So why don't we start, you know, what got you guys into music? Why music? Yeah, it just kind of called you. I love the name Vintage Trouble, and your guys' sound is amazing.
It's this just real kick-ass blues rock sound. When I listen to you guys, I think of The Stones, I think of The Animals, and I think of old-school James Brown. How did you guys go about finding the sound of the band? This is high.
Again, for some reason I think in the style of the band, people might think a little more really thought out than we actually put into it. We didn't put a lot of thought into it. All we said was we wanted to not put boundaries on ourselves, and we wanted to, like, we've been in a lot of other bands before where, you know, you have to do this, you have to do that. We want to get rid of all that.
And then the common ground for us was that 1950s and 1960s period, because I think just because we all have varied backgrounds, there's something about that 50s and 60s time that allowed all of those different styles to be as one. You had your gospel, you had your rhythm and blues, and you had your rock and roll all in one medium, and that was called the original rhythm and blues, you know? And that was just all, for some reason, it was a meeting point inside of our music connection. You know, people like Little Richard, Etta James, and Ruth Brown, and Magic Sam, and Chuck Berry, and Bobby Blue Glenn, all these people that were just, they didn't say to themselves, I'm a rock and roll singer, so I just happened to sing rock and roll, or a guitar player that was rhythm and blues, you know?
Thank God for the blues, that's where he came from, but that's where that image it came from. It was that period when people didn't tell you what you had to do. You know, so it's just like all these early musicians, and all this heard in our houses, and then just, you know, when we first got our first vinyl record players, it's what our parents were probably playing, and then so it was just, it was the center of who we are. And it's kind of how we like to walk around in life today.
I mean, so much of all the stuff that's going on, that most people consider to be a controversy in the world, it's just because people are trying to see the differences in themselves, and so the similarities. There was that period in time in music, where people didn't make you make those differences, so why would we not fall in love at that time? You guys just recorded a new EP, and it's called The Swing House Acoustic Sessions, and on the EP you guys have a great rendition of Blues Hand Me Down, which is probably my favorite track that you guys have done. Why did you guys decide to go for an acoustic EP?
Hey, this is Malikoltz. Well, you know, we were going to, we just signed a deal with Blue Note Records, and it happened early this year, and we were about to go on the road and do this whole Summer of Trouble tour all over the world, and, you know, we were coming back to a place where we couldn't record a new album before we went on tour, and we really wanted to bring an album with us on tour, and we thought, what can we do that's something that would be exciting, and it's something different for us to do right now, you know, something, a little EP that we could kind of bring to the world. And we've been working a lot on, you know, when we're on the road, we do a lot of acoustic radio shows and stuff like that, and we've been playing more and more acoustic, and, you know, it's something when you bring down the songs to the very basics, just acoustic guitar, acoustic bass, and keep it really simple, and we thought maybe we should go in and do an acoustic album, and we did, and we did it in one day, and, you know, we wanted to try out some of the new songs that we have. There's three brand new songs on the album, and two songs, as you mentioned, and one of them is the Blues Hand Me Down, that we wanted to kind of approach.
We wanted to take two other old songs that kind of, almost like another band, like, if you look at the songs and turn them upside down, it's something different with them, so the Blues Hand Me Down came out like this, what you just heard, so we're really proud of it, and it's actually, it was kind of a cool little in-between album, and it's basically getting a lot of attention, and we're going to be going on a full U.S. Canada tour now, called the Swinghouse Session's tour, based on that album. It's been going really great, and we're happy that we did it. This is a tie, it's really interesting, something that Nolly said, maybe, for the first time, but he was, like, saying it's almost like playing like a different band, and playing the same song you're playing like a different band.
