Issue #21: VANDOLIERS
On creating a band, creating their inimitable live show, and trans rights
An announcement and a reminder! So thrilled to share that JOSHUA RAY WALKER will be joining the Don’t Rock The Inbox Live official Zoom room on September 14th at 7 p.m. CT — become a paying subscriber today so you don’t miss it!
Also, in case you missed it we are officially launching the Don’t Rock The Inbox Book Club!! Our first book will be Why Tammy Wynette Matters by Steacy Easton — we’re telling you this now so that you have time to read it before we get Steacy on Zoom to discuss it on Monday, September 18th with us and our paying subscribers. If you don’t have it yet, we have our first discount code (!! I’m so excited about this!) for Don’t Rock The Inbox readers only (!): enter UTXTAMMY for 25% off + free shipping if you purchase the book directly from UT Press.
Also — follow our very new Instagram!! We’ll be posting up a storm from our various country adventures…
About a month ago, Joshua Fleming and Cory Graves of the great Dallas band the Vandoliers took one of their rare nights off to chat with us for our second Don’t Rock The Inbox live event — and it was an absolute delight. Four albums and about a bazillion shows in, the band has really refined its cowpunk, rock n’roll via the backroads sound and, particularly, its relentlessly fun and energetic live show, which has earned them headlining spots for everyone from the Old 97s and Turnpike Troubadours to Bowling For Soup and Flogging Molly.
Josh and Cory sat with us (and the paying subscribers who were able to attend the Zoom) for an hour, talking all about how the band came together, what makes their music so Texan, how they found themselves standing up for trans rights and everything else we could imagine. Paying subscribers to Don’t Rock The Inbox can listen to the full audio of our conversation as a podcast here, as well as get to know the band through a playlist we made here; everyone else should consider listening to their latest self-titled album and checking them out live, as they’re on tour now with Flogging Molly.
Natalie: I don't think anyone can go to one of your guys’ shows and not have a good time. What was your process of honing that live experience for people like? How did you learn to do that? Because it is a pretty separate skill from songwriting and music-making in general.
JF: We've just learned a lot of tricks from the bands we've gone on tour with. The Old 97s, Lucero, Flogging Molly, The Turnpike Troubadours, Mike and the Moonpies — every time we go on tour with a band that's bigger than us, essentially we watch them play every night, we learn new tricks, they teach us something, and then we move on and apply it. After, like, eight years of hundreds of shows a year, it's just kind of started building this momentum. Right now, when we go out and we play, it's this whole new animal that really I don't think exists anywhere else. It's kind of genreless and it's really fun, and overall we've found this thing where we're just a positive energy force — just really pushing that at the show. If it hits, the people get it and push it back on us, and then it just turns into this big wave of cathartic joy. At the end of the show, everybody's just drenched in sweat, smiling, no voice...and that's the kind of show I want to play.
CG: When you're young, just being on stage in front of people is exciting because you haven't done it. Now that we've played like, 1000 shows in this band, and 1000 shows before in our other bands, we have to keep it exciting by like, trying to make each other laugh on stage, or doing a dance move you've never done. You keep yourself interested, and then that will keep like your buddy interested — that takes him out of his head for a second. All of a sudden, we're up there loose and just having fun. We're not just standing there playing our instruments. We're like, "How can we keep ourselves engaged?" And that keeps the audience engaged as well.
Marissa: You guys made waves for your perfect protest against Tennessee’s drag ban earlier this year; right now, Josh, you’re wearing a shirt that says “Protect Trans Kids.” Did you expect what came after that protest? Why was it important to you to do?
CG: For every one person making memes that say "Vando-queers," there were like, 1000 people going, "I've never heard of you and now I'm your newest fan." People come up to us at the merch booth every night and tell us they have a gay brother or sister or cousin or whoever, and what we did meant a lot to them. And it's like, there were 80 people at that show — we didn't know it was going to touch that many people. We're just trying, that's it.
JF: I've been wearing it a lot. Cory's like, "You really gotta change shirts." I have a daughter, and she's very young. I don't know if she's going to be trans. That's kind of my mindset, like, I want my daughter to be able to be whoever she is and be accepted later on in life. I see so much trans hate on TV, and it's so scary. It's just a t-shirt for me, but it means a lot to the people that see me wear it on stage. I've been wearing that for really big shows — and Cory, we've been playing some really big shows consistently so that's why I've been wearing it all the time!
Marissa: Is there a secret to keeping harmony within the band? Is there anything that you guys do to keep your relationship healthy as a unit?
CG: Early on, we made the wise decision that we were not going to be called "Josh Fleming and the Vandoliers" — that we were just the Vandoliers. I mean, the other day, we were on a festival lineup that got announced, and somebody made a comment, like, "The Vandoliers are the only ones that have like the balls to be a band" or whatever, because so many of the other acts were soloists.
That was a really big thing at the beginning. There were no egos, we viewed ourselves as equals, we all helped write the songs — Josh might come in with a fuck-ton of lyrics and chords and stuff, but then we all make it a Vandoliers song. Everyone's got different little side responsibilities in the band. If it is successful, we all feel like we had a hand in that — and if it's not, you know, we all feel like we had a hand in that. We made little band contracts in our first year with all these rules of who was going to do what and if this was successful, that we each got this percentage of everything, and we all signed them — it was equal down the middle.
JF: I think we'd all been in bands where we got really fucked over. Like, my ska band kicked me out and took my songs, that kind of thing. Cory was in a band where he was kind of like a hired gun, but like, didn't get to be creative in it or something like that. We really just wanted to have a contract with each other that was like, "Hey, this is what I expect and this is how things need to work and if they don't, we have at least this piece of paper to point at to realign what we're supposed to do."
CG: There were even instructions in there of how to scratch someone out and put someone else in — there was a predetermined set of rules for that. Everything was thought of in advance, and then signed and agreed to. And then 10 shows in or something, we all got tattoos? Was it 10 shows?
JF: Yeah dog, it was 10 shows. Like, commitment, right onto my body. I saw a lot of potential in it, I think we all did. I don't think we knew we were going to do this for a decade, and I don't think we would have ever foreseen, like, every single thing that happened, but I don't know. Everybody wanted to tour, everybody's bands broke up and like turned into house bands at restaurants and shit. I wanted to see mountains, I wanted to go to like, the Pacific, I wanted to go around the world — this is the only way I was gonna be able to do any of that. We all had the same goals, which is really important in any relationship. If you're going the same direction, and you have a mutual respect for each other, and lines of communication on what should and should not be in the relationship are clear, it's gonna go! It's gonna work.
Listen our full conversation with the Vandoliers in podcast form here, and mark your calendars for our next live events with Joshua Ray Walker on September 14th at 7 p.m. CT and Steacy Easton (the author of Why Tammy Wynette Matters, our first Don’t Rock The Inbox Book Club pick!) on September 18th at 7 p.m. CT.