Villanova Junction

FRIDAY 3.25

Villanova Junction / Big Blu House / The Heart Machine
9 p.m., Cock & Bull, 975 Cattlemen Road, Sarasota
If you want to get a great sampling of Suncoast music, Friday’s bill at the Cock & Bull offers three distinctly different, yet all well known and highly regarded, Sarasota staples. Villanova Junction plays with influences taken from the psychedelic rock era right up through modern indie-alt-rock distortions and effects, creating unique soundscapes driven by heavy blues chops and the Morrison-esque vocals of guitarist/vocalist Ryan O’Neill, often harmonized with the emotional bellows of tambourine/vocalist Megan Jourdan. Villanova’s sophomore effort “11:11? was released on 1-11-11, and features a more varied cast of songwriters than their eponymous debut, with Jourdan and bassist Justin Keiser each taking the lead on multiple tracks. - the Ticket - Tim Sukits

Silhouette of Sounds
w/ Villanova Junction, Sons of Hippies and Strangers Family Band, 10:30 p.m. Fri., Jan. 29, Burns Court Cinemas, 506 Burns Lane, Sarasota, $6.

Bands come and go, as do band members. But when keyboardist Erin Johnson left Villanova Junction, taking his 280-pound Hammond spinet organ with him, he took the band’s trademark stage prop along with his whirligig, Jon Lord-style runs.

No hard feelings exist, but it left the remaining two-thirds of the group, guitarist and singer Ryan O’Neill and drummer Julian Leonard, at a crucial junction — pun definitely intended.

When Johnson left, the band could have simply closed up shop. But the best way to move forward, they found, was to super-size. After playing a few transitional acoustic shows, O’Neill and Leonard recruited keyboard player Nick Dorfman, songwriter and bassist-by-default (à la Paul McCartney) Justin Kaiser and vocalist Megan Jourdan (already an honorary member, having previously sung on their debut CD).

Jourdan views VJ’s growth as emblematic of the constant struggle to remain a Sarasota-based indie band. “That’s why it’s so important that Villanova Junction has continued to evolve,” she says, “because even though the Sarasota music scene for independent original bands is expanding, it’s still fairly limited, so you have to keep expanding the music that you make by bringing in new instruments and performers so that people don’t get bored.”
“Kind of like Hugh Hefner with his new girls,” Leonard adds. “Twins plus one,” Jourdan quips.

Some recently surfaced YouTube video of the group at the Emerald Bar in St. Pete demonstrates the value added. As always, O’Neill, a veteran of a number of local bands, knows how to please a crowd and works hard at it. “You don’t want to go to a live show and just see a couple of people,” he previously told CL, “A bunch of jackasses just strumming away and that’s about it. You want a show. It’s entertainment.”

He now has other front-liners to cavort with. Kaiser gives the sound’s bottom end its own dedicated representative for the first time in the band’s history — Johnson’s left hand previously played that role. Dorfman rolls his fingers around the keys pretty good, and Jourdan belts it out.

Kaiser and O’Neill were previously in the Scandals and an Orlando-based outfit called the Uptight. Most recently they played together in a local band called the Stiff Saints. “We played a bunch of shows around town,” says Kaiser. “I got back from California this year, and I’ve been in St. Pete. [Ryan’s] been trying to get me in on bass for several months, but I neglected VJ for several months, and only recently did I decide I wanted to… I had nothing better going on. Times were bad. I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel right now, until my jug band gets back together.”

With its new members, VJ is fine-tuning old songs and writing new ones. “We’re still doing ‘Panic’ and ‘Pirate Grace ’O Malley,’” said O’Neill, “but since we have a new lineup, we are trying to introduce Justin’s writing skills. Justin and I were in a band before VJ, so we’ve been collaborating on different songs and writing new material since then.”

VJ’s debut CD, recorded over a year ago, is worth listening to even though the band has moved on. Its high-water mark is the two-song punch of “Young Minds,” with its fuzzy “Highway Star”-channeling organ solo, and “Panic,” a song with a stop-start organ riff, a static, repetitive melody, novel chord changes and relentless drumming from Leonard. “Panic” segues into “Outside Intermission,” featuring locals Harper Sublette on mandolin and Dayna Osen on violin. “Underage Drinking” and “I Licked Your Hole,” another pair of back-to-back howlers, precedes “A Heart Full of Chloroform,” a dark, bluesy showcase for Johnson’s swirling runs and O’Neill’s baritone. Lyrically, “Chloroform” mistakenly sounds like a 4:20 anthem (“Feeling like you wanna / Taste the marijuana / Dancing like you wanna get high”) before veering into dark thematic territory and cheap sex in crummy hotels. The song is about the alleged behavior of Casey Anthony, the mother of 2-year-old Caylee Anthony, who went missing on June 9, 2008. The opening “I Shot Her Down” is a sinister song about Marilyn Monroe. (“Music is history just as much as anything else,” notes Leonard. “And it’s cool to someday look back and listen to what was going on.”)

