= Bands Like Rush

The Vital Might is a Boston-based prog rock/punk trio. Today I speak with the Vital Might’s guitarist, singer and primary song-writer in the band – Andy Milk – hitting on several topics near to my heart:

• The recording & production process
• How to achieve a “big” sound as a prog power-trio
• Stylistic mixing/matching in a composition: i.e. moving from grunge to pop to metal to pretentious prog – all in one song
• Andy’s vocal affinities with Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon

We also hear two full tracks – a whacked out track called Make My Day from the debut album, and a heavy late-Rush style track Phantom Spaceman from their latest album Red Planet.

Ben: So I’m here with Andy. This is Ben from BandsLikeRush.com. He’s the guitarist. Is that right, Andy?

Andy: Guitarist and singer.

Ben: Right, for the Boston-based band, the Vital Might. Andy, welcome, won’t you just give us a little insight into what you’re band is all, and what you’re doing lately.

Andy: Well, yeah, we’re based out of Boston. We’ve been together with the band for, I think, about five years. We put out a record on our own called ‘Obsidian’ back in 2006, and then we had some personnel changes. We have a new album called ‘Red Planet’ that we put ourselves and it was put out again by 10T Records. We’re kind of all over the place as far as what we think our style is. Some people say prog. Sometimes we say that, you know, we don’t. That’s what we set up to do it, but it just comes across that way sometimes.

Ben: What else do people say?

Andy: Some of our influences are being called out like, you know, I’m fan of like Minus the Bear, and even like heavier stuff like Mastodon, but I’m also into like some singers and songwriter stuff like Jeff Buckley or Ray LaMontagne. I mean, we haven’t really heard either of those last two, but you know that’s…

Ben: Well, even if you haven’t heard someone to call you out as sounding like a particular band, if you have have that influence combining those two or three bands into one – that usually equals “prog”. If you’re doing anything off the beating path with harmony, melody, with content, theme, rhythm, you’re prog almost, you know, at the first level anyway.

Andy: Yeah, yeah, and we play live. We’re either too loud for the bands we’re playing with or we’re too quiet for the bands we’re playing with because our set can go from, you know, like singer/songwriter song to like odd time heavy lots of loud guitars and cymbals.

Ben: Right. When I was listening through your work online, I heard kind of a live sound. I don’t know if you guys record all live in the studio, but it sure sound like it has a kind of that vibe and energy. So am I right or wrong on that, first of all?

Andy: I think a chunk of it is live, but yeah, definitely do some overdubbings. I mean, we’re a three-piece band, so we chunk up the guitars and there is a couple of fun try. I do my actual own harmony, so you know.

Ben: You can’t get away from that.

Andy: Yeah. We try to get it live with people, you know, there are live shows. They’re what we’re all about until we recorded anything.

Ben: I heard that, which is kind of a punk approach, but yeah, you hear three or four guitar parts and the same voice doubling. It obviously gives it away. I also heard the metal and kind of a post-grunge vibe, the pop-ish melodies at times. So I hear what you’re saying when you’re saying as soon as you have an unusual or unhealthy mix for the touring gigs anyway.

Andy: Sometimes I even just do exactly opposite of whatever the last thing we just wrote or worked on.

Ben: You made a point that you’ve played out and played live as a band before you even recorded something. Although these days, there is so much of “mad scientist musician in basement recording and refining” than “doing”. You then either leave it in a locker or form a band and doing something solo. So are you traditional in that respect? Are you band oriented?

Andy: Yeah, I mean, most of the projects I’ve done I had one band for many years like at the end of college, and that was a little bit more mad scientist. The Vital Might actually kind of came out of the break up of another project I had and I sort of took the songs I liked – and some other guys liked them too – and kind of organically formed the band that way.

Ben:  So who does the songwriting? Is that a split thing or do you most of it?

Andy: I do most of it.  I’m definitely the structure guy of the band. I bring in the riffs, and maybe some lyrics, and then we kind of all bash it up together, then the other guys have a good chunk of the songwriting, especially since I can sort of play bass but I definitely can’t play any drums. So then I need their help.

Ben: So you leave the rhythmic complexities up to your man on drums.

Andy: Yeah. For sure.

Ben: When you say that you start on the performing stage and then try to translate that and go record later, how do you decide what to overdub, how to produce the recorded product and then how do you translate that back, if at all, to the live performance?

Andy: Oh, yes, actually, it’s an interesting kind of progress that our songs have gone through. A lot of times, we have some harmonies written. If one of the songs is a specific song we play out a lot, then our bass player and drummer – Evan or Rick – they kind of jump in and they’ll throw in a harmony just randomly at a show and then we’ll be like, “Oh, yeah.” You know, we don’t often sit down and practice and like too many harmonies and those later parts and then, when we get to recording, some songs are so new that they have no harmonies written. We work with a producer and we all kind of come up with the harmony and layer ideas. We even throw in a couple of guitar parts in, and then, once the finished product comes out, we’ve heard it so many times in the studios and really come to love it. I also focus on getting a big guitar sound like – as well as in the studio

It’s actually been a comment we frequently get after our shows: “Wow, I can’t believe you guys are three-piece.”

Ben: How big your guitar sound is?

Andy: That’s what people are saying. I guess, we never really know since we’re not in the audience.

Ben: Well, you say you can’t do two guitars live. But have you explored it? You can do anything these days with trigger samples.

Andy: Yeah.

Ben: You know, I heard a demo from a podcast I listened to of this new harmony pedal – a device that will harmonize the voice according to key. I mean, it was uncanny. You could hardly believe it was just a lead voice with harmonics around it, so have have you ever messed with anything like that?

