The Bulletproof Vests

BY FRED MILLS



The BLURT staff put our heads - and ears - together and we have the latest pick for our Blurt/Sonicbids "Best Kept Secret": it's Memphis outfit the Bulletproof Vests. Take a little bit of garage, a whole lotta power pop, touches of Beach Boys vocal harmonies, sprinkle in some twang, some soul - pure Memphis, in other words.



The music city's in the quintet's genes, in other words (and in their jeans as well), and based upon the evidence of the Bulletproof Vests' debut album Attack!, they couldn't fake it if they tried. From "To The Moon," which righteously marries Big Star to T. Rex, through the anthemic pop/soul (think erstwhile Memphians the Reigning Sound) of both "Magic Wand" and "Down in Yer Pocket," and all the way to the unreconstructed Nuggets-worthy, raveup of "Queenie in Trouble" that'll have you hittin' the nighttime avenues, ready to rumble - these guys got the stuff.



The band: brothers Jake and Toby Vest, on guitars and vox; Greg Faison, on drums; Dirk Kitterlin, on keyboards; and Brandon Robertson, on bass. With a collective resume that includes the likes of Antenna Shoes, Jump Back Jake, Snowglobe, The Third Man, and even a one-off with the late producer Jim Dickinson called the Trashed Romeos, those Memphis roots are consistently on display. Jake and Toby also operate their own studio, High/Low Recording and have been diligently documenting the Memphis indie-rock underground in between working on their own projects.



You can hear tracks from Attack! at both the band's MySpace page and their official download site - it was originally self-released earlier this year in a super-limited run, but it's slated to have a full national release very soon via local label Electric Room Records. Meanwhile, totally smitten by what we've heard to date, we contacted the band to get the scoop on where they came from, where they're going, and everything we need to know about their home town. A big salute to the band from BLURT and Sonicbids.



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BLURT: Where did all the members come from - previous bands, etc. - and when and how did the Bulletproof Vests form?



JAKE VEST: Toby and I were in the midst of mixing a record for our first band, The Third Man, when we got a call from a friend offering the Third Man a gig at the legendary Hi Tone Cafe. Sadly, some of the members of the band had scheduling conflicts - one had chest waxing appointment, another had to wash his hair - so we couldn't commit to the gig as The Third Man. Toby looked at me and said, "Why don't we just write 15 songs and get some folks together and bash through it." I immediately wrote our song "Magic Wand," and the idea of another band was born.



We toyed with names - Deathcopter, Vietnamicon, Grammar Napkin, Wizard Tears, etcetera - and while drunk on a plane, we decided to include our namesake and call it The Bulletproof Vests. Through the passing of time and the shifting of the solar plexus we put together a band that included Brandon Robertson, of Snowglobe, Coach & Four, Jump Back Jake, and Antenna Shoes, on bass; Greg Faison, of Antique Curtains and Jump Back Jake, on drums; and Dirk Kitterlin, a member of The Third Man, on keyboard instruments.



TOBY VEST: Let me also say that one of the main reasons for starting The BPV was to have a creative outlet that was miles away from what we'd done before. The excitement of expanding our creative palette really fed into the way the songs came about and the way the record sounds. That, and the fact that we were tired of jumping up and down on effects pedals in The Third Man, so something a little more natural was a welcome change.





I'm also told that some of you were in a band called the Trashed Romeos with Jim Dickinson and Greg Roberson - what was the deal with that?



JAKE: We were lucky enough to spend a couple afternoons with Jim Dickinson at Zebra Ranch throwing around song ideas, jamming on stuff, and listening to great stories. We took the demo tapes, picked the best songs, and cut them at our studio, High/Low Recording. After that, we went back to Zebra Ranch and Jim played piano and organ like a madman all over it. I mean, he NAILED that shit to the wall! In that short time, Jim Dickinson taught us more than we would ever be able to thank him for. He is and will always be an important influence to us musically and beyond.



TOBY: We'll forever be grateful to Greg Roberson for introducing us to Jim and facilitating the project and to Jim for welcoming us into his world.





Tell me a little about the album Attack! and how it came together.