These days, Kaiser contributes new material. “It’s me and Justin mainly writing the main material,” O’Neill explained, “but again it’s going to be all of us starting to implement ideas, transitions or changes.”

“A lot of the music I’ll be contributing is more melodic and a little softer,” Kaiser mentions. “Right now I’m doing some backing singing, but when we write more stuff, I’ll be taking over lead vocals on a couple of songs… I’ll do whatever. I’m kind of a whore. But I still haven’t gotten paid.”

The band profess love for Sarasota and speak at length about how the local music scene is shaping up. “There’s been some exciting stuff happening downtown,” Jourdan says, “primarily because of The Box Social, which is an all-ages music venue. There aren’t a lot of those around town. Rico’s has started having live music. The scene is definitely expanding a little bit.”

Still, they lament the dearth of local places to play and hear live music, citing the closing of stalwart Steel Can Alley in Gulf Gate as one particularly sad example. “[Places like Mattison’s and The Gator Club] want to draw an over-30 crowd,” says Leonard. “It’s very age-specific. That’s why they don’t have a lot of original music because then it would draw the younger crowd.”

O’Neill hopes the band can play a show at Box Social soon, set up some monitors outside facing towards Mattison’s and crank the volume. More band members, more noise — why not put it to good use? - Creative Loafing

