Nothing says rock n’ roll like loading up the van and hitting the road towards the great unknown.
Date after date, place after place, load in and load out- the routine is a grind, but you don’t do it if you’re not compelled, as if you don’t have a choice. And it sure helps when you have clamoring fans eager to hear you rip.
Such is the case with notable 21st Century blues rockers The Record Company, who’s gearing up for their fall tour tomorrow, September 11th, 2024, kicking things off at The Majestic Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin. And what better place to start than lead singer Chris Vos’s home state. The rock n’ roller grew up on a dairy farm in rural Wisconsin where he couldn’t even ride his bike to a friend’s house, nor did internet reach his family’s desolate but sprawling acreage. This left room for the imagination to run wild — and run it did — as he picked up a guitar and essentially never put it down.
Widely known for their chart-climbing hit “Off the Ground” and others like “Rita Mae Young,” the band is out on the road celebrating and showcasing their latest album, The 4th Album, which greeted the world last September.
We got to chat with Vos back in June about tour life, the new record, and much more.
How do you go about altering set lists as you go from city to city, or do you mostly stick to the same one give or take? What’s that process like?
We rotate set lists, but there are a couple of songs that generally appear every night. There are songs of ours that have hit the radio, and people who have seen us a number of times, people who haven’t seen us before, and so we take these things into consideration. We want to make sure we touch all of our bases, and rotate the experience every night. Not just for the crowd, but for ourselves too. You want to keep things fresh. You want to create an experience where people are like ‘I want to see that again.’ I think taking a different journey every night is a lot of fun.
Do you have any pre-show rituals as a band or is it just business as usual at this point?
You know, I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t have to go through any mental gymnastics or physical stuff that’s too out of the box really. Just things like some vocal warmups, staying hydrated, getting enough sleep, not being out partying hard before a big show, eating good- nothing that’s going to make people go ‘wow!’ It is that simple really.
But when I hit the stage, I have a very simple mantra that I always try to remember: it’s one less time, not one more time. So I always try to play it knowing that I’m subtracting from a number I don’t yet know of how many times I get to do something that I love. No matter how you look at it, there’s no debating the fact that you’re about to subtract one more experience. You’re adding an experience, but you’re also subtracting an experience from what’s yet to come in your life. So I think it’s really important to play in that state of mind. That makes me reach a little farther, go a little harder, and care a little more.
I also have a thing where the moment I step on stage, I know I’m in a sacred place. There’s no taxes, no bills, no emails, no phone calls, no ‘what am I doing tomorrow’- it’s just music, and that’s a really beautiful sacred escape. Your job is to express yourself, and you get to witness and participate with a group of people who’ve chosen to be there with you, and create some emotion. And that’s essential, beautiful stuff.
What are one or two pinnacle tour moments for you and the band?
I remember we got the John Mayer tour one year in New York, and we were going to play Madison Square Garden with him. And I remember walking with my guitar through the back door of MSG, and two years earlier or whatever I was thrilled to sell a hundred tickets let alone do anything remotely like this. Now we’re playing The Garden with this guy. That was crazy.
We also opened for Bob Seger on his farewell tour in 2019. We played a bunch of big places, but we were in Los Angeles and played at The LA Forum. I grew up on that music- that was my dad all the way. He loved that music. So Bob came out and was sitting in the seats while we were doing our sound check, and we’d been playing a song or two, but my wife suggested we play our whole set. It was only Bob and probably his tour manager and production manager out there. We get done with our sound check, and I said to Bob ‘do you want to hear the whole set?’ So we played our whole set for Bob Seger, in The Forum, empty. Basically just Bob.
We got about a minute into the first song, and he’s shaking his water bottle over his head having a good old time, and walked down the aisle closer and just sat right in front of me. We played better in front of Bob than I thought I did that night in front of the crowd. It was so spiritually fulfilling. And right when we got done, he said ‘hey that was hot shit.’ [Laughs] That blew my mind.
Absolutely incredible. I wanted to talk about your latest album, The 4th Album. How might this one compare or contrast to your previous albums over the years?
As musicians, you’re always pushing to evolve. We started off making albums on our own. Our first record was made in a living room and mixed by us, produced by our bass player, and that kind of thing. The next album, we got more production involved, and by the third album, we worked with an actual producer for the first time. So for this album, we said let’s take all that we’ve learned and bring it back home. So we did this record again in a living room and just took it back to our roots.
Any notable themes or messages behind this collection of songs?