Andy: Yeah, I played around them a little bit. I think, maybe with that kind speaks a little bit of punkishness where I don’t necessarily want to do too much fake stuff on stage. But that’s me. I don’t mean to label it that way because. Just for the fans, I think we just move around, we jump around on stage while our shirts are sweating out by the end, so you know, we put a lot of energy. Some of the mellower songs have a lightness to them on stage. But in our live shows, we play more of our louder/faster stuff.

Ben: Right, so you can get away on energy and a big amp sound instead of pyrotechnics & triggered sounds.

Andy: Yeah, you know, I’ve already got more pedals than I should – for the kind of stuff that we’re playing. I don’t want to have to do too much on stage beside playing.

Actually, when we first started, I had a delay pedal that I would hook up.

Ben:Y ou need a guy in the background to manage all that gear live, you know.

Andy: Yeah. I’d love to have a guy like Mars Volta has – he just does sound manipulation live. Like he just takes the stuff that comes out of the vocals with some keys on guitars and then swirls them all around like…

Ben: Wow. I didn’t know that.

Andy: Yeah. The original guy passed away, but I think they’ve got a new guy that does that stuff.

Ben: Wow, when I went to grad school for music (of all things), I had a friend who would perform improvised electronic stuff. He would just sit there with his computer set up, and do these absolutely nutty things, live/real-time.

So I have a couple of specific questions only because I listened to a bunch of your songs and maybe you get a kick out of here on what I hear.

Because I’m a musician. I can never tell what my own influences are. It’s almost like a baby where you can’t tell your own resemblance in him, because you’re too close and you need someone else’s opinion.

Andy: Right.

Ben: So, I heard System of a Down. Are you fans of them at all?

Andy: Oh, yeah, definitely.

Ben: Great. I mean, it wasn’t obvious. I don’t take it like you’re wearing it on your sleeve. It’s just I love that band, too, when I heard that, definitely in there. The vocal, you have a funny, well, it’s not funny, it’s a good kind of mix, a kind of a poppy style with a bit of roughness, you know, so it’s almost like a punk Simon Le Bon, that guy from Duran Duran.

Andy: All right. I like that.

Ben: I thought you’d like that, but overall I think the element I hear the most is the kind of symphonic textures that are all overlaying, It’s the big guitar sound, with the kind of more personal and emotive lyrics than you usually hear with most prog rock. So that struck me more like Radiohead or even The Who maybe.

Andy: Okay.

Ben: But lastly, this one song, I think it’s called Make My Day, is the song. That thing is weird. I mean, I dont’ know what to compare it to. Only Zappa can compare to that, so where does that song come from, what it’s all about?

Andy: That’s actually our original bass player. He is no longer with the band, but still a friend who is around. He wrote that totally. He wrote everything about it like apart from the band and he kind of brought to us and then, you know, when we were recording it, you know, we definitely were like let’s really weave this one out, and you know, we recorded that. That was our first album. We recorded that at like a private school up in New Hampshire like in the Windsor in New Hampshire and we actually got to use their theater that the kids would put on shows. And it was like old like 150-year-old theater that, you know, they claimed was haunted or something.

Ben: Wow.

Andy: So we really tried to like get the vibe of that place. They had like an electric piano thing there had all these weird sound effects. We actually recorded all the sound effects that were on this old like electric, you know, synthesizer thing and we kind of mess with that stuff when we came back to the studio.

Ben: That’s cool, wow, what a story.

Andy: Yeah.

Ben: Yeah, well, anyway, this is a weird song. It wasn’t too far out of field of left field, but it was just struck me and another thing I noted down, which is always worth noting is a double kick that would put Neil Peart to shame, so everyone else is always saying Neil Peart is the greatest and this is a Rush site, so I ought to give a nod to your drummer. It seems that he’s maybe part of late crop of drummers who have just the technique, at least, with the feet but also with the hands. It’s just sick. I mean, the level of skill in most, you know, hard core metal or prog drummers these days is incredible.

Andy: Yeah.

Ben: And then here’s another guy that’s pretty awesome.

Andy: Yeah, well, I’ll make sure Kraker knows about that. Right before our band, he was in the metal band and doing a lot of double kick and then, you know, before that he was playing jazz.

Ben: Oh.

Andy: So you definitely hear jazz metal would kind of combine in his style for sure.

Ben: Yeah, those are two techniques to go for it, if you’re going to go for it.

Andy: Yeah.

Ben: You can do anything. It’s like a history degree. You can do anything with it.

Andy: Yeah.

Ben: Cool.

Andy: I can play tone wild thing on the drums, but that’s about it. I can’t do any of this crazy…

Ben: Oh, that’s a good line. That was probably samples of some pseudo, you know, similarly lame, you know…

Andy: Yeah.

Ben: Oh, it’s Wild Thing.

Andy: Yeah, and it’s like it’s from…

Ben: Yeah, we’re dating ourselves there. Cool, this has been great talking to you. Where can the people find you online?

Andy: www.vitalmight.com is the best spot and that kind of links out to Facebook and MySpace and YouTube and PureVolume and all of that stuff.

Ben: Cool. Do you have any shows or anything else specific people should know about?

Andy: Yeah, we’ve got a couple of shows in September. We have one in Boston on September 17th at the Middle East.

Ben: Oh, cool.

Andy: And then the next night on Saturday, September 18th at Kenny’s Castaways in New York City.

Ben: Cool. I’ll put them on my calendar and see if I can make it. I live in the South Shore, so you and I are locals.

Andy: Oh, cool, cool.

Ben: Yeah, excellent. Well, thanks for joining us. Take care.

Andy: Yeah, thanks for having me.