Here’s an interview I did with a Sarasota band called Villanova Junction about six or seven months ago. I first emailed Ryan, the guitarist/singer/primary songwriter, and asked if I could get a copy of their CD. It arrived a few days later, and it’s been in rotation with me ever since.
Their lineup might have changed since then (I’ll be hearing more about this in a couple of days). Still, I thought this interview was worth reproducing in its entirety. Their self-titled album is really worth hearing. Contact the band directly on how to get a copy:
myspace.com/musicbyvillanovajunction
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MH: What does it mean to be from Sarasota? What kind of venues are around here?
Julian Leonard: I think it has to do with the slump of the music scene here, you know? I feel that in high school it was pretty peaked… a lot of exciting things. I felt like it went down on a slump, so to be in a band again now as it’s starting to rise, and hopefully even being a part of that rise, is kind of exciting, you know? To try to bring that all back.
M: How many years ago was high school? How old are you guys anyway?
J: 24.
Ryan O’Neill: 25.
Erin Johnson: I’m 28.
R: I think the scene in Sarasota, it kind of happened spontaneously, right? I mean, I think ’98 was really big. There was a band called No Solution, there was Super Tuesday, but they were more, like, new-school punk.
J: We weren’t really stuck in a scene but… punk rock, you know?
M: Would you say you are part of the punk rock scene?
J: That’s a problem that we are trying to … and a lot of the venues we played at, like we played in St. Pete at The Garage, and I don’t think we’re necessarily … we’re undefined, because… the owner there, he was very much into the punk rock scene, but he’ll play anything that he can, you know. Obviously he’s a venue guy, but he’s like, ‘I wanna put you guys in with…” because we played with a cover band, a 90s-rock cover band, and he was like, “We’ve gotta put you with … I just don’t know where to put you guys right now,” you know? Where is our little beat?
M: Here in Sarasota, there’s Pastimes and there’s Steel Can Alley. Is there anywhere else to play for your kind of music?
R: Sarasota Olive Oil has shows.
E: Digital 3 used to be really good. Digital 3 was good but they just relocated. They used to put on a lot of good shows.
M: Where was that?
E: It was on Central and Boulevard of the Arts. That was a good scene. Mainly it’s just Gulf Gate right now.
M: Maybe it’s good to have a centralized place where people know… it’s kind of like an Uptown / Downtown kind of thing where you have Downtown… that’s where the edgy/original stuff gets played. Whereas if you want to play here on Main Street or anywhere else, you have to play cover tunes.
R: Sometimes that’s the way to do it. If you want to play, like, a three-hour set, you make your money that way, you know? it’s a good business-side of things.
M: Tell me about your CD a little bit. What was cool about the recording of this? When did you record it?
J: How that was recorded was pretty damn cool, I think.
M: Was this the first recording by you guys as Villanova Junction?
J: Yeah, I mean if you don’t count laptop recordings.
M: Let’s go even further back. Somebody give me a history of how you guys got together.
E: We met at a Super Bowl party. Me and Ryan met at a Super Bowl party, which was hosted by a mutual friend. I don’t want to disclose at this point who that was… no, a really good guy. So we met there, and we introduced ourselves, and he found out I was a keyboard player and I found out he was a guitar player, and I was like, “Oh, that’s pretty interesting.”
R: I’ve been looking for, like, two years, for a good organ player, someone who plays good keys, and he was just kind of like, “Hey, how’s it going?” I didn’t even want to go out that night. I met Julian before I met Erin at a party, I think it was, and we decided to, you, “Let’s play some Misfits because Halloween’s coming up.” I think it was two or three years ago. “Halloween’s coming up… let’s play some Misfits.”
J: There’s no Misfits cover band in Sarasota, so we were joking around about that idea. There was a bassist and a guitarist and a singer.
M: So what year was that?
J: Halloween of ’06.
R: Then we just ventured off and did something else. We wanted to go more towards originals. I started cranking out some songs, and they all liked it. But we kept that same grasp of that old-school punk, like Iggy Pop, Misfits. So if we were to be classified as punk, it would be more in the sense of the old-school influence of those characters. But we ventured off and did our own thing. I guess that’s how we first started.
J: It’s funny because one night we sat around, just shooting the shit, and I hadn’t really known Erin too much, but he was like, “You know, I really like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple.” And I was thinking, “Okay, I like those groups, but that’s weird,” you know? Ryan’s iPod, flipping through it, I saw bands that I’ve never heard before. So, us three together, it’s real interesting.
R: Hendrix, Cream…
M: There’s kind of a … I don’t know if it’s the organ or what, but there’s a Deep Purple-ish, Doors kind of vibe.
J: It’s weird to say what it is because all of us are so different.
M: You [Ryan] kind of sing in a low voice too…
E: Jon Lord of Deep Purple… Jon Lord is my favorite organ player. There are a lot of really good organ players out there: Jimmy Smith, of course, who Jon Lord was listening to, and, you know, Ray Manzarek is obviously unique and awesome and legendary. Jon Lord I used to listen to quite a bit, just his sound…
M: That distorted sound…
E: The distorted, overdriven organ is what I’ve always wanted.
J: He’s always looking for a pedal. He’s like, “Oh, this buddy of mine lent me this pedal.”
M: How do you get that sound? What’s your setup like?
E: Well, actually, basically, right now, I’m a senior in college. I go to Ringling, and I’m majoring in illustration, and right now I’m working on my senior thesis, and so I don’t have a lot of money. And actually, when I moved here from Vermont in 2005 to go to Ringling, I didn’t bring the bass amp that I normally play through, so I showed up with no amp and haven’t really gotten an amp since then. But what we do, and I think it sounds good – is I just plug directly from the jack on the organ just right into the PA and we just kind of mix the signals from there. The distortion that I get is a natural, mechanical thing, because it’s so loud. I’m trying to experiment with different sounds. I don’t want to completely emulate one player or another. All these influences are good, but I’m trying formulate my own sound. The natural distortion I get …
M: You obviously have a classical, jazz sort of background.
E: Well, basically I started taking piano lessons when I was nine. I took piano lessons for six months when I was nine. When I was eleven through thirteen I took piano lessons for a couple of years. It was your normal, traditional piano-teacher type of thing. So, I stopped doing that because she raised her rates. My dad’s a musician. He’s a guitar player and a bass player and a drummer. He’s been in tons and tons of bands long before I was born. When I was growing up he was playing in bands, playing bass, playing rhythm and lead guitar. He writes a lot of original material. He’s a wicked good player. He taught me how to improvise with other musicians, to read the flow, follow your drummer, follow your bass player, and the difference between… there’s a fine line between fine verses and playing too much, and just how to solo. Once I learned how to solo, you know, here we go into the solo and you just kind of take off, and that’s where a lot of the magic happens. I really enjoy playing the rhythm too.
R: We are only a three-piece, so he fills in that bass line.
M: You are only a three-piece?
J: As of right now.
M: You don’t have a bass player?
R: No, and that’s the trick.
M: So, do you [Erin] have to play bass with your left hand?
E: Yeah, I play the bass and I’m always working no matter where it is on the keyboard to improve my technique and improve every sound and just to make it really damn good. So I practice every day.
R: Since we don’t have a bass player, we’re kind of under the concept of the garage band, and I kind of like that idea that it’s something a little different rather than the same four or three piece kind of band. I think it’s interesting to see just an organ and just a guitar and just the drums connect … and onstage, I’m surprised that I don’t hear anybody shout out, “Where the fuck’s your bass player?” At the end they think, “Well, this is great.”
M: What’s the stage response like when you play out? Do you have a following that comes out and sees you everytime?
J: Here, mostly, yeah. And what’s really funny is once in awhile someone will have a camera and we’ll get to watch the video. I don’t really pay attention, but we’re sitting around watching it, and we’re like, “Wait, there’s people dancing.” And it’s really cool. I just never really got that idea, and it’s cool to see that people were dancing and getting into it.
E: Also, my grandfather’s a musician as well. He was in jazz and Dixieland bands during the Big Band era in Massachusetts. So I’m from a line of musicians. One thing about solos is: when I’m playing a solo, I don’t want to play it the same way every time. It might be a couple/few notes that lead into the solo, your hook that brings in the next part. Roger Glover [bass player of Deep Purple] said of Jon Lord that he was a Zen Archer soloist, that he would hit it the first or second time, but that his solos were always different. He never wanted to play the same thing. Part of that is that you can’t remember how to play it. I can sit down and learn technically how the exact solo goes for any given song, and I can memorize that stuff…
M: But why would you want to? You want to create something different every time.
E: It’s all about reaching into the ether and pulling out that …
R: Creamy goo?
E: Yeah, that stuff. - 4GB - Michael Hamad