The Oct. 31, 2024 cover of Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. Credit: Photo by Derek Suomi. Design by Joe Frontel

Not many people forget Lauris Vidal after seeing him play live. The Ormond Beach native makes his name with a show that ditches cliches of one-man-bandom and instead presents festive, Florida folk propelled by a trio of drums, tambourine, and hi-hat, all powered by Vidal’s bare feet. His hands switch between eclectic and acoustic guitars, dobro, and even homemade instruments like an Arturo Fuente ukulele. Between guttural growls, and poetic observations of the day-to-day, Vidal wears a trademark smile which conveys a jubilation that seems to flow uninhibited throughout his entire being. It’s a spectacle that Vidal, the son of a preacher, has spent the last decade-and-a-half refining; and it’s an experience that music lovers can only have in-person—until now.

“I don’t want to be one of those novelty one man bands. I wanted my record to sound like the band that I want to be in—but me doing it,” Vidal, 47, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. Mission accomplished.

This weekend, Vidal releases a debut full-length, Horribly Good Times, his first batch of recorded music in 14 years. The vinyl is wrapped in a package designed by Joel Cook, an artist who earned a Best Recording Package Grammy nomination for his company’s work on Underoath’s Voyeurist LP. The work won’t even hit streaming until all 500 copies are sold. The outing represents a five-year project where song ideas scattered between napkins, notepads, and his phone have been whittled down to eight newly recorded songs and two more that’ve been reworked not just so fans can take his sound home, but so they can hear how Vidal sounds in his own head.
Captured over three days in Miami, Horribly Good Times is essentially a live recording where engineer and longtime collaborator Josh Rohe situated Vidal in his one-man band setup, close-mic’d the percussion and ran the guitar straight into the board. Listeners with headphones on will hear a mix that puts them on Vidal’s throne, with the hi-hat on the left, kick in the middle and floor tom on the right. Little squeaks and rattles add color, and humanity, to the 33-minute record. The split guitar and ukulele signals—one natural, the other an octave lower—are also faithfully captured, further illustrating the craft, care, and, yes, sometimes joyous commotion of the Vidal songbook.

But the road to Horribly Good Times wasn’t always as sunny as Vidal’s disposition. One of his tours as a one-man band—and a particular, poorly-attended show at Matchless in Brooklyn—almost broke him. There are times when he misses his old drummer, Billy Dean, who used to spend any downtime between gigs talking about how to make the show better. “The conversations always went to this phenomenal, creative and philosophical, free association type stuff, to the point where you’re just energized,” Vidal explained.

That spirit of collaboration is how Vidal got to this weekend in Ybor City where the official record release is more of a mini-festival.

“Since I slowed down from traveling all the time, Tampa has become the home for me for my original music,” he said, adding that his gigs elsewhere force him to be more or less background music. Here, crowds have always encouraged Vidal to explore new territory. “Whenever I play in Tampa, I can stretch my legs and be who I am.”

So the show in Ybor City is kind of like a love letter to Tampeños. It finds Vidal joined onstage by his brothers in Americana, Have Gun, Will Travel, after sets from Gainesville folkie Michael Claytor, Vidal’s one-man-band inspiration Lone Wolf, and a bonafide Florida supergroup, The Za-Boo-Zays, which includes Kaleigh Baker, Olivia Wynn Roche and Hannah Harber Wynn. Violinist Nick Ewing is the artist-at-large and emcee for the affair, which even gets started early with a 5 p.m. children’s show featuring Joe Gaskin (aka Hello, Mr. Joe) who Vidal met when they both opened for The Avett Brothers.

“My friends and fans are of that age—we got kids,” Vidal said about the choice to include children in the record release. Gaskin, a librarian and author, wrote a kid’s book based loosely on Vidal’s 2006 song “Skeletons.” His next book comes out around the same time as the album, so the timing was perfect to do music and storytelling with younger fans.

And there’s so much storytelling and vivid imagery on Horribly Good Times, too. “Killing Floor,” where dust rises from the ground, is about Vidal’s best gigs at the original New World Brewery location. “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” brings listeners to northern Florida swamps, and album-closer “Saints Of the Lost and Found” is set in Tampa where a teenager has aged out of foster care with nowhere to go. “Down In This Hole” is an anthemic conquest of shame.

There is darkness on the record, surely, but more than that, Vidal offers a way out. Take the reprise of “Skeletons” for example. The tune was born two decades ago as more of a dirge, but has evolved into a fight song.

“I think the only way change happens is a decision,” he explained. People give into the gloom sometimes, but go into survival mode, too. Others make a choice to thrive. Through relationships with people who’ve faced the worst of circumstances, Vidal’s found that people must choose to go forward or backwards.

“Just like it takes work to be productive, it takes work to be destructive,” he added.

Productivity for Vidal looks like a handful of singles to be released on Spotify, and live videos in the hopper. He also hopes to be pretty close to finishing a new album that’s got a more collaborative, rootsier, modern sound by the time the 500 copies of Horribly Good Times are sold (totally doable for a guy who’s sold 15,000 some-odd CDs directly from his hands to fans at shows).

“It’s about where you put your foot and where you put your mind,” he said about the journey.

This weekend, Vidal’s feet will be beating those drums in support of a record years in the making. Anyone who’s seen him before will want to be there, too, singing and smiling along.

Tickets to the Lauris Vidal album release show at Crowbar in Ybor City, Florida on Saturday, Nov. 2 are still available for $5-$25.

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