we had least 30,000 people on the ground, jamming to the song.  I mean, that’s pretty crazy. 

And also, the generation is different. Just today I was walking down the street [in Quebec] this guy pulls me in and says, “Thank you so much. My daughter’s 16. She saw you guys in Montreal the other day. I’ve been trying to get her to listen to the kind of music you play all my life. She hates it. And then the Montreal Jazz Festival came and she saw Vintage Trouble and all she’s asking about the last few days is, ‘OK, now show me the old soul records [and] the old rock ‘n’ roll records.’ Whatever it is, you’ve got it.”

They were supposed to have left yesterday but the daughter convinced her dad to stay and they’re here tonight!  And they live in Chicago! They could have seen the show in three weeks.

I’ve heard the people in this city are nuts about classical music.

Colt: It’s amazing, this part of Canada. … It’s such a musical country. Everybody’s into music in an almost European way. We’ve been spending so much time in the U.K.  The appreciation of live music is very much like here in Canada. … It’s kind of a new place for us.

So this is a new market for you?

Colt: Yes.

Richard Danielson: We played [Montreal] with The Who. We also played with Joss Stone and The Cranberries. We’ve been here as an opener.

Taylor: It’s very interesting, this thing about the classical music. It should work in our favor. Most of everything we do is melody based. Not only do we arrange our music, we orchestrate the music itself, so I think people who have an ear for classical music will hopefully appreciate the amount of work we put into the arrangements and understand music from that point of view. I’ve never really thought about that before this moment. Ideally, if people listen to classical music, I think we could be a nice bridge into some stuff they might not usually try. We try to make it “music first,” not energy nor hype nor fashion. If this place is into classical music, I think it’s going to be great.

Danielson: You know, one of the thing about [Montreal Jazz Festival] being a free concert is it’s not about, “We gotta sell a million tickets,” etc. They’re trying to bring music … that they think their people are going to like. And that is a huge compliment to Montreal and the people who threw that festival. It’s the world’s biggest jazz festival and they’re putting all kinds of eclectic things on, and it’s all for free. What a great way to enrich your community. It was an honor for us to be brought to so many people just because they wanted us there.

Taylor: It’s great to think that just because we play music and we feel good about the music we play that we’re totally responsible for why we would be at a place like that – [but] … one of the main reasons we’re here is because we ended up having a “fairy godfather” that met us somewhere else. That guy made a team of people that are responsible for us being here. A lot of times people get so arrogant about what they do that they think they don’t need help. We’re here because we had a lot of help, not just because we’re good. 

I think a lot of bands think only in traditional routes. They think, “Let me get with a record company. Let me talk to promoters.” Instead, there are people around that love music and – I hate to say it – but they have money.  Sometimes it’s important. They’re great businessmen and they’ve always maybe dreamed of being a musician and that’s not what they did. So, in this way, they get to partake in music. And this time we lucked out and found some great partners who are teaching us about business and how to up our own touring game and what we need to demand from the people we choose to have around us. … It’s really nice when you actually feel like friends while it’s happening.

We’ve all seen those movies: “Hey, kid! Here’s some money! Go play a tour!” You can tell. We’ve all been fucked over enough in our lives to have a good sense of what people’s energies are like. It’s really nice to have this fairy godfather in Canada and the team he’s putting together and the fact that we get to do things like last night in Montreal because we’re a live band, and it’s even better for us than a television show.  The more people we can get to, in a live way, then we’ve reached that many [more] people in an hour.

There are a lot of potential fairy godfathers in this business. Can you give me some more details?

Danielson: Well, there really is no mystery. We were playing with The Who and somebody was watching The Who and fell in love with Vintage Trouble, and brought us to their friend who happens to be involved with the Montreal Jazz Festival.

Colt: It’s been a one year project, with him coming to see shows, and trying to convince these guys to put us on the stage.

Danielson: It’s not a music business person as much as a music lover who believes a lot in this band.

Colt: We were really lucky.

Taylor: He kept coming to shows because he wanted to make sure it wasn’t a fluke!

Danielson: He’s been to Chicago, Nashville, and California. He started following us around to see what we were made of.

Taylor: And it’s completely validating, and it makes you feel so good about yourself because all you want the entire time you’re writing songs and playing songs is to have people of all levels enjoy you. It’s just as important that a little girl is excited as some older businessman. And it’s better when you have someone say, “You know, I believe in you so much I’m going to make a lot of people understand what I understand.”