You know, like, I don't know if you're doing any kind of, like, spiritual setting or whatever, but a lot of times they tell you things like, if you go to work every day, every once in a while, you should take a different route, because you'll see things differently, don't go to the same path, and that's kind of what I was saying, too. I never thought, like that, he said, like, playing like a different band, it's like taking the same song, but taking a different, a path to get to the end, you know what I mean, you can see them differently. It's cool, too, because when you're learning, when you're studying as a musician and stuff, one of the things you hear most of the time as a songwriter is, you know, a good song, you should be able to take away all the electricity and stuff and play it, and that is defined as to whether it's a good song or not. So it's also nice that some of these songs are new for us, and that we had tried them, some of them, the way we did, and we got to experiment with them and strip them down, and, you know, it was nice of self-validation that, you know, the songs might be better than we had even thought, so that's kind of nice.
Yeah, I was just going to kind of add to that. A lot of times, you know, you need perspective, and perspective is something that only distance can give you, and it's interesting because, you know, as the four of us, the fun thing is, if we can get, the real thing is whether or not it's good or not, for us, is if it can get through all four of us, because, you know, we come from different perspectives, and that's the beauty of it, but it's also, like, in the studio, it's also, that's the filter, and so if it does get through all the four of us, it's kind of like, okay, we made it there, and then, you know, whether or not somebody else liked it or not, it's kind of the touch of the gods, because sometimes it just takes us, you know, okay, it got through us in the studio, and then we just need to step away from it for a while, and then oftentimes, because it did get through us in the studio, that's that, once the more distance we get, the more and more we're like, oh, we did it ourselves, and then that, you know, that's something that we can kind of, because of how hard we kind of beat up on ourselves, I think, you know, and then collectively, that serves as a great barometer or a great measuring stick. Now, you guys are getting ready to go back on tour at the end of September, early October. For someone that's never seen Vintage Trouble live, what can they expect when they see you guys live?
You can expect, we are a live band, we've always been a live band, we record live in the studio, and so, if you listen to the Bombshelter sessions, or the Swinghouse Acoustic sessions, expect it to take it to another level, you know, we always want to, you know, performance is what we thrive in, so if you hear those records, it's going to be more than that, we get everything, so please come out to the show. Now, I got a fun question for all three of you guys that I want to ask, for the listening audience, if there's one album that you could recommend that they go listen to, what would that album be, and why? Actually, the first album I ever got was Jim Hendrix's January Curtis Knight, it's a great vinyl record, the reason why, Jim Hendrix, it's amazingly inspiring guitars, and he actually plays a lot of covers on that album, a lot of Beatles covers, you get it, a cool mix of great musicianship, amazing songs, it's very loose and live, you can tell they're having fun, and that's what music should be about, and it's got great stories, and it's worth listening. This is Ty, and this is going to be so weird, I'm going to say this now, but I haven't listened to it on the top for a few days, I'm not going to give an explanation to why people should listen to it, I'm just going to say the title, and put a period afterwards.
James Brown, like me, follow. I thought you said it, yeah, because I have to see the movie, I got inspired to put that back in my playlist again, and I did that too. I thought you were talking to James Brown. Yeah, and like me, follow from the movie, I got inspired, and I've listened to that for a while, and it's good.
You know, I can't, speaking of, now that we were talking about earlier, how we strive for more, and we're a live band, and Donny Hathaway, you know, arguably one of the greatest soul singers of all time, he, even though he came later in the period relative like the season 60s, to me, just, I mean, just embodies how to deliver a message, where it's all in the tone, it's all in the sense, it's all in the space that you create to deliver that tone. And when he had such a kick-ass band, the band, and just everything is so good, and on TV, there's a lot more, and speaking of, he hits a couple of covers, he does a TV Wonder cover, with the band, he covers the Beatles cover, and it's just mind-blowing, it's kind of the one record I feel I could never do without, I go back to it, and you'll get everything from kick-ass band to just making you cry, to fantastic songwriting, to Pocket, and it just makes you just kind of, you know, you lose your breath, sometimes the band is just so good in there, and it's live, and it made me not be able to listen to any studio Donny Hathaway record anymore, not a few Donny Hathaway bands, it's like, it ruined me for studio recordings, you know, it's right there in the moment, and it's better than anything you could ever capture in the studio. Now, as I told you guys at the beginning, I'm a part of an organization called College Radio Day. What we want to do with College Radio Day is to just showcase the really unique medium of college radio, and right now it's kind of a dark period for college radio.
