WZLY Interviews: Red Vox

Red Vox recently released their latest album, Afterthoughts, which is now available to stream or purchase

by Aislinn Bohot ‘24

WZLY recently sat down with Vinny of the New York City-based indie rock band Red Vox to discuss their newest album. Afterthoughts is the latter half of a double album project which began with the release of Visions in early 2022. 

WZLY: So to get things started, why don't you just give a little introduction of yourself and your band? 

Vinny: Well, I'm Vinny, and the band is Red Vox, and we are a four piece band at the moment from New York City, and we make music that grandpas and dads would like. But also, I guess, people who just enjoy plain old rock music. Sometimes we try different things, and sometimes we just stick to guitars. 

I actually have this funny story. My dad and I, at one point, I think we were just, like, sitting out on the patio at my house, and I was like, “Dad, you should check out this band.” And I told him about your band. Apparently they've played you on one of the independent radio stations in Texas. He heard you guys there and he was like, yeah, good stuff. So literally, music for dads. 

Yeah, and our music has been on some radio stations as well. In the past couple years, we've had a company basically take our CDs, and their whole specialty is sending them to college radio, local radio, internet radio, and, you know, try to get the songs on the radio, and sometimes it's been decently sized FM stations. Most times not. And weirdly enough, they still need CD's, you can't just send them a song digitally. Most of them want a physical thing with a letter of like, here are the songs you should play, so that's been a little odd, having to make CD's for every album. Some people want them, but not as many people. Most people want vinyl, but there's still a contingent of people that like CD's and use them for their car.

We get sent a lot of CD's at ZLY, but we pretty much train all of our DJ's now to do everything digitally.

Yeah, yeah. And it probably will be like this for a little while for a lot of stations. I think it's gonna be so much easier to have a digital library, and you can run an FM radio station with a computer and a janitor's closet. I mean, there's a part of me that laments the loss of the radio station, because having grown up in the 90s, there was something romanticized about radio stations and doing the interview on a radio station or being in the studio and talking about your newest release, and the idea that these DJ's could actually make or break a band and get them known. I feel like that's still true to a degree, but maybe not as much as it used to be. 

Tell me a little bit more about getting into making music. Obviously, you are a huge fan of music. I mean, who isn't? But getting into being a recording artist is like a whole different playing field. How did that happen? 

When I first started recording music and making it, that was, I guess, in 2004 or 2005. Even then, things were changing. I will say, the streaming stuff and YouTube has made it easier to get your music out there and heard. Back when I first started recording, my old band [Davy’s Grey] put out a little seven song album in, like, 2009. And even then, it was still really hard to use the internet to get the word out. So only really friends heard it, and you'd have to send a CD. And like, you know, send lots of letters and phone calls to labels. And even then, it was kind of on the cusp of changing and kind of dying.

Essentially, I never had any hopes [of] music becoming a source of money or a source of anyone else's interest. It was a time when we were just making the music because it's fun, and so I stopped playing music for a while. [...] It didn't feel like I was making any progress, and truthfully, I was just not able to pay bills. So for like 5 years, I didn't really do anything with music. The reason I started up again is because of my—how do I put this—my side gig, which is I make memes on the internet. I got some luck with YouTube and some viral videos for my gaming related stuff. Then in 2015, I said “maybe I should start up a band again,” and I got together a couple of friends and we started recording. Now, by then, having a built-in audience is already a leg up, but starting from that was great because maybe ten people were willing to check it out, and then 30 and then 100. Knowing that people are in your corner and that they're out there is huge for your morale as a musician, as opposed to what it was like just making music and no one was hearing it and just hoping maybe someone at some company might notice you.

So yeah, you know, that's also because of my luck on the internet, but also because things have changed in the way people discover music. Services like Bandcamp or Spotify. You know, their algorithm, pushing various types of music to people that like similar music. Say what you want about Spotify and their bad cuts in regards to money, but a lot of people have discovered our music through that algorithm, and we're grateful for that. 