JAKE: I guess the best way to explain the album is to look at the cover. Our friend Mary Carmack created the collage that we used. I relate intensely to her work for many reasons, one being that her collages are just like our band. She uses classic images in concert with her own creations to make something completely new and exciting. That was our goal with this record. When I saw her piece that we used for the cover, it just made so much sense. We wanted this record to be a full out attack. So we just dropped those words on top of it and called it a day. Hopefully, she'll let us continue to butcher her work in the future.



Musically, the album is the result of us learning to be a band. And at the time of recording our lineup was different. Our friend/Third Man bandmate Preston Todd was on drums, and he contributed greatly to the writing and singing of the vocal harmonies. So you have songs where Faison would be on drums AND bass, Preston would be singing, I'd play 2 acoustic guitars and an electric, etc. etc. All these odd little pieces surprisingly ended up as a somewhat cohesive album. It was loose and fun and still is.



TOBY: The recording of the record was pretty much a club house kind of situation. Jake or I would come in with a song and we'd cut a track and start to build on top of it. There were no sessions, per se, for the record; it just kind of came together by working as much as possible over the course of maybe a 6 months or so. It was fun and relaxed. We had the songs done for a while and were introduced to Adam Hill, who works at Ardent, by Greg Roberson and he did a great job turning our ramshackle recording into a listenable album. We pressed a small run, maybe 100 discs, and sold them at shows this summer. We are going to officially release it on local label Electric Room Records this fall. Then world domination can commence.





Memphis has a schizophrenic reputation: it's one of our most legendary music towns, yet numerous musicians have told me that it's a damn hard place for an indie rock band to make a go of it. Is that true?



JAKE: I don't think I understand the question, really. It's not hard at all to be a band in Memphis. You find some dudes, or dudettes, you like and you play music and have fun doing it. Sure, if you bring expectations into the equation, then eventually you'll get disappointed by something like a low turnout or the 1,000 copies of your record you still have stored in your house. The way I see it, this is the EASIEST town to make a go of it. Not only do you have a huge wealth of musicians to work with, but you also have venues that support their bands and an audience that is hungry for live music. I challenge anyone who disagrees to an arm wrestling contest.



TOBY: I think one of the biggest obstacles in this city is the audience for live music because this town doesn't tolerate bullshit. Either you believe in what you are doing or you don't and the audience in Memphis can tell. And if you don't, then why the hell are you doing this anyway.





What are some of the best kept secrets in Memphis - from bands to venues to vices - we should know about when planning our vacations to your fair city?



JAKE: I'd say musically its Richard James & the Special Riders. Richard and his wife Anne Schorr make up the core of the band, and they are incredible. The live show is not to be missed. The Hi Tone Cafe has the finest pizza, Payne's BBQ has the best barbecue, the Lamplighter has the best patty melt, the shows at the Buccaneer Lounge are always insane and out of control (in a great way), and Alex Threet is the greatest bar regular you will ever meet.



TOBY: Jeffrey James and The Haul is another band that stands out to me - great songs, great dudes, and fun for all. I might also say that what is going on at our studio space, High/Low Recording, is a pretty well kept secret. Over the last year we have recorded Jeffrey James and The Haul, Antique Curtains, two Richard James and the Special Riders records, Chinamen, New Mary Jane (featuring Dave Shouse and Scott Taylor of the Grifters), and Holly Cole, as well as all the stuff we are personally involved in - The BPV, The Third Man, Trashed Romeos, and Kid Polio. Our hope is to make it easy and comfortable for our friends to make records in a relaxed environment.





I hear a lot of styles and influences in your sound, but I wanted to know, if YOU were encountering the Bulletproof Vests for the first time, what would your reaction be?



JAKE: My reaction would be as follows: "What a bunch of drunk fools up there lookin like they're having the time of their lives playing music with each other. And shouldn't that drummer lose some weight?"



TOBY: "What's with the tights?? Is that a statue or a keyboard player???" Or simply, "Bitchin'."





Biggest successes to date? Biggest failures? Plans for the immediate future?



JAKE: For me, our biggest success has been that our friends keep coming out to our shows and having fun. Our biggest failure is when we ran over that possum in Pittsburgh last summer while on tour. All I'm gonna say about the future is that we are recording our 2nd record and where we're going, we wont need roads.



