Chattanooga Times Free Press entertainment reporter Casey Phillips spoke with Nashville-based singer/songwriter David Vandervelde about his friendship with Wilco’s Jay Bennett, why he was drawn to four-track recording in his teens and how moving around the country has left its mark on him.
CP: How did you start writing music? What drew you to it?
DV: [Laughs.] In a pretty basic way, I guess, I started playing guitar when I was – I don’t know – like 13 or something. I just got really obsessed with it and started to write songs. I got really into four-track recordings and that kind of thing at a really young age. I just always knew that’s what I wanted to do, and I kept doing it.
CP: What specifically attracted you to recording on four-tracks at that age?
DV: I don’t know, really. I guess it was probably because my older brother had a friend in high school who was in a band. They had a four-track in their rehearsal garage in Michigan. I would go over with my brother sometimes and hang out, and I got into it from there.
I had this metal band when I was in 8th grade and 9th grade, and we went to Peoria, Ill., to record with a friend of a friend. After I saw how the whole thing worked, I got more into it and got a four-track and started making recordings at home.
CP: How old are you now?
DV: 27.
CP: What do you remember being attracted to about music at 13?
DV: With the multi-track recording thing, what was cool to me was being able to record a guitar part. My parents had an organ with the bass pedals and beats on it and stuff in the basement, and what was cool was coming up with other parts to one guitar part – record an idea and sing harmonies with myself or figure out other guitar parts to go with what I’m doing. That was a pretty cool thing.
CP: Did you grow up in a musical family?
DV: My mom played the flute, and my dad was in kind of a non-serious high school band. He lived in Muskegon, Mich., and in the ’60s, they had a band with neighborhood kids. I think they played a couple of dances or something, but he just sang. There were two guitars and everyone sang. It was very Buddy Holly or Everly Brothers-ish.
My sisters both sang in choir. We all kind of grew up in the church, and the church really embraces all the musical elements like singing in harmony and all the choir parts. That was probably a big part of what it meant to sing in tune and stick to a part, that kind of thing.
It’s funny. Almost every musician I know who is really talented has some kind of background in church singing. [Laughs.] I’m definitely not involved in any kind of church or religious thing now, but it’s funny to look back and talk to other people and be like, “How did you learn to sing harmony part?” and they’re like, “Oh, in church.”
CP: Who were you listening to, growing up?
DV: My dad graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1969, and one of the first dates my folks had was to see Janis Joplin play. He got to see like Stevie Wonder open for The Temptations in 1965. He was a little bit too old for Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and a lot of the Stones-type stuff, but he was a huge Motown fan just from living in Michigan and hearing that stuff on the radio. He was also a Beatles and Buddy Holly and The Everly Brothers. That realm is very much what I was raised on. I remember every other Saturday going to get my haircut with my dad and listening to oldies in the car.
The funny thing is that I had certain bands who I was either really into or not to. As a kid, I remember hating Neil Diamond, which is so funny because during high school and a little after, I got into this whole crooner thing where I really liked Neil Diamond and Scott Walker and The Zombies and that kind of stuff. What I really started to listen to is definietly because of my dad.
CP: You started on guitar, but when did singing enter the picture?
DV: It was kind of a strange combination of stuff. There were certain smaller ’90s, indie rock bands that I’d hear on cassettes from friends and stuff, and I’m not sure exactly when. I definitely started to play guitar before I started focusing on the singing stuff, as far as my own music goes.
At the same time, my sister and I would always sing. She kind of taught me how to stick to a harmony part. I had always been singing, in some way, but as far as the recording thing goes, I think the first stuff if I ever recorded was four guitar tracks, figuring out some weird tuning on the guitar and layering parts. That was how I really got into it.
CP: What’s your earliest written song with which you still have a good relationship?
DV: One that’s still in the set list? [Laughs.] Recently, we’ve been playing a large amount of new songs, but one of the earliest recorded and released songs, the first song on my first record “Nothing No” was written when I was 19 and ended up coming out a couple years after that. As far as time goes, that’s the oldest song we still play, “Nothing No.”
CP: Why did it stick with you?
DV: I still like it. [Laughs.] It’s a great song. When I was living in Chicago, that was one that Jay Bennett kind of helped me out with, in certain parts. It was one that was really spontaneous and came together really fast.
A friend of mine was playing something and left a guitar in this bizarre tuning where almost every string was tuned to G. It was really open and weird. I started fooling around and came up with the different progressions and different parts and the verses.
I was working on the chorus and putting the words together, and Jay heard what was going on in my room from his room and he came in and said, “Oh, man! What if you do this this way?”
It turned into this fun, spontaneous, timeless thing. That’s why it stuck around. People like it, and I like it, and it’s fun to play.
CP: You’ve done a lot of moving in your life from Holland, Mich., to Grand Rapids to Chicago to Brooklyn and … finally, Nashville. Do you think this move will be your last?
DV: My girlfriend, Lauren, and I decided to move to Nashville, and then we got married and have a house. Yeah, I think I’ll be in Nashville for a long time. I really like it here. I’ve got my studio in the basement, and … yeah, it’s a pretty nice setup, compared to moving around and not having a place for years.
