The Vacancies - interview

The Vacancies
by Mike Hammer

[I]The Vacancies (www.thevacanciesmusic.com)are a punk rock commotion. Singing about fear and pain and survival, their sound is a mix of Hot Water Music and the Dead Kennedy’s. The band is made up of 5 guys – between 21 and 34 years old, working jobs for the city and jobs and painters – who grew up listening to the Clash and they deal out a smarmy show of fun and sweat and punk fuckin rock.
They just released a record on Joan Jett’s Blackheart Records (www.blackheart.com) and are hitting the road with the Tossers in September.
I caught up with them, at a dinner table in the basement of the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland and talked to them about punk rock, hot sauce and Joan Jett still being hot.[/I]


[B]Mike Hammer[/B] How does the hot sauce help you get ready for a show? Is that on your rider? Is there a pre show hot sauce ritual?

[B]Vacancies[/B] I wish there was. (points to beer) This is the pre show ritual.

[B]MH[/I] How many beers before you’re ready to do a show.

[B]Vacancies[/B] It’s usually about 3, 3 is a good number.

[B]MH[/B] Ok. So you get buzzed and get get up there and play. You got your pretty straight forward punk rock, rock and roll sound, I used to have a friend who said rock n roll and punk is just the blues sped up, what do you think about that?

[B]Vacancies[/B] Yeah. That’s safe to say. There’s a combination of blues and 50s rock and…. blues is the roots, then there’s rock and roll and it branches off to punk and everything else. It’s all related. Punk is just regular old rock n roll tunes, done a little faster and maybe a little sloppier. I guess cause we’re not as good as musicians. We sing about the same things, the same attitudes, just sped up.

[B]MH[/B] What are the best songs about?

[B]Vacancies[/B] We don’t really sing any love songs. The best ones nowadays are just about being down and out and feeling good about not always having good things happen. We have always kinda tried, not tried, but it’s always worked out where we took something negative and tried to turn something around and make something positive out of it I guess, more so on the last album ([I]Beat Missing or a Silence Added[/I]) our last had a lot of positive message to it. It pointed out things that we thought were wrong and singing about trying to rise above it. But this record is along the same lines. We just sing about stuff that we think is lame and stuff that pisses us off and , we’re just regular dudes that work jobs and see a bunch of crap that’s going on that we don’t like, so what else is there to sing about.

[B]MH[/B] You ever sit down and try to write a love song?

[B]Vacancies[/B] Well, a lot of us are married (3 of the 5 members).

[B]MH[/B] What? You can’t write love songs if you’re married?

[B]Vacancies[/B] I feel that if you sit down and try to write a love song it’s gonna come out like crap. Yeah, you gotta feel it. A good song, that you feel, I think we all think so, comes out like a fart. Just comes out and you’re like ‘Look guys, this just popped in my head.’ We usually feel too, that if you have to work on it, it might not be a good song. Although, sometimes it does work out… so we’re constantly contradicting ourselves. I think a lot of the songs that we get excited about are when somebody brings something to the table and we all jump on it. You kinda know. Everybody just kinda looks at each other and we smile.

[B]MH[/B] How often to you guys practice. You’re all in the same area and you all work other jobs, what is it, 2 or 3 times a week you get together in somebody’s basement?

[B]Vacancies[/B] Twice a week for 8 years. We still screw up though. Unfortunately we don’t have a basement to practice in so we rent a space, but we share it with some other bands so it’s not too expensive. But yeah, you gotta practice. It’s kinda like a little tree fort that we get together and hide out in a way for a couple hours. We put the no girls allowed sign up.

[B]MH[/B] I thought punk rock bands wanted the girls to come out? What do punk rock bands want?

[B]Vacancies[/B] Beer. When three of the 5 members are married then… woah, let’s go back to your first question. This guy (Dave) wants to put Hot Sauce on titties.

[B]MH[/B] Alrigbt, The new album [I]Tantrum[/I] just came out a month ago, how’s that doing do far.