TOBY: I concur.





Anything else we should know about the band, the city, life, love or the pursuit of happiness?



TOBY: "Never get less than twelve hours sleep; never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city; and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese."



JAKE: Our mom makes the best chicken salad you will ever taste. - Blurt-Online.com

By Chris Herrington



"Magic Wand," the first song on Attack!, the debut album from the young Memphis band the Bulletproof Vests, leaps out of the speakers on a nimble classic-rock guitar riff and cools down with a splash of soulful organ, all serving as foundation for an identifiably Southern vocal. It sounds more than a little like the Band's "The Shape I'm In."

This wouldn't be unusual, except that four-fifths of the musicians who recorded the album got their start on the local scene a few years ago in Augustine, a buzzed-about experimental indie band that sounded a lot more like British art-rockers Radiohead. >>>

What happened?

"It's like a journey, where you start with certain influences, and I guess our tastes changed," says singer/guitarist Jake Vest, 24, who, along with older brother Toby, 30, fronts the band.

The younger Vest was an 18-year-old college freshman when Augustine started, driven by his elder brother's then tastes in contemporary rock. Augustine released one record under that moniker, then a second — Among the Wolves — under a new name, the Third Man, but then began to sputter.

"Right after the last Third Man record, we were meeting to plan our promotional attack, and after taking two years to make that record, it was extremely difficult," Toby says. "Not only did we drive ourselves crazy, we drove [producer Kevin] Cubbins crazy. The enthusiasm, for the moment, was not there. So we decided to put the band on pause for a while. We didn't have plans to start another group."

The band did still have a show scheduled to open for fellow locals Antique Curtains but couldn't get everyone together, so the Vest brothers, bassist Dirk Kitterlin, and Curtains drummer Greg Faison did a set of covers.

The seed for a new band was planted.

In the Third Man, Toby was the primary songwriter, with Jake taking a secondary role. Those roles are reversed in the Bulletproof Vests.

"Jake had a bunch of songs that didn't really fit in the Third Man," Toby says. "I wanted this band to showcase [his stuff]."

The younger Vest's tastes were also changing.

"I became more interested in Memphis, especially after I read [local author Robert Gordon's alternative history] It Came From Memphis. I wanted to know about everyone who'd played here. And Dirk was working at Stax and introducing me to stuff — Big Star, Otis Redding. I even started to like Elvis, which was very hard for me," says Jake, who also speaks excitedly about classic-rock touchstones such as the Velvet Underground's third and fourth albums and the Band's concert film The Last Waltz.

"It hit me like a brick, man," he says. "This was the kind of music I wanted to play."

The younger Vest had a partial outlet for this interest alongside singer Jake Rabinbach in the swamp-rock and R&B band Jump Back Jake, which also features Faison and current Vests bassist Brandon Robertson. The band originally included Kitterlin, who has moved to organ in the Bulletproof Vests, taking a crash course in Booker T. Jones and the Band's Garth Hudson to master his new instrument.

But with the Bulletproof Vests, which add a more diverse array of '60s and '70s rock influences (witness the Big Star-meets-T. Rex mash-up of "To the Moon"), Vest & Co. get to fully explore their newfound classic-rock jones. - Memphis Magazine

Mention Memphis and Ardent Studios, and Big Star comes to mind. Well, here's a Memphis band that enlisted Adam Hill, an Ardent Studios engineer, to mix and produce their debut, and darned if these guys don't have a little Chilton in them. They manage to mix power pop, rock and R&B in an intoxicating mix, and grab you from the get-go with "Magic Wand", 3:16 of rollicking goodness that brings to mind the classics as well as current bands like The Whigs. "Down in Yer Pocket" could be The Black Keys mixed with Booker T & The MGs, and "Darlin' Wait" is an awesome rave-up. Elsewhere "Picture Show" sounds like a lost Nugget, "Don't Cry" is a dusty barroom ballad, and "B&E" rocks with abandon. Although you don't hear the "Memphis sound" much any more from new bands, these guys do it proud. - Absolute Powerpop

Vest brothers try on different sound

By Mark Jordan

Monday, July 13, 2009

The Vest boys, brothers and bandmates Toby and Jake, spent their July 4 holiday in Las Vegas. But in the age of Twitter and Facebook, what happens in Vegas does not necessarily stay there.

