Vintage Trouble
Why do you like touring in St. Louis?
“St. Louis just has this amazing soul music history, what with Tina Turner and Chuck Berry and all. We like to feed off of that energy. Plus, we have some great Troublemakers (a.k.a. Vintage Trouble fans) that dwell in St. Louis.” - Nalle Colt, guitarist
It’s not the 1960s, and rock and roll has riled a crowd into a sweaty, gyrating mess before this day. But watching Vintage Trouble sway and jitter with its crowd, you wouldn’t know it.
Vintage Trouble began as a way to make the world less square.
Nalle Colt (guitar) says he and the other men of Vintage Trouble—Ty Taylor (vocals), Richard Danielson (drums) and Rick Barrio Dill (bass)—were listening to the over-digitized, over-produced, square soundtrack of today’s generation, and they said, “ENOUGH.”
They were ready to cause a little trouble, old school.
So Vintage Trouble was born out of a mission to bring the soul, the analog, the rawness, the grit, the joy, the life back into rock and roll. They started by abridging the whole process, and what they found was that a little less complication was exactly what the world wanted. “Playing this kind of rock just feels … really, really goooood,” Colt says.
This rock reciprocity took the world by its coattails and flung it into a state of nostalgia—back to a time when women with beehive hairdos screamed from the front row and men wore ties to shows and the equipment mattered less and the talent mattered more.
The band that’s giving the world its funk back brought that funk right into the 21st century with its first award-winning video, Nancy Lee, which was completely filmed on an iPhone 4. Colt says the iPhone usage just made sense, given the fact that they are on their phones pretty much all the time anyway.
It was an underground L.A. buzz that propelled Vintage Trouble to their current acclaim. Since the band was signed after Doc McGhee had only heard one chorus, Colt says it feels like the incline hasn’t stopped. They’ve been on tour nearly constantly, meaning that their dry cleaning bills for those suits are outrageous. “We get tired, of course,” Colt says. “But, when we get up on stage and get really into the moment, every worry just sort of falls away. Everything you thought was hard a minute ago all of a sudden doesn’t matter as much as the music.”
The Bomb Shelter Sessions catapulted Vintage Trouble onto top ten lists on Amazon, iTunes and more, and appearances on major late night talk shows increased their fame in the states. Performances alongside artists such as The Who, Bon Jovi, Lenny Kravitz and The Cranberries also might have helped a little bit.
Many of their influences are pretty classic, including Tom Petty, Otis Redding and The Rolling Stones, but they’re also currently digging the likes of Gary Clark Jr. and The Black Keys.
Even with the band’s respect for the retro, it doesn’t pretend it’s living in anything but the now. Technology has been a huge help to them, and Colt says things like social media, YouTube and personal laptops are some of the reasons their music in particular has been able to spread around the world like it has.
But Colt would like to issue a public service announcement in regards to technology: “People, you need to see live music! It’s so easy now to sit at home and have everything you need for your favorite music right there. But then you’re missing that connection to something larger than yourself. You’re missing the music.”
