I wasn’t a person who automatically knew how to roll out great songs. I was never the guy that would think that would sit down and just blow you away.”
Chris Vos is talking about the different phases, bands and all the work that it took for him to land at the steering wheel of his current vehicle, The Record Company, which earned a 20201716 Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album for Give It Back To You (the group lost to Fantastic Negrito’s The Last Days of Oakland).
“A lot of the other bands I was in were in Wisconsin, which was a whole different place, a whole different time, compared to moving out here in Los Angeles nine years ago. The difference creatively is that it came from an honest place,” Vos told CL during an early morning phone call from La La Land.
“I had to work really hard to obtain whatever skills I have in any direction. All I wanted to do was find the best way to be me as an artist. What made this band different was that we were all ready to do that.”
Ready to do it again, with a little more pressure, too.
The Record Company has a new album mixed, and while Vos won’t share its name with CL, he will share some of it with fans at Gasparilla Music Festival. He took some time to talk about that, record deals, John Mayer’s donuts and more.
Read our Q&A, and get more information on the festival, below.
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You were talking about five songs, tweaking them before they get mixed?
Yeah, we have about five songs mixed to where we feel they’re completed and we got another mix for the back half of the record. We have some extra material that we did that we will mix up too. It might not appear on the record, it might make an appearance in a different way. So, yeah it’s coming along. It’s very exciting to do another record with Concord and follow up and give back these records. We wanted to make sure we’re writing the best songs possible, that we’re honest and coming from a place that reflects where we’re at this point.
That brings me to ask, who’s mixing the record right now?
We have a guy named Mark Needham doing some mixes for us. But we also got a couple other guys, but Mark has been doing the most of it, so, you can say he’s the only one that’s gotten a track completely completed. Mark Needham mixed the first couple of tracks and he’ll probably mix some more.
How do you think the new songs stretch TRC’s sound?
Yeah, absolutely. We did the last record, we recorded and mixed in our bass player’s living room with our bass player mixing it. Now it’s more, we recorded some of it there with our bass player, we recorded most it in a great studio in L.A. called Boulevard Studios, who’s done more recently things like War on Drugs. The room itself has more history from Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd’s The Wall have been in that room, Ray Charles. It’s changed names but it’s always been that room. It’s just a fantastic studio, the engineer that owns the place, Clay Blair, just a top-notch guy. We went in there and cut drums and bass, and some of the tracks we did all in there. Some of the tracks we did all in there, some we did mostly, then we went back to our living room and cut vocals. We still wanted to keep that laying it down vibe in there. We want to stretch and evolve but you didn’t want to abandon who makes you who you are either. You want to make sure you’re taking a logical, exciting step for yourself as part of band moving forward on how you write a record. You want to keep what makes you going through that.
Your last deal saw Concord buy the album. Was it a one-off deal? What’s the TRC outlook on a follow-up?
Concord is pretty hands off. They’re fantastic, we’ve got a couple of records with them. This is the second that we have in line for a couple of records with them. We hope to stay for a long time.
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“Baby I’m Broken” — will that be on the record? You’re thinking bonus track, right? And who was the specific woman on the label who said that needed to be more than a live track? Was it Kim Frankiewicz?
I still really can’t say, one way or the other. [Laughs]. I will say that it was the label. That track was something that we had done on an earlier EP that was not on Concord. Someone at the label heard us play it live and asked if we would be down to record that to release between “Give It Back to You” and the next and album and we were for it. We were comfortable and had worked it into a kind of place where it was a little different from where it was back in the day. As the stages changed, the way we play the songs grow with it. You find it’s like, if you’re in a 150-person room, you’re playing a certain way. When you find yourself in a bigger room, you have to fill this whole place with sound. We took it on a little differently and worked with a guy name Vance Powell out of Nashville, who is an awesome guy who did the Stapleton record. He mixed it, and it just had a great sound to it, and they put it out. It got some radio attention and we’re happy.
Does Vance still have that sick beard?
Absolutely.
You guys are still relatively new, you think you have maybe 300, 400 shows under your belt?
As a band from 2012, I’d say the number is around 600 some, if not more than that. I’d say that just because the first year we played in 2012 we played 100 something shows. But nobody was there, we’d play next to a tomato stand [laughs]. We played a country market sometimes, but we did some cool stuff, some festivals. We were luckily though, a few promoters set the tone for us in town, who enjoyed our stuff. We got booked for our own residency at the Satellite in November of 2012 which at the time was a really big deal for us because we got the time to stretch our wings. You gotta think you gotta play four weeks in a row, and we’re a new band. That makes you write more material because you don’t want to go up there and play the same thing every week.
Going back to this follow up record, what’s the stress level like? Any pressure you put on yourself?
I’d be lying if I said you didn’t feel something. But we talked about it as a band around our first single, when Off the Ground was doing what it was doing and we couldn’t believe it. It was a real shocker at first. I remember playing in Washington, D.C. right after the single came out and we were expecting 10 people and 150 people showed up. It was called the Rock and Roll Hotel, I remember that. It was the first time that ever happened.
