Suburban Legends – Vince Walker
Posted on December 06, 2008 at 7:00 am by Luke
The Shout It Loud Tour came to Toronto in summer 2008 with four great ska outfits. Suburban Legends was one of them and I was able to chat with vocalist Vince Walker a few minutes before they went on stage. So if you haven’t heard of these guys, let me tell you that for a ska band turned funk, they’re pretty catchy, fun, and just plain different!
WayTooLoud!: What do you do in the band?
Vince Walker: I used to play trumpet in the band, I sing now and I play guitar and a little bit of keys but nothing special.
WTL!: What got you up and playing?
Vince: When I was a kid I played piano for a little bit, violin for a little but then I started playing trumpet. When I played trumpet I wanted to play jazz music like Myles Davis and stuff like that, then I started playing guitar and I got into guitar and wanted to be a blues guy then the next thing you know I joined a ska band when I was in High School then it just became this.
WTL!: How much writing do you do for the band?
Vince: Actually all of us write the songs, Derek [Lee Rock - drums], Mikey [Hachey - bass], myself and Brian [Klemm - guitar] kind of write songs. Me and Brian do a lot of the lyrical content but we usually bring songs to the band and kind of round ‘em out that way.
WTL!: What inspires your lyrics?
Vince: We like to write about some cheesy stuff and fun stuff and doing stuff like… well it really depends we like to write about chicks, about partying, you know whatever comes to mind. We have a song [on our new album] about our van catching fire this time around, so we try to mix it up. Our pets! We also like to write about our pets!
(Laughs)
WTL!: There’s a lot of different sounds on the new record, how do you decide which music styles you like to play?
Vince: We’ve explored ourselves and kind of really grown as artists on this album. I’d say if you took the last 4 or 5 albums, it showcases that now and where we’re gonna go on the next album we put out or whatever we put out. We got everything on there, we got a couple ska songs, rock songs, disco songs, soul songs, all of that. Check it out, “Let’s Be Friends”!
WTL!: What influenced the funk sound for Suburban Legends?
Vince: The first band I was in was like a funk band and at the same time we kind of did a little disco thing, like in “Rumpshaker” we did a couple songs like that. I think we just kind of jumped into that again and tried a lot of different stuff and a lot of that stuff was kind of a disco rock.
WTL!: How do you keep yourselves entertained on the road?
Vince: We drink a lot… Well it’s tough, that’s the toughest part about being on the road ‘cuz being on stage is the “moment”, those 20, 30 minutes is the “moment” then after that it’s like… “What do you we now?” We don’t have a tour manager or a label so we’re doing all this stuff ourselves so it keeps us very busy doing day-to-day stuff.
WTL!: What’s in your stereo right now?
Vince: I’ve been listening to a guy named Jamie Lidel, like really cool stuff, he’s got an album out called “Jib”, really soulful stuff it’s really cool.
WTL!: What’s it like touring with Less Than Jake and Goldfinger?
Vince: It kicks ass! It’s really just been amazing, we’re so lucky to be on this tour, every night it’s been just amazing! Really good so far!
WTL!: Who would you like to tour with who’s both feasible and not obvious?
Vince: Feasible is the Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana… no, I don’t know. It’d be great to… we like playing in front of as many people as we can! We have so many different genres that it’s just nice to see and test it out in many different atmospheres. We’re up for whatever!
WTL!: Is there anywhere in the world you’d like to tour?
Vince: Everywhere! We’ve been to the UK once but we’d love to tour Europe, Japan, China, Africa.
WTL!: China’s just starting to happen!
Vince: Yeah it’s blowing up over there and I have no idea what it’s like there. Very powerful, developing nation in the past 10 years.
WTL!: I know there’s a lot of rumors about your band name so have you told any good lies about it?
Vince: The name just sort of came up, we had a meeting and it just came up and just stuck. So no good lies yet…
WTL!: You’ve never gotten bored of answering that question?
Vince: (Laughs) Actually today, a little bit today but not from you guys!
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