[B]Vacancies[/B] We have no idea. We are the most naïve business people you’ll ever meet.

[B]MH[/B] Can’t you get weekly updates from the label or something?

[B]Vacancies[/B] No, no. It got good reviews. So far we’ve gotten good feedback but I couldn’t tell you if it’s sold 50 or 5,000. We’re just happy that somebody wanted to give us money to put a record out. Honestly, I don’t care if it sells or not. We would be putting it out ourselves if somebody didn’t help us out. So it’s just a great way to get our records out and not have to dig into our own pockets.

[B]MH[/B] Is it the ultimate validation that you guys can play music well enough, with 3 beers in you, that Joan Jett wanted to sign you and pay you to record your stuff.

[B]Vacancies[/B] That’s really what it’s all about. This is a fun thing. That we would no matter what. I always say some people build model airplanes, we play in a rock band. It’s just what we do cause it’s what we wanna do. It’s a big kick and it’s a good chance to get out of the house, drink some beers and tour around the country. If we could make a few dollars in the process for gas money to get to the next spot, that’d be nice.It got a little more fun when Joan Jet said ‘Hey we wanna put out your record.’ We got to do a lot more things, but overall that’s really what it’s about. As long as we can get some free beer out of it and play some shows. Really it’s about playing live and then making records. Above and beyond that it’s just extra bonus. As long as we can play shows and we can make a record, especially when we have somebody who is gonna put it out for us, we feel pretty lucky I guess, just to have that.

[B]MH[/B] How did it come about that you got signed to Blackheart?

[B]Vacancies[/B] We played a couple shows with Joan and the Blackhearts and the second time we played with her she said ‘Would you guys be interested in doing your next record with Blackheart?’ and it was a no-brainer. Just like, yeah, of course. I grew up a fan of Joan Jett and it was awesome to meet her and play with her and to have someone like that offer to work with us, was an honor.

[B]MH[/B] Were you guys kissing ass a lot at that second show. Playing some Joan Jett covers to get on her good side and stuff?

[B]Vacancies[/B] No. Somebody we know, a friend of ours, sent our first record to her, she was playing a show in Sandusky, to try to get us to open the show. And she usually doesn’t have opening bands and they called us up and said ‘Joan likes the record come on out and do the show’ and at that show they asked us to do another show and she asked us to put a record out. And we were like ‘fuck yeah dude.’ Anytime you can hang out with Joan Jett in New York, that’s something I can tell my kids about.

[B]MH[/B] So you recorded the album in New York?

[B]Vacancies[/B] The last one ([I]Beat Missing or a Silence Added[/I]) but this one we recorded at home, the new record, [I]Tantrum[/I].

[B]MH[/B] Is Joan Jett still hot?

[B]Vacancies[/B] Totally cute.

[B]MH[/B] You guys have been around 8 years or so, but she’s been around a lot longer, did she give you guys any advice as a young band? How to go about yourselves?

[B]Vacancies[/B] Not so much on a business side. But, she did from day 1, it was always about ‘don’t drink too much’ and ‘you should probably quit smoking if you want your voice to improve’. I don’t know if that woulda been her advice 20 years ago, but she takes the business very seriously. Being the best you can be live, and she is, she’s awesome live, incredible. She was really courteous to the point of like, when you’re there and you’re nervous and you don’t know how to react, she was like ‘these are important songs, you’re saying stuff that people aren’t saying to often anymore’ and she was encouraging and I think that’s what she added to our band.Not, just go through the motions, but be passionate about it, ‘cause she’s passionate about it and I think that’s what she added to us. And she, she coulda stopped years ago if she wanted to, but she put out another record last year, she’s still doing it.

[B]MH[/B] OK. So Joan was in the studio and produced your album.

[B]Vacancies[/B] Yeah, the last one, [I]Beat Missing or a Silence Added [/I].

[B]MH[/B] Who recorded the new one [I]Tantrum[/I]?

[B]Vacancies[/B]We did. Joan kinda gave us the go ahead to do it ourselves.

[B]MH[/B] How was that different?