If you're an artist that's starting from scratch, it can be hard to sustain a career, but that's why it's good to kind of have a side thing or a primary career and then try music secondarily. It's still really hard to make money from music, just in a different way than it was in the 90s and prior. At that time you were at the mercy of some executive or maybe a DJ. But now, even for a band like us, we're doing well on Spotify and we're doing well on various other services, [but] don't make a ton of money even at this level, which is a decent level for a band with no record label. So if you're like, “oh, I'm going to be a musician, and I'm gonna, you know, upload my stuff and make revenue,” that's going to be real tough. It makes me wonder how some of these artists kind of come out of nowhere and just end up with millions of followers overnight. It doesn't happen a lot, but once in a while you learn about it. There's a lot of people that now accuse very famous artists of being plants from the industry. I would argue that's true. That's been happening since the beginning of the record industry. 

Talk a little bit about the new album. Did you have any influences, or did you come into the studio or into the writing process with any particular concepts in mind?

Well, in the past we've done stuff that has varied from psychedelic to alternative. Our influences are pretty clear. All of us in the band like Pink Floyd, we like Tame Impala, Radiohead, the 90's rock that we grew up with as well. It's nice to make music that you can just play, and just play live. [...] But I also like to make stuff at home and record it into my DAW. 

Sometimes we work more on music that comes from jams, and sometimes, it's more constructed. I think this album was more constructed. My influences were still kind of the same ones, but I had been listening to a lot of Pavement, a lot of Tears For Fears, weirdly enough, so that's probably in there too. I think whatever this album sounds like is still the result of the stuff that I respond to deep down that still resonates with me, like the bands I mentioned earlier. So yeah, I didn't necessarily go into the studio with a specific plan. It's just, let's work on this group of songs until a pattern emerges. And then we try to find other songs that work with them to make a 10 song album, and that's how this album happened. 

How do you feel that your music has changed, or that your process has changed, from your first album to your latest release?

Well, the process definitely has evolved a little bit in regards to the types of songs I want to write, and the stuff that I filter out. [...] While I think our music still sounds like us and is not the most complicated music in the world, some of the newer stuff is just stuff I stumble upon, or we stumble upon as a group, that is maybe a little different than what we've done. We try to add a little depth to it, if possible. And then I'm excited to work on it and write lyrics to it.

The only thing that's changed to me is, instead of trying to write these big riff songs, I kind of tend to say, alright, well, what can we do that we haven't done already, and that led us to a lot of these new ones.

Well, that and also the recording process. Joe [bassist, producer/engineer, and occasional lead guitar] is very forward thinking with his mixing and his engineering, and he'll always push us as a band to go a little further, and to evolve a little bit each album. Whether that be different sounds, or different approaches to arrangements, or just trying to dig into the music a little bit and find something that might be in there that we didn't realize. A lot of times we'll just add stuff to a song like a keyboard part, another guitar part, a couple of weird instruments. And we'll just add as much as possible and then remove. That way we're left with the stuff that we feel is more interesting and fits the song the best. 

What kind of weird instruments? Now I'm curious, because I'm a big weird instruments person. 

A lot of times it's just synthesizer sounds, whether it be something on the computer or on the Roland that I have. In one case, we used the stylophone, and we tried to add a part to a song using that. It's a strange little instrument that Bowie used on a lot of his songs, weirdly enough. And it just didn't work, but we tried it. Same for strange percussion. On Kerosene, we used floor stomps where we just recorded the sound of, like, stomping on the ground, or using drumsticks on various surfaces in the studio just to see what kind of sound they would make. And then we distort it or add effects to it to try to get a unique percussion sound. Sometimes it works, sometimes it sounds pretty bad, but it's always worth a shot. 

Yeah, it is! It’s so fun to experiment with that kind of stuff, and it's so great that the software is so readily available now at a personal level, where people could do that degree of experimentation. It's awesome. 

Yeah, you used to have to, like, be at Abbey Road. Everything that you could do at home now would take like five times longer just because you had to rewind the tape. You had to splice tape together. You had to actually go into a reverb room, depending on how far back we're going. Now, the unbridled creativity that you can have with sound is pretty great, which is why I love recording at home. Then I bring it to the studio and hope that we can make it sound even better. And I can do things at home that we don't do at the studio with my equipment or my stuff on the computer. And then there's stuff at the studio I can't do at home. So it's a really nice system and we make the best of both worlds, I think. 