The long-planned vacation took on a more far-reaching nature at the last minute when Toby decided to use it as an opportunity to wed his longtime girlfriend. But by all accounts, the end result still seemed ripped right out of "The Hangover."

"I jumped on a bar," says Jake from his hotel room at the Venetian, recounting just one of the lost weekend's booze-fueled misadventures. "It was a Pabst Blue Ribbon shotgunning-beer contest. I think I came in third place. I don't know. Maybe I came in first. I don't remember."

Back home now, the pair won't have much of an opportunity to recover from their trip as they throw themselves into their latest musical project, the Bulletproof Vests. The band -- which in its live configuration also includes Dirk Kitterlin, Brandon Robertson and Greg Faison -- kicks off a three-week residency at the Hi-Tone on Monday, a stand that coincides with the release of the band's debut album, Attack!.

The Bulletproof Vests is a side project of The Third Man, the art-rock outfit (originally called Augustine) the Vests started in 2004 with Kitterlin, Jeff Schmidtke and Preston Todd that released two of the most acclaimed local records of recent years. Despite being largely absent from the scene since the release of the second disc, Among the Wolves, in 2007, The Third Man is still very much together, Toby says.

"I don't know how to define it," he says. "We're basically just kind of recording at this point. Whenever we decide to release something we'll release it, but it's not really the main focus at this point."

Instead, The Third Man has been pushed to the side by a group that, though it shares many of the same players, is very different in style and presentation.

"The Third Man kind of became a strange entity," says Jake, who has used the new band as a chance to push more of his original songs. "When you experiment all the time you lose the thrill. It seemed far more exciting to throw a bunch of stuff together and be this loud, raucous, by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of thing."

The Bulletproof Vests began last year almost on a lark. When not all the members of The Third Man could make a gig opening for their good friends the Antique Curtains, Toby, Jake and Dirk joined with Faison to bang out an impromptu set of covers and Third Man originals.

"It started almost as a joke," says Toby "Then it took on a much more serious note. We realized we could do a different thing from what we'd been doing."

Coming off of Among the Wolves, a long-wrought, ambitious and meticulous piece of intellectual music, the immediacy and visceral rush of a straight-ahead rock band seemed to be just what the doctor ordered.

"To us, (Bulletproof Vest) is more instinctual," says Toby. "It comes from the gut. All the songs and styles, like The Rolling Stones and The Band, that we were never able to incorporate into what we were doing in The Third Man. Something a little more Memphis-based might be the best way to put it."

Indeed, a key influence on the Vests appears to be Toby and Jake's growing integration into the Memphis music scene. In recent years, the two have played with a variety of local bands and musicians, including Jump Back Jake, Richard James & the Special Riders and Jim Dickinson. A listen to Attack! reveals a host of local inspirations, including Big Star and the Oblivians. And following the example set by groups like the One Four Fives, they have even integrated Memphis covers into their live sets, including gems from such obscure local cult faves as Moloch.

"(Amy LaVere guitarist) Steve Selvidge gave me that Moloch record, and it just felt right," says Jake of their decision to work songs from the late Lee Baker's '70s blues-rock institution. "Ever since we started playing music here, we've met amazing people that shared so much. It seems we're learning something new every day." - The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)

Two local indie bands explore the classic-rock canon.

by Chris Herrington
July 16, 2009

Magic Wand," the first song on Attack!, the debut album from local band the Bulletproof Vests, leaps out of the speakers on a nimble classic-rock guitar riff and cools down with a splash of soulful organ, all serving as foundation for an identifiably Southern vocal. It sounds more than a little like the Band's "The Shape I'm In."

This wouldn't be unusual, except that four-fifths of the musicians who recorded the album got their start on the local scene a few years ago in Augustine, a buzzed-about experimental indie band that sounded a lot more like Radiohead.

What happened?

"It's like a journey, where you start with certain influences, and I guess our tastes changed," says singer/guitarist Jake Vest, 24, who, along with older brother Toby, 30, fronts the band.