The way these people [at Montreal Jazz Festival] set things up, it was like we were already Beyoncé. When we stepped onto that stage, they added lights, etc. We [had been] in Rio de Janeiro – we saw Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake [with elaborate stage production] – that’s what it felt like in Montreal!

Like the stage was dedicated to you.

Taylor: Right! We saw Rock in Rio and said, “We want to have that kind of stuff for us some day.” Every day we spend time on Facebook. We talk with our fans one on one. I think we go out of our way to be good to people as Vintage Trouble. And I’m a big spiritual guy and I have to believe that the reason why some of these things happen like Montreal is because maybe we’ve done something nice, and we’re getting rewarded.  It makes you want to keep doing nice things.

So where are you “at” in your career? Meaning, can you walk down the street here to get some poutine with some anonymity?

Colt: It’s fun because, after the show in Montreal we could tell [we were being recognized] because there were posters of [with] our faces. We’re still working on this and it’s an amazing market.

Taylor: I went from here to the record store, which is about seven blocks away, and got stopped about 22 times.

Colt: But we’ve gone into markets where we’ve sold 87 tickets.

Taylor: There’s a lot of friction in what we’re doing because you do get recognized every other day but then there are the days in between that put you in your place. I could be in L.A., [at] my local record store, Amoeba Records, be holding my own record, walk up to the counter and the person will say, “Yeah, that’ll be $9.99.” They don’t even realize who we are! It’s a good balance. You get to be excited but you know your own shit still stinks.

[Ty happens to be holding an old vinyl record he just bought.]

Today, I went and bought this record. I was looking for it forever. It’s 1967 Booker T & the MG’s, and The Mar-Keys. I went to the counter, put this down, and the owner pulled up Booker T’s new record and was, like, “Oh!” So he knew who we were. So today wasn’t that story. But I’m more used to the story you’re talking about.

So I fuckin’ skipped back here. I was trying to write lyrics to this one song and it was blocked but someone gave me a compliment and suddenly I’m unblocked! It’s thrilling. When you start seeing stuff going like this, for the amount of time we put into this, I dive into it. I don’t try to pretend it’s not happening. I think we have enough time as artists where you beat yourself up nonstop that when little things happen that are nice nods to what you’re doing, you gotta roll around in it a little bit. That can be the rejuvenation you need to get past tomorrow, when nobody is going to recognize you.

Danielson: We’re getting recognized on a different level as well. At festivals we’ve [been] shoved in our teeth for years but now promoters are putting us in better slots, moving up from last year.

Taylor: Since this is Pollstar, we gotta talk about this. It’s a live thing, and it’s the biggest live thing other than Montreal. Glastonbury.

Danielson: Well, it’s England and it’s constant rain. But it rained so bad it was an electrical storm and they shut the stage down. Lightning hit a stage while we were playing, so they shut us down [after] a song and a half …

Colt: Live on BBC TV …

Danielson: Our big moment!

Taylor: It was tough. It was the third biggest stage this year. During “Hand Me Down Blues” our tour manager comes over and whispers in my ear, “You gotta cut the show.”

Colt: We had all these fans there, and they’re shouting “Vintage Trouble! Vintage Trouble!”

Danielson: And then the heavens opened and it was torrential rain but these people stood through it for an hour.

Taylor: But there was a half hour where we wanted to “feed” them so we’d go to the side of the stage and … we’d sing and they’d repeat. We felt like that would be a Band-aid. Then we go back a half hour later and they said, “No, it’s not going to happen.”

Danielson: They tell the crowd we’re canceled and they go nuts. So we grabbed our instruments and someone gave Ty a bullhorn and we went out in front of the stage, on the PA, and did an acoustic show …

While they’re doing the setup for the next band behind you?

Danielson: Yeah, behind us, and the crowd’s going wild because we’re playing for them acoustically, which is kind of the spirit of what Glastonbury is, that impromptu moment. We turned a negative into a positive and made magic out of it. People were so appreciative that we came out and tried to give them something. People want to be moved, you know?

Taylor: And we wanted to play!

Colt: We flew from Los Angeles to Glastonbury and our show gets canceled!?