Universities are selling off their licenses, they're closing it down, kids nowadays, they don't listen to radio like they used to. From your perspective, what role do you see college radio playing in the music industry? This is not right, this is, you know, college radio is really important, it has to, it gives meaning for the younger generation to find out new things, like, I mean, it's easy today, with internet, you know, you have this wide span, you can listen to anything you want and find it at any second, but you kind of need some direction sometimes, sometimes somebody needs you, bring you into a new place, you know, and that's what's cool with college radio, a lot of different music, it opens your ears to new things that you might not know about, it could be music that changed your life, you know, you never know, so thank God for what you guys are doing, you know, it gives meaning to the younger generation, that's what I think it means. It's funny because in college, I think they're listening to radio different than, or they're certainly getting their music different than any other demographic, I think, you know, largely, you know, and there's such an interaction and a quest for, not only knowledge, but a quest for, you know, new stuff, on a level, I don't know, you know, you find it in any kind of active demographic, and the cool thing about it is, they still actually rely on their actual college radios to help amplify their things that they have going in their specific, you know, college or their specific region, and so rather than a national thing that's kind of been to come from a, you know, from a terrestrial radio that's still left over, your college radio station, it almost, it's finding, you know, you listen to, I come from Florida, right, and even in a state like Florida, University of Miami radio versus, you know, versus, you know, University of Florida versus FSU, that's, you're talking the middle of the state, the bottom of the state, and the top of the state, and it would have largely different radio playlists when I was, you know, when I was going to college, and kind of everybody would get territorial about it, and that's the cool thing is, you know, it's kind of feeling like you discovered something, and then you're sharing it with other people and just being proud about what it is, and that's, hey, I'm better than your kind of thing, and that's a college library that I always thought was really funny in school, but, you know, there's still sort of kind of that last fashion of independent spirit in intellectual radio.
This is Kai for college radio, kind of similar to what maybe both points were. I don't know, I think one thing I just thought about it is the fact that you can only go through a certain time period in life where you share it with a certain community. Like, there's people around you that all know the same TV shows, according to when you grew up, you all know the same Bellbomb Genie, so the same screen like she, that's kind of what college radio does, so it unites a time period for people. So it's not about what everyone is doing in the world, it's like, listen, there's a community, it can be national college radio, it can be initial college radio, but this is what we all listen to this time.
Everyone will have that music as something that is in common with them, that will represent the time for them, that will represent growth for them, that will represent struggle and challenge for them, they will all have the same soundtrack. And it's different for the guys that are sitting in their cars going back and forth to businesses, or like us, like bands that are going around the world and doing these stupid things. There's a certain 19 to whatever, however, 18 to 22, that period in your life that you have with the other people that are going through it that no one else will be able to identify with, and that music is the soundtrack for that time. I got one final question for you, and thank you so much for being willing to talk to me today.
This is Vintage Trouble. They're blowing up. Somewhere around the world right now, guys, there's a kid in the garage thinking about forming his first or her first ever band. What advice do you have for that kid who's trying to start their own band right now?
No, I would say the first thing you would think of is don't ever worry. Sometimes you can get discouraged when you hear an album or something, and like, wow, how am I going to get there? My band or whatever, it's so far away from that. But just remember, everything starts a little bit like, I don't know if you can say it on the radio, but everything starts very basic, and don't give up.
Even Vintage Trouble, we strive for simplicity. If everything comes, you don't have to be a virtuoso to make it. You can just keep playing and enjoy yourself. Everything is about having fun, and who knows?
Just because your dad's friend tells you that it's not good or whatever, go with you to be good. That's what matters. There's a whole world out there, and we need your music. So just play it.
Guys, thank you so much for doing this interview. I really appreciate it.