So, obviously you have a presence on Twitch. You chose to premiere the album on Twitch. Is there any reasoning behind that, or is it just because that's where you are? 

We've done Twitch premieres for years now, for most of our albums. A lot of our audience is very connected, and they like to hear the music first alongside a group of people that feel the same way. It may not be like a concert, and it may not be an in person thing, but the energy is still there. And when you see people, even in a chat room, like, really happy to hear a new song or to like, recognize a song that was released as a single and they sing along to it—I mean metaphorically, you know, typing the lyrics in the chat—it is a fun experience and they like it. And we as a band get a kick out of it too, because in some ways it's almost like you're performing the thing live. You're not, and you're just showing like a year and a half of your hard work to a group of people that really want to hear it. And so we find it's a really fun thing to do, even if it's not 100% necessary.

But also me being connected to the Twitch thing in general for my gaming stuff, that led me to just think, well, if the reaction to my gaming stuff is so strong on Twitch, maybe the music can be similar. And I will say, for the premiere of Afterthoughts we had probably around 4300 people live, just listening to our new album and watching our videos and the reaction. That was our best numbers yet. The reaction was all very positive, and it made the band feel great. So it's just a really positive thing to do, overall. I wouldn't necessarily say it's the most effective method of, you know, getting your music out there, unless you have a built in audience already. But it is a lot of fun. 

It's a fun form of pseudo-concert, I guess. 

It is, yeah. And people even do VR premieres these days, where they will DJ in VR chat and have that stream simultaneously to Twitch with people in VR dancing to their music. It's a whole new world. 

I was at a DJ set that was simulcast to various instances in VR, and I was just brought along by friends. It's not my type of music, but here I am, in this thing. You start outside, you hear the music, kind of like from the outside. And then the bouncer opens the doors, and you can go into the club. You follow the path downstairs and get to this, like, dingy concert space. And there is this DJ. An amazing light show, by the way, because it's VR, so you can do all this crazy stuff, and like 30-40 people just dancing and enjoying the music as it was happening live. It actually did feel as close as you could get to going out to a club, and it was all done in VR. For people that don't have VR, they could just watch the DJ set on Twitch. It was really cool. Again, not necessarily my style of music, but I couldn't deny it was a unique, once in a lifetime thing to check out, and I would recommend it if anyone has the means.

And it's fascinating. I mean, sound design in game settings where it's sensitive to your location, that's a huge thing with VR, right? Because it's VR, so you're supposed to be there, but you're not. 

You feel it directionally, because especially in VR the audio is positional. So you can really kind of hear the depth of the music. It's really interesting and really high quality. Actually, in some cases, they've built it so that you can hear the music reverberating off the walls in a way that changes the way the music sounds. Yeah, it's cool. 

The attention to detail there is fascinating. I don't know if you ever do this, but I love just sitting in a game, having it open and just listening for a little while. There's something soothing to it. 

I used to do that a whole lot, yeah. Before the Internet and the beginning of the Internet, when it was harder to find music, I would just like, hang out on the overworld of Final Fantasy 7, or just take the airship to various locations and enjoy the music and just chill there. 

My first love in music was Nirvana and the music of the early 90s, and then my second love in music is Final Fantasy music and Chrono Trigger music, so video game soundtracks. Like alternative rock music, those are my two big musical inspirations that I still come back to time and time again. 

Do you think Twitch has potential as a platform for music promotion?

I think Twitch has potential, but it hasn't really been established yet. Like, they've tried Twitch music stuff. A while back now, they promoted a bunch of music acts, and they were trying to get some bigger artists on Twitch. I do think there's potential, but until the copyright system in this country, and frankly around the world, is really looked at, I think Twitch is always going to suffer, because most music instantly gets claimed. And you're almost discouraged from playing music, I think. As a platform to do concerts, to live stream events and shows, I think Twitch has a ton of potential, and I think it could be utilized definitely in the artist's favor. However, I also think that one of the best ways for people to discover older music, or even some newer stuff, are Twitch streamers and Youtubers playing the music in their videos and livestreams. But unfortunately, it's very discouraged because of the copyright system and the DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998] stuff. It makes it so that streamers and Youtubers are encouraged to play only copyright-free stuff. So I do think there's potential, but until we take a closer look at some of these laws that were written for a different lifetime ago, I feel like that influence and promotion potential is going to be very stifled. 