The younger Vest was an 18-year-old college freshman when Augustine started, driven by his elder brother's then tastes in contemporary rock. Augustine released one record under that moniker, then a second — Among the Wolves — under a new name, the Third Man, but then began to sputter.

"Right after the last Third Man record, we were meeting to plan our promotional attack, and after taking two years to make that record, it was extremely difficult," Toby says. "Not only did we drive ourselves crazy, we drove [producer Kevin] Cubbins crazy. The enthusiasm, for the moment, was not there. So we decided to put the band on pause for a while. We didn't have plans to start another group."

The band did still have a show scheduled to open for fellow locals Antique Curtains but couldn't get everyone together, so the Vest brothers, bassist Dirk Kitterlin, and Curtains drummer Greg Faison did a covers set. The seed for a new band was planted.

In the Third Man, Toby was the primary songwriter, with Jake taking a secondary role. Those roles are reversed in the Bulletproof Vests.

"Jake had a bunch of songs that didn't really fit in the Third Man," Toby says. "I wanted this band to showcase [his stuff]."

The younger Vest's tastes also were changing.

"I became more interested in Memphis, especially after I read It Came From Memphis. I wanted to know about everyone who'd played here. And Dirk was working at Stax and introducing me to stuff — Big Star, Otis Redding. I even started to like Elvis, which was very hard for me," says Jake, who also speaks excitedly about classic-rock touchstones such as the Velvet Underground's third and fourth albums and the Band's concert film The Last Waltz. - The Memphis Flyer

1. The Bulletproof Vests: The Bulletproof Vests is a local super-group of sorts. Composed of members of several notable local bands, including the Third Man, Jump Back Jake, and Antique Curtains, the Bulletproof Vests might be the best of that talented lot on the strength of their spot-on Stones/Faces-influenced songwriting and the sheer guitar wizardry of frontman Jake Vest. Vest is everything an aspiring lead guitarist would hope to be — his licks are tasteful, effortless, and incendiary. The Bulletproof Vests is the best new band to emerge from Memphis in 2008. - Memphis Flyer

Memphis upstarts the Bulletproof Vests were one of BLURT's "Best Kept Secret" picks last fall - you can read our profile and interview here - and at the time they'd recently done a limited-edition private run (like, 100 copies) of their debut album Attack! As noted in the story, however, local label Electric Room was planning on repressing the record and distributing it nationally. Based on this humble reporter's impressions of the tunes both then and now, any self-respecting aficionado of garage and power pop (and maybe a little bit o' Memphis soul, too) should not be without this in their collection.



It kicks off with the one-two groover punch of "Magic Wand" (an anthemic bit of pop/soul that could pass for classic-era J. Geils Band) and "Down In Yer Pocket" (sixties-flavored, R&B-tinged psychedelia; listen for the backwards guitar solo!) effectively establishing the quintet's bonafides. From there the genre-hopping commences, one moment touching down in twangy, Rockpile-styled pub-rock ("Darlin' Wait"), slinkysmokysexycool fifties pop with Latin flourishes ("Picture Show"), full-on garage raveup ("Queenie In Trouble"), and slam-bam pop glam ("To The Moon" - the song that initially hooked me on the band, it sounds like a cross between Big Star and T. Rex).



At 10 songs clocking in just over a half-hour, Attack! gets in and gets out without wasting a second of your time, and it's testimony to the band's songwriting prowess that you want to spin the platter again the moment it's finished - the tunes are as addictive as they are varied, and they boast a full-bodied sound that may have its origins in the garage but has clearly been honed with finesse in the studio. Any number of these tracks would sound great blaring from the car stereo. (I should know; I road tested the CD.)



Featuring brothers Jake and Toby Vest on guitars and vocals, Greg Faison on drums, Dirk Kitterlin on keyboards and Brandon Robertson on bass, the Bulletproof Vests slot together in classic Memphis tight-but-loose fashion, as a result constituting one of the more exciting young bands to emerge from that city's always-bustling, ever-mutating music scene.



Standout Tracks: "To The Moon," "Down In Yer Pocket," "Queenie In Trouble" FRED MILLS - Blurt-Online