CATCHING UP WITH THE VINE BROTHERS: MUSIC, ORIGINALITY, AND STAR WARS
I recently had the chance to talk with Joe Credit III, the mandolin player from the fabulous gypsy-Americana band the Vine Brothers. He was catching up with the news, which to him, is like football. Like a fan follows his favorite players, Joe likes to keep up with what's going on across the country and world. I, however, was more interested in what was going on with him, and the music he helps create.
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TCC: How do you define the Americana sound you've created over the years? Your influences seem to come from different places than the classic Americana tradition.
JC: That's definitely true. Greg [Bucking, guitarist] had kind of been an experienced jazz player, and Garrett [Jones, upright bassist] is definitely- he's a schooled jazz player, and I was just getting into it. I come from a bluegrass background. When we were singing together, we really enjoyed the way our harmonies worked out, so we created kind of a blend of our influences. Greg goes back to playing reggae and ska in New York and Long Island, and Garrett comes from a classical jazz background. He's been training since he was a little guy- since the bass was bigger than him. I come from a musical family, so we have a really broad base of influences that sometimes manifest themselves in strange ways, and I think that's a good thing.
TCC: Where are you guys based out of?
JC: We're based out of three locations: I live in Maryland, Garrett lives in Arkansas, and Greg lives in the Catskills. So we come together in one of those places, and then we go out from there. We're in the Northeast quite a bit because Greg is up there, and we're starting to be in the mid-Atlantic because I'm down here. But we got our start in northwest Arkansas.
TCC: How do you see your music having evolved over the last few years? I've seen you a couple of times, and it seems like your music has changed recently. The energy is higher and you're overall tighter. I really loved your Star Wars medley. Is it safe to say you're excited for Episode Seven?
JC: Oh yeah, oh yeah. I'm one of the people that has the anxiety about the tickets, and how am I going to get them; I have children and my oldest son I'm going to take to see it. The oldest one- that was one of the first movies I ever saw.
TCC: When I was young, I saw the re-release, in the late 90s. It was pretty amazing.
JC: Oh yeah, it blows your mind. When they first came out, there was nothing like it! Sci-fi was really campy, like Flash Gordon, with the red jumpsuit and the silver “V” on the front, 'Onward and forward!' Basically 50s B-movie stuff. And then 'Woah, Star Wars!’
The soundtrack made the difference. Greg and Garrett are also crazy fans. I'd been playing the Death March when I was busking, and they were like 'We should play that, and you know what else is fun? That part we're they're going into the canyon [humming], that's cool too!'
That's pretty much how all our covers start. A lot of the covers that we play, it's an exercise, and then we just start jamming it out and say 'Wow, that was really hot, let's work on that.' Over the course of touring we play together all the time, and we learn. I can play this one spot here, or not there, and it adds to the overall sound. In real time you can watch people’s reactions to it. It evolves that way. As we grow, we know where we can fall back. I think, when a group of musicians gets together to that point, it’s easier to grow and take more risks.
TCC: It seems you guys are quite comfortable playing with each other- you're able to really dig into what each person is doing. Is that the way you write songs as well? Someone brings an idea to the table, and the other members jump in and try to figure out the way they can fit in to what's being brought?
JC: A lot of it is what each individual brings in. Greg has kind of been on a writing spree lately, and I occasionally put together a song. Garrett is working on a few that might be on a future release. We throw it out there; then we start tweaking it. Pushing it around, prodding it, changing the bridge; we'll add a walk-down, or add an instrumental break to take it in another direction.
Garrett is phenomenal at that. He can hear a simple piece of music and derive where the best place to fill or put a lead break is. He's a great arranger, almost supernatural. We put it through that process, and then we play it out. If we play it out for a year on the road, and it's still a cool song, then we'll record.
TCC: I'm interested in what you think of your place in the musical landscape. There are certain folk and roots bands that are very into how the music was originally played, and that's what they do. You guys have elements of that, but it seems to me to that you're more interested in seeing where this music goes in the future.
JC: Well, it's a broadening of influences. It's a struggle to stay completely true to any genre. Genres were built in an age when your neighborhood sound was your neighborhood sound. There was no access to anything else, really. If the weather was right you could pick up national radio. So, of course, a Mississippi sound is going to be completely different than a Minnesota sound. They don't even know the other one exists.
Now with the internet, everyone knows everything, and the broadening of influences finds its way. Musicians as a group are pretty open to suggestion and things that are new, things that help them say what their songs are and what their presentation is, as an original art form. So you have a way bigger palette now, and that's why [the Vine Brothers] sound like we sound. We're more concerned with creating an original sound than we are with keeping a tradition alive; however, we are very concerned with keeping a tradition alive. It's a very close second.
TCC: Right. So, it's interesting- I was talking with a friend about the ability we have to siphon and take in all this information from the internet; there's so much information available to us. Do you ever find it kind of daunting to have that amount of information available to you? How do you write original music? Can you do it?
JC: There's a meme going around: that every rock song uses the same four chords. But that's because it fits the time frame; it fits the genre. The thing that's different about it is the singer, the perspective, the human element; technically you can't write a piece of original music. You technically cannot do that; but you can create an original sentiment, you can create an original feel. Technically, yes, it's impossible, but emotionally, it's infinite. You hit a wall on that one. My son asked me the other day, 'What's your favorite song?' I told him the one that fits the mood of the room. That's my favorite song. Everyone might be sad, and you might want to play a happy song to cheer them up, or they might seem like they need to be sad, so you play a song to make them even sadder, to make them cry. He said 'You can do that?' and I said, 'Yeah, that's part of the art and craft of playing and singing music.'
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That is the beauty and joy that can be found within music. We come together, to laugh, to sing, to dance, to cry, and we leave feeling a little bit closer. We leave feeling a little less like the computer we rely on, for writing, work, or to pay our bills, and a little more human. The Vine Brothers take the stage at the Cyber Cafe at 176 Main St., Binghamton, at 9 on November 6th (AKA First Friday). Fall in love a little, dance around a little, but most importantly, have fun and stay human.
