"We have John Anthony on lead guitar, Rick Deak on guitar as well, Brendan Burke on bass, Owen Davis on drums and Nathan Anthony on keys and we love to usually have our horn section with us but we're not able to take them on this tour this time around but we do have trumpet, trombone and saxophone as well; we call that the family size band and that's always fun to take them on the road as well," laughed Jackie Popovec, lead vocalist of Ohio based band The Vindys as they prepped for the first of 20 shows opening for Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo with the first two occurring July 6 at Atlantic City's Ovation Hall located at Oceans Casino Resort and July 7 at The Hackensack Meridian Theatre in Red Bank, NJ.
Finally getting to hit the road in earnest to promote their 2021 release "Bugs," Popovec says they are "Thrilled" to be out on the road with Benatar and her husband Neil.
"My boyfriend and I were actually vacationing in Italy and on our first day in Rome; we really wanted to take this vacation and we said, "Hey, we're gonna put our phones away and leave all of this behind, put our phones away and explore and do our thing" and that night we were at dinner and I get a call. So, I looked at the phone and it said, "Beverly Hills, California" and I said, "Ummm-maaaybe we should pick this up" and we picked it up and as it happened it was their booking agent from CAA. So, for the next 25 minutes or so at dinner, over our amazing appetizers and wine, we were trying to figure out how to get this done. We are so excited and it was pretty funny the way that it happened with them ending up calling us and asking how to get it done; it was just amazing. We had opened for her twice before, once in Detroit and once in Cleveland and we think that they recognized that their fan base was receptive and liked us. They were like, let's get them on the road. The whole thing is just magical, it's gonna be amazing and I can't wait to get over to New York and New Jersey and get this thing started!"
The Vindys are not newcomers to the world of rock n' roll; they're not veterans yet either and the nice thing about the band is that they have not fallen into the trap that ensnares many of the acts today; they've got a touch of an old school mentality in their approach.
"The band, we have been doing our thing since about 2017," Jackie began. "We came out with a full length album that just kind of radiated out from Youngstown, Ohio, Akron, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Columbus and then beyond in the Northeast Ohio area; it just got picked up by Triple A Radio. So, we've been doing our thing since 2017 and kind of just growing ourselves with a grassroots way of doing business as a band; we're doing it the way you used to do it. One thing we pride ourselves on; when we get in front of people, we win people over and being from Northeast, Ohio, we have supporters in the area. You may even remember some of these names; Belkin Productions, Michael Stanley Band out of Cleveland, Donnie Iris in Pittsburgh and so, all of these rock legends that came out of this area way back when have kind of stepped up to support this band and that's how we got the attention of Live Nation and Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo who is from Parma Cleveland and their bass player who is from Youngstown as it happens. So, it has been just kind of word of mouth that has got us to a really cool place with Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo and now we're on a national tour."
Popovec says her influences and "Schooling" led her to places beyond the state of Ohio but upon returning; the band kind of just came together.
"So, obviously I was a kid just running around the house; I was a radio kid. I'd wash the car with the radio on, VH1, MTV; I was very much used to the hits I would say. I really gravitated towards the melodies and huge vocalists as it was when I was young in the early '90s. So, people like Whitney Houston, Pat Benatar actually, Ann Wilson of Heart, a lot of these crazy rock vocalists; Steven Tyler was even someone I looked up to and tried to emulate. It wasn't really until I came across, while illegally downloading from Napster and BearShare and while we were all breaking our parents computers with all of these downloads that I came across Etta James and that's when I really dialed in. I loved that you could have this silky sweet kind of voice and then this raspy and screaming kind of voice at the same time and I really loved her for that and then I went backwards from there. I Was like, Etta james; who is a similar artist? Who inspired her? I'm looking at Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan and that was kind of like my door through into that kind of world as well as Frank Sinatra. He was a big one in my book because I think he died in the '90s and there was a resurgence of playing Frank Sinatra all of the time and I was around that as well; I gravitated to a lot of jazz artists. So, that was kind of the school that I was brought up in but once out of high school, I didn't want to go to a performance college. I saw my friends doing that and I wanted to learn production and how to edit and produce music because at the time, people were doing that stuff at home already and I thought, maybe I should be learning some of this. So, I tried to go to Youngstown State because they had a classical music school and I just hated it so much (laughs). I was trying to go for songwriting and composition and it was just too smart for me (laughs) and so I quit that. I went down to Florida where they had a new school called Mike Curb College of Music in Daytona and these Grammy Award winning producers had built this new school and invited me to come down on a full ride and I was like, Hell yeah! So I did that for two years and came back and realized that there was really not a scene for music and rock clubs in Youngstown anymore. I'd heard about this scene that was so vibrant with these rock clubs in the '90s and it was just full of tribute bands and cover bands when I returned in 2012 and it was sad to see. So, I was like, I'm getting out of here, I'm going to New York or L.A. or wherever and that's when I ran into these guys and noticed that the guys coming out of that classical music school at Youngstown State that I didn't get hip to were coming out of there completely seasoned, professional and improvisational masters and I was just wowed. So, I brought them my own music and they were like, absolutely ready to get the original thing going and that is how the band started and developed."
In the world of real estate, it's said to be, "Location, location, location" and when you're a DIY touring band such is also the case. One might think an area like Youngstown, OH wouldn't fall into that category but Popovec says, "Not so,"
"Youngstown used to be an old steel city, it was the perfect place between New York and Chicago for people to come in and out of and it almost serves the same purpose for us as a touring band because we can hit so many cities from within our radius. We're six-and-a-half hours from New York City, we're seven hours from Chicago, we are eight hours to Nashville and we can be in Toronto in five hours."
Fortunate circumstances have led to this current tour but it was an unfortunate occurrence that led to "Bugs" and the video which accompanies it.
"Bugs" is the album from 2021, our second full length album but it is a story about me actually having Yellow Jackets in my ceiling that I didn't realize were right above me in my bedroom and it (The ceiling) was about to cave in," she explained. "The "Bee Man" as I call him came in and grabbed the bugs, I don't know where he put them but he said, "Had you stayed one more night in that room, they would've fallen on top of you and you could've died" and I was like, are you kidding ? So, I wasn't sleeping well after this and decided to write a song about it because it was very creepy yet very cool and that's how "Bugs" started. When we went to make the music video, I knew exactly what I wanted to do; we're gonna make the guys all bugs who are chasing me in my dreams. I called a filmmaker out of Canton, OH and maybe six months later he calls me and says, "Hey, the Tribeca Film Festival would like to screen "Bugs" at the festival and it's one of eight music videos including Lizzo, The Black Keys, some international videos" and then us. So, we went and it was a fantastic time and that was our first real music video we ever made; it was low budget because we are doing it ourselves but some of the stuff that we've been able to do as an independent band is pretty incredible."
As stated earlier, The Vindys aren't newbies yet they're not jaded warriors of the industry just yet and with this Benatar/Giraldo tour having only one stretch of more than several days off between shows; their attitude is perfect as they traverse the country from coast to coast.
"Sometimes I think, we don't have a viral video, the social media thing is a whole other game; we've been doing this for 10 years now and we see artists come and go and we're at the point now where we're like; what happened to that band? What ever happened to the band that got signed? The industry is just so fleeting that we are excited that we can keep doing it; you know?"
To discover more about The Vindys and/or purchase tickets for their Jersey appearances, please visit https://www.thevindys.com/
That's it for this week! Please continue to support live and original music and until next week....ROCK ON!