[B]Vacancies[/B] When we did the New York one we recorded in like 6 days. We did 16 songs and it was nerves and energy and it was, ‘lets try this, now this, let’s do this again’ and we were hectic and I think it came across, as a really aggressive record. This one we did at home so we could spend more time on it. We worked our jobs during the day and went to the studio at night. We took more time with it, so it wasn’t just boomboomboomboomboom, we recorded it a little differently. I don’t know if it was just better, it was just different.

[B]MH[/B] So, the songs, do you feel like your delivering and saying something new and something relevant on the new album?

[B]Vacancies[/B] I don’t know if it’s anything new, new ideas, it’s more like, I think it’s relevant. I think we’re saying something that’s important. We have songs about poverty – which is kinda a big deal right now especially in Cleveland – we have some anti-racism songs, just anti-hate songs – cause it seems like everybody hates each other still and we’re supposed to be growing and being better as a population, and at times it doesn’t seem like we are – and I think we’ve got better as song writers. I think a bunch of bands come out and you always remember that first record as the great one and I like to think that we’ve gotten progressively better and that [I]Tantrum[/I] is our best one, and it makes me kinda excited to see what’s gonna happen next. Basically we used to suck pretty bad and now we’re OK.

[B]MH[/B] Punk rock overall. Is it getting better? There’s a lot of ‘pop punk’ now but it doesn’t seem like there as many straight punk bands, what do you guys, as a punk band, think of the punk scene and where it fits in with the whole musical landscape.

[B]Vacancies[/B] As far as the scene goes, I’m a little scared right now. We just got back from playing the Warped Tour and it broke my heart to see the direction that that Warped Tours going. We were standing out there with stickers and looking for t-shirts of people walking through the gates, trying to get anyone who is real punk rock fans over to come see us play and we would look for Clash shirts and stuff and out of thousands of kids, it was hard to find a punk rocker. And it was the Warped Tour. It just blew my mind. The types of music that we’re fans of, that style, is not a real popular thing right now. It was in the early 90s or whatever, but its not now and it makes it hard for a band like us to play what we like playing. It would be easy for us to jump on any sort of bandwagon and probably get signed with a major and get on the radio very easily and make money and actually get a tour bus, but that’s not why anybody should be in a band. I think we are just getting older too. And when your parents used to say ‘what is that crap you’re listening to’ we’re doing that now. Like ‘what is this crap these kids like’. You can’t really knock it because kids are lovin it. There are a lot of talented bands out there, but it’s just not necessarily what we’re into. We are older now and the stuff that we grew up with is what we like. There are bands that are new and are great too, we’re friends with The Vandals, that bands still doing it. Against Me, I think is a great band, there are still bands that are popping up that are great but there just aren’t as many. There’s not as much an audience for that. But, trends happen and people will get tired of stuff and.. we wanna be that band that kids graduate to. Like, the listened to Backstreet Boys when they were 12 then in high school they listened to ‘ what’s this Clash band that everybody keeps talking about’ – I’m not comparing us to the Clash, but we wanna be that band that kids take seriously after the trends are over. Right now it’s really scary times right now locally and everywhere, we tend to have the pop music push because it’s lighthearted and you can listen to it and not think about anything, but during all this there’s an underbelly that’s growing and there are gonna be bands that’ll come around full circle, bands that give you something to think about. We might not be part of it, but they’ll be there.

[B]MH[/B] Are you guys going on tour now to get out the new record and spread the punk rock?

[B]Vacancies[/B] In September. East coast and Mid West tour with a band called the Tossers, they’re kinda like Flogging Molly. They’re Chicago dudes.

[B]MH[/B] And that’s for a couple weeks.

[B]Vacancies[/B] Yeah. Then after that we don’t know what’s going on we just kinda going one day at a time. Hopefully we’ll put out another record

[B]MH[/B] You guys just gonna walk around in Cleveland and see if you see some more sad things to write songs about.

[B]Vacancies[/B] You gotta live life to write a song. You can’t write about TV shows.