CP: What do you get out of living in so many places? Do you find that those cities have all influenced you, musically? Some more than others, maybe?
DV: I guess, musically, but not really in a direct way. All that moving around, even if it’s for short periods of time, makes up who I am, to some degree. So of course, there are certain lifetime periods and situations that happen because of where you are at a certain time, and that can be inspiring, whether it’s good or bad. That’s pretty closely connected to what I write about. In other words, it’s not like, living in New York, I heard all these great New York bands, and it influenced me to have a New York sound.
CP: Where do you tend to look for inspiration? Do you walk around with a notebook in your back pocket all day?
DV: I normally don’t walk around with a notebook. It all depends. There are almost different areas or compartments of my brain where sometimes it’ll be writing about a very specific situation that happened. Then, whether I’m successful or not, trying to write in a way that uses universal language. Sometimes, I’ll think I’m writing a song about somebody else or being frustrated about something and then I’ll realize that, “Whoa, I’m writing this about myself.” [Laughs.]
There are a lot of different things that inspire what I write about, but recently, it’s not love songs and not necessarily “You’ve done me wrong” type songs, but more about situations I didn’t understand or trying to figure out how something works. I try to figure out how to be aware of certain situations and how to treat people and do the right thing. That’s something everyone faces, naturally.
Even if it’s writing a song about something really, really basic, I try to write about simple situations, but in a very aware kind of way.
CP: Does any of that have to do with you being recently married?
DV: Yeah, part of that is true. It’s definitely not the easiest thing. I’m super happy, and it’s a really positive situation for me, but at the same time, there are definitely challenges. I’m trying to balance my lifestyle in a way where I’m being healthy and all that, like respecting that I can’t play music in the basement until 3 a.m. and drinking beer all day when my wife is at work.
It’s just being responsible. All the clichés have a lot of truth to them. It’s easy on tour to drink all day. You show up at a bar in some town, and you immediately start drinking. You play for 45 minutes, and then you party.
I’m learning how to handle all that. Being in that situation between the age of 18 and now, being surrounded by that all the time, it definitely takes some learning about how to keep everything in balance and be a good person instead of being an asshole and treating people the wrong way and being selfish.
CP: You’ve done a lot of work as an engineer and producer. Has that background affected your approach to your own work?
DV: Yeah, it has. I’m always working on stuff. It’s been way too long since I had a record out, and I’m trying to figure out a different label situation right now. I’ve got a couple different singles over the next few months that are coming out on different labels.
One is coming out on a U.K. label. That’s going to be four or five new songs coming out in early spring over there in a limited release. I have another one that’s coming out on my friend’s label in L.A. that has put out some cool limited-edition vinyl thing.
This year, I put out a couple of songs, digitally. Last year, I put out the “Summer Time Hits” EP. I’m always trying to get music out there, but as far as an actual, concise full record, I feel like I’m working on two of them at the same time.
To answer your question about recording and if that’s relevant to me, on one of the records I’m working on, it’s still relevant, more so than the other one. One is a true solo record in the way the “Summer Time Hits” thing was where it’s just me in the studio fooling around with my tape machine and getting crazy guitar sounds and layering vocals.
The other one is more what we do live; it’s more of like a band record. I describe it as being like if Big Star made a record that sounded like Neil Young or something. [Laughs.] I’m in both of these worlds.
When I’m home alone, I always have fun recording myself and producing my songs and that kind of thing, but that’s very different from having a band and being on tour. Right now, I’m in a situation where I can do this one-man show and have all these pre-recorded tracks and can bring along a sound guy, but it’s not what I’m interested in doing right now. What I’m most interested in doing right now is finishing up my organic, rock’n’roll record and trying to capture what we do live and not having the responsibility of engineering but just focusing more on the songs and the arrangement of the band, that kind of stuff. That’s where my interest lies right now.
CP: Why? What’s behind that shift?
DV: Just because I really enjoy playing live. I’m really attracted to how natural it sounds. I can do a pretty good fake band by myself. [Laughs.] I play drums, and I’m into trying to figure out anything I can play, but when I can just fully get into playing guitar and playing with the band and singing my songs and having somebody else sing harmonies with me, that whole world just feels really, really fun and really natural to me right now.
It’s not like I’m not into engineering or producing. It’s more of an experiment, in a way. I’ve never put out a record where I didn’t either play drums on half of it or engineer the whole thing or do all the harmonies or the synthesizers.
I’m more interested in having other people to collaborate with. It gets old after a while feeling kind of isolated in that way in having to mix and push all the buttons and all that. What would be fun right now is have a record written, which I do, and go into a studio and have somebody else set up the mikes and get the cool sounds and just be able to play and sing with my band. That would be awesome. That’s where I’m at right now.
CP: Do you think it’ll be hard for you to let go and allow someone else to take over as producer?
DV: And let go? [Laughs.] I don’t think so, because there’s another record and piles of songs where I’ve already gotten to do everything. I have the outlet at my house to do all that.
I want it to be raw and sound like it wasn’t something that I had the overall vision for. I want to find somebody as a producer or an engineer who I trust and respect who gets into the songs and can maybe reveal something I wouldn’t have revealed by myself. I don’t think it’ll be hard for me to let go.