Right around that time we had a pow wow and we do things as a team. I said guys, we can’t wait around to do this second record. We gotta start thinking about it right now. We started, we’d tour, and then we’d be home for a few days and I would be at Alex’s house cutting demos that we could listen to and think about. We started writing it a while back but didn’t put it together until recently. The reason we started writing is that we knew that the second record, unlike any other record we’d written, there would be a couple of people waiting to hear it.
So you just want to make sure that you’re doing the work that’s required to make the art you have to make. You get a little twitchy at first thinking about it, but in the end, find the songs inside you and find the experiences, be honest, sing the songs you believe in, don’t sing the song you think you should, sing the song you know you have to sing. That’s always been our philosophy. That’s always been our place, it can be a little different of a feeling but it’s the only way you can do it. How else can you? Art always comes from the same place, no matter the circumstances that surround it.
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You’ve talked about compromise and doing things for the wrong reasons being the beginning of the end of your career. What’s the main difference between The Record Company and the other bands you’ve been in?
Well, a lot of the other bands I was in were in Wisconsin, which was a whole different place, a whole different time, compared to moving out here in Los Angeles nine years ago. The difference creatively is that it came from an honest place. I wasn’t a person who automatically knew how to roll out great songs, I had to work really hard to obtain whatever skills I have in any direction. I was never the guy that would think that would sit down and just blow you away. I had to really stop, think, and work hard. Coming from growing up on a dairy farm, work never scared me. All I wanted to do was find the best way to be me as an artist. What made this band different was that we were all ready to do that. I think the collective experience was that we’ve all been through a few things together, and it led us to that.
Your old pedal board looked like it could’ve been pulled out of the space shuttle. Could you talk about the moment when you realized you didn’t need all of that? What it a song or a person?
Well I think it was two things. I had gotten to a place where I was tired of what I was doing I felt like my favorite stuff was old soul, old rock n roll, old punk, old blues. We were at that place. I went in to play with the guys, the first day, and what happened was I just wanted to do what I wanted to do. I love old rock n roll, blues and punk, and I don’t know how that fits into anything out here. “Let’s do this.” That was kind of the agreement between us as a band. We may have not been booked into a coffee shop out here but we loved what we were doing so we just kept going. It didn’t need to be complicated and we wanted to make it about the songs. We wanted to make it about making it simple.
You guys love to play, and you’ve said that a Grammy nom was the farthest thing in your mind, even saying that a band like the Record Company might never have had a chance at a record deal in the 90s. Has the nomination changed anything for TRC as far as gig and recording opportunities, revenue streams go?
The things just grow, we’re lucky we found our management right before the deal. It’s a real nice high level of trust environment. You’re trying to have your business make sense next to your music making sense. You let things happen as they’re supposed to, listen to those you trust and listen to your heart. Try to make the best decisions you can, it ain’t always easy but as far as the Grammy thing, I think it did something. I don’t know if you quantify it, but it’s something that is said. To be nominated, we were certainly honored and shocked. It’s like, I’ve been married for a while, and before we were married and didn’t envision how different it could be. When you stand up in front of your friends and family though and say those words, something happens. And I say, I never anticipated these things like nominations, but when you experience them, something happens. It seems to be a good thing, it intensifies things. It makes life interesting, it makes it beautiful.
You mentioned finding your sound and learning these rooms, and you went on tour with John Mayer recently. Now the question is, did he make you eat donuts with him?
No, he didn’t [Laughs]. I will tell you something though, a few things happened on tour that made me think, “This is how you do it.” On of the first night when we were in Albany, about to go on our biggest stage ever, 18,000 people. It was quite a step for us, we’re sitting in the back, scared and nervous. It was a lot more than I was anticipating. So, all of sudden we get a knock on the door and they ask if John can come say hello.
EAT AT JOHN’S
We see John Mayer mini doughnut’ed it up in Tampa
So he comes in and welcomes us to the tour and talked to us for 15 minutes and made us feel right at home. And he did it on the last night too and i thought it was such a class move. We had nothing to do with putting people in these rooms and he was gracious of us. He ran an amazing show, and we felt right at home. It was a huge thing because we’re not a band that plays Madison Square Garden. But sadly we did not get donuts, but we got something so much more important; he knew we were there and he cared that we were there. We passed him a few times and asked us “How’d you like the Garden?” and I was like, “Dude, are you kidding me?” [laughs].
You’re pretty mellow offstage, but the guy onstage is pretty different. Which one’s feels more like the real you?
Whatever minute I’m living. It’s really a second to second thing. One of the big transformative things was someone brought up that the only moment that really matters is the one you’re living in, the only one you can do something about. It was simple thing but it changed my life It hung with me It made me focus on right now, the second I’m standing on. I try to be natural in those seconds. But it makes the path behind and in front of me more natural. You don’t walk without looking around or walking looking at your feet, but for the most part I look ahead. I can say I’m more chill than the guy I am on stage, I’m only that guy there. Something happens, your foot hits the stage and the switch goes on, something happens to a person. Music does that, music is the only true magical thing. It’s invisible, but it’s something really powerful that happens. If anything, it’s the music.
Anything you want to say in particular to the Florida audience that’s coming to see you?
We got a new record coming out, going to play some new stuff. We’re going to play a rock n roll show. Try to leave your cares at the door for an hour.
Sat. & Sun, March 10-11 $30 & up.
gasparillamusic.com
This article appears in Mar 8-15, 2018.