Just to wrap things up a little bit. What do you think the future is like for Red Vox and your upcoming projects? Is there anything you really want to do as a band that you hope you get the chance to in the future? 

I feel like it would be nice if there was a better way to get our music to people who like music like us. There are people that lament the loss of rock music in the mainstream, and it becomes hard to find bands like us and King Gizzard [and the Lizard Wizard] and Pond, and tons of other bands that are just kind of, again, if you get lucky on Spotify, maybe you'll hear them. So I think my aspiration would be for people who like the type of rock we do to find us. I don't even know how to go about that, but that would definitely be something I would enjoy and be happy about, especially considering we have a back catalog of albums now. You know, I think you can see the progression, as you mentioned, from the first album to now, and we're proud of our albums, so that would be #1 for us. It would be nice to do shows, and while we're not a touring band and that's not something that I think most of us would want to do, we would like to play some of our songs live, and that's something we're actively working on. We're not sure it's going to happen, but as a band who mostly has been in the studio and has only done a couple of shows live, that would be something challenging and worthwhile. And we hope we get a chance to do that, even if it's just local New York City shows. 

Even if you were just to do [...] just a one off, like, one show, that's fantastic. It's about the experience, right? 

We would like to do that, but we'd probably need to do a bunch of shows where we suck, and then do that one show, or end up doing a run of like 5 shows and work up to a big show. But you know, it is a lot of work and it's a lot of pressure on me, because I have to remember all my lyrics and songs. It'll be worth it if we can pull it off, and I think we can. We have a lot of different songs that would be very difficult to recreate live, but we also have a lot of songs that would be fun to play live that are a little easier to play, and I think those are better for a live setting. You know, unless you're going to an established band, like if you go to see Radiohead, you're willing to give them the space they need to recreate some of their songs. And to like, actually pay attention and listen. But I think if you're just starting as a live band, you need to hit an audience with your best stuff early, the stuff that's going to make the move, the stuff that's going to stick in their head, and the stuff that works towards your strengths as a band. So that's our plan, hopefully we will find our way there. 

Also, for the future, we have a lot of songs. [...] While we work on our practicing, we're also going to be recording a little bit and, you know, seeing what the next Red Vox album would even sound like. There's also a chance that if we do some live stuff that could change the way we approach this. And we might workshop some new songs live as well. So that's the plan. 

When you released Realign, I was working that summer, and I was driving around a lot. I would just listen to the album, and it flows so nicely straight through. This new one does as well. You guys do tremendous work.

That means a lot, and we're definitely always happy to hear that. And you just hope that hearing that never gets old.

I was listening to an interview about the Clash recently, and one of [Clash co-founder] Joe Strummer's regrets was that they got a little too famous, a little too quick. He said that he wished they had a little more time to get there, and I think the result of us not quite getting there, whether or not we deserve it, is that we're always, especially me, really challenging myself to try to be as honest with the music as possible, and push and to work hard on the music. And even if there's no chance this band will end up being a bigger band, the fact that we get compliments like what you just said, that's something that pushes us, and me in particular to keep trying and and keep going, but not in a way that we're just going to write pop songs so that we can get on the radio.

We could try that, we could put our effort into that, but I think depth can be rewarded too, and I think you can do a little bit of both. You can do catchy songs, and you can do stuff that's got a little bit more going on. I think that's a perfectly reasonable way to evolve and grow your audience, which maybe isn't the most obvious thing anymore compared to how it was in the 70s, where people were pushing in that direction constantly.

The point I'm making is like, yeah, it's nice to hear these things from people. And we'll keep going. And we're going to keep being as honest to the songs as possible, and try to just do the songs justice. If we continue doing that, I think we’ll put out albums that our fans will continue to like, and that's really all that matters to us right now.