Danielson: I’m not going to lie to you. We looked out at that audience and thought, “Dammit, we didn’t get to play.” And live on BBC TV.

Taylor: But we did get to do a song with Jools Holland, so they do get to see the impact of that. And then, also, when you read about festivals, you know it’s the really odd moments … [and] the weird stuff that people remember. We’d love to have played our set but I think more people remember the fact that our set was great.

What was the feedback?

Danielson: We got a lot of press. It was about something unusual but people were appreciative.

Colt: They said it was the first time they had to shut down all of Glastonbury because of an electrical storm. It was kind of a historic moment.

What do you actively do to gain new fans? Do you visit the merch table after the show?

Taylor: Always. We jump off the stage, walk through the audience to the merch tent.

Colt: We do that no matter what. If it’s our show, festivals, anything. Especially festivals. That’s where 60 percent of the people have no idea who you are and how cool it is to get to meet those people.

Taylor: It’s sometimes true that our merch line is longer than our shows.

So there’s a nutty amount of selfies going on.

Colt: Yeah! And at the end of the day, we love to do it because it’s rewarding. It’s cool to hear what people think about [the show] and their stories. It’s more rewarding than performing.

Danielson: It plays into what we preach, which is community. We have this fan base called the Troublemakers. We want them to interact with each other, and we want to meet them. Look, it’s about selling merch but we’re not trying to turn people upside down and shake money from them. Ty, even on stage, says, “Come over whether you buy something or not. Give us a hug. Bring us a drink. But come and meet us.” And in doing so, they meet each other. It’s really a much bigger thing than selling merchandise.

There are a lot of bands out there that don’t feel that way.

Nelle: It started organically. We used to play a place called Harvelle’s in Santa Monica. We played there every week for more than a year. It would be a party. It was called “Trouble Tuesdays.” After we did two sets, we’d just walk out into the audience and have drinks. They’d just stay with us. Even when we played with The Who, we’d support them and when we were done with our show we’d just jump off the stage and walk around the entire arena, saying hi to everyone. It just stuck with us; we never really thought about it.

Taylor: Our manager manages KISS as well and I remember hearing some funny stories that made us laugh. Gene Simmons was talking about merchandising this crazy kind of stuff. … KISS is one of the biggest merchandising bands in the world. … You realize that by people having merchandise they are a walking advertisement. When they have music they play it while their friends are around. It’s not only about dollar sales, it’s about knowing who your band is. You don’t really think about that until you’re in a festival and see a lot of Vintage Trouble T-shirts walking around.

Danielson: And I want to add something I think is really important, which is we just finished up a U.K tour and after every gig we throw an after-party, and it’s for all these people to come out and get together. We are the after party. We come. We drink. We hang with people all night. It’s a lot of work for us but we’re massaging this community. It’s become now where they’ll get together before the shows with each other and they’ll come to the shows together.

Taylor: You’ll see things on Facebook like, “Where’s the pre-party?” Without any help from us they’ll have a “pre” [event]. And often we’ll see the sun come up with these people.

I know we gotta go but, referencing your manager, he also handles Darius Rucker. And what you’re saying happens in country music, and it’s a perfect way to connect with fans.

Taylor: Yes. There’s this famous story about Garth Brooks that he would stay around and sign for 24 hours.

Colt: It’s funny. We did a corporate show last night, a private party. And afterward we came out. I met some couple and they said, “Oh my God! I can’t believe you’d come out after the show and say hello.” They were shocked.

Upcoming dates for Vintage Trouble:

Aug. 16 – Tokyo, Japan, Chiba Marine Stadium (Summer Sonic)   
Aug. 17 – Osaka, Japan, Maishima Outdoor Activities Center (Summer Sonic)     
Aug. 19 – Tokyo, Japan, Blue Note Tokyo  
Aug. 20 – Tokyo, Japan, Blue Note Tokyo  
Aug. 23 – Minneapolis, Minn., Loring Park (Cultivate Festival)     
Sept. 7 – St. Louis, Mo., Central Field @ Forest Park (LouFest)   
Sept. 14 – Danville, Ill., Kennekuk County Park (Phases Of The Moon Music & Art Festival)     
Sept. 18 – Washington, D.C., The Hamilton Live    
Oct. 24 – Las Vegas, Nev., Downtown Las Vegas (Life Is Beautiful Festival)

For more information visit VintageTrouble.com.