The songs are mostly about not letting your head drop when the chips are down. It’s definitely a thing we tend to write about quite a bit. You learn a lot of lessons when you build your own thing from the ground up, too. That is reflected in the music, and it’s always been a theme that’s run through our catalogue. It’s also about getting away from things you need to get away from — heading towards hope and looking towards the light. I think they’re all normal human every day things that we go through, but when you put them to music, it turns into something more magical.
“when I hit the stage, I have a very simple mantra that I always try to remember: it’s one less time, not one more time. So I always try to play it knowing that I’m subtracting from a number I don’t yet know of how many times I get to do something that I love.”
Is there a song on the album that was the most difficult to write/record for one reason or another?
I don’t know that I would say difficult, but we had one that ended much differently than it started, and that was “Highway Lady.” It just ended up being something where we did a lot of things that we’ve never done. Like I doubled my vocal, which is not something I traditionally do with my voice. The mixing of the two takes over each other makes an interesting like other-worldly sound. If you listen to some John Lennon tracks, like his solo stuff, sometimes you’re like ‘oh what effect is he using?’, but a lot of times it’s just a simple ‘verb or slap delay and two vocal takes over top of each other. We typically don’t do that, but on this one, we decided to go for it. This one just kind of took on a life of its own.
What has been your favorite/the most rewarding part of making this album?
I think the most rewarding part was getting back to business after years of challenging times for everybody. Having some sense of what you’ve known in your life back again. It was also rewarding knowing that we could still write and make a record on our own and still have it hit the radio, and still have people want to hear it, get new fans, etc. The goal is always to have it reach new ears, and I believe we did that.
Do you have any tour horror stories?
[Laughs] Well it depends on what you want to be afraid of. There are so many things that can go wrong, from electrical gremlins chasing you onto important stages, your equipment sabotaging what would otherwise be a wonderful experience because your guitars won’t stay in tune or your amp blows up, you know things like that. But you need to learn to deal with that in a calm and cool way. You can’t ever be a afraid of what’s going to happen or you’ll lose your touch with the deeper place you’re supposed to be in.
This wasn’t a tour story, but back in the day my college band was supposed to play opening day at Milwaukee County Stadium, but it rained and rained and rained. Literally the whole place had water on the ground, and the stage was only a few feet above it, and for whatever reason, the guy who was running it demanded that we play. I was too young and inexperienced to know any better, I was like ‘well, it’s a gig I gotta play it.’ There was nobody there, we’re playing in water, all of our pedals were shorting out, and it was just ridiculous. I’ve had a couple of those types happen.
You guys seemed to catch fire pretty quick with your 2016 album, Give It Back To You. What was your experience like during that time to see that kind of rapid success?
When the first single “Off The Ground” suddenly was getting on the radio and getting on play charts and climbed up to #1, that was obviously wild. We’re looking at a radio chart and we see our little song and little band name off of a record we did in our living room up there with Pearl Jam or the Foo Fighters or whoever was on there- I remember that being surreal. And the funny part was we were all guys in our mid 30s at that point, and people were like ‘oh you’re an overnight sensation’ and we were like ‘dude we’ve been doing this for forever.’
Around that time I also remember opening for some band on the East Coast, and we had one day off, so we booked a show in Washington D.C. at this little club called The Rock N’ Roll Hotel. When you’re that far from home [LA], you don’t think people are going to show up, so we got there assuming basically no one was coming. So the promoter met us at the door complimenting us and was super excited for us to be there, and we were like ‘uh what’s going on?’ We didn’t even know to check the ticket count, and I said ‘are there people coming?’ And he told us ‘it’s sold out.’ I was just like holy shit, I couldn’t believe it. [Laughs] At that point we knew we finally had something.
I’m also a big believer that there are a couple of people who will rocket to the top in certain ways, and people are always trying to figure out why that happens. You never can tell, and I think that’s great for whoever, but you can’t and shouldn’t plan on that. I think the better way is to lay the foundation and build on it one piece at a time, one gig at a time, and your reputation gets built on gigs upon gigs and years upon years. That’s an unbreakable thing. When people are like ‘hey I’ve gone and seen these guys three times and every time they throw down and they actually care,’ that’s an extremely valuable core thing that I don’t think you can put a price on.
It’s all a part of why you do what you do. You can’t do things for any one for one reason, but there are little moments that add a little sweetener. Because it’s not all roses and sunshine. There is a lot of beating your head against the wall, self doubt, politics, and business, and you’re up and you’re down. It’s a reality for almost every single musician who’s ever taken their show on the road. There’s a song on this record called “Roll With It,” and that’s exactly what that’s about. You just gotta keep the tires spinning.
