The Vacancies (www.thevacanciesmusic.com) are a punk rock commotion. Singing about
fear and pain and survival, their sound is a mix of Hot Water Music and the Dead Kennedy’s .
The band is made up of 5 guys – between 21 and 34 years old, working jobs for the city and
jobs as painters – who grew up listening to the Clash and they deal out a smarmy show of fun
and sweat and punk fuckin rock.

They just released a record on Joan Jett’s Blackheart Records (www.blackheart.com) and are
hitting the road with the Tossers in September.

I caught up with them, at a dinner table in the basement of the Beachland Ballroom in
Cleveland and talked to them about punk rock, hot sauce and Joan Jett still being hot.

Mike Hammer: How does the hot sauce help you get ready for a show? Is that on your rider? Is there
a pre show hot sauce ritual?

Vacancies: I wish there was. (points to beer) This is the pre show ritual.

MH: How many beers before you’re ready to do a show.

Vacancies: It’s usually about 3, 3 is a good number.

MH: Ok. So you get buzzed and get get up there and play. You got your pretty straight forward
punk rock, rock and roll sound, I used to have a friend who said rock n roll and punk is just the blues sped
up, what do you think about that?

Vacancies: Yeah. That’s safe to say. There’s a combination of blues and 50s rock and…. blues is the
roots, then there’s rock and roll and it branches off to punk and everything else. It’s all related. Punk is just
regular old rock n roll tunes, done a little faster and maybe a little sloppier. I guess cause we’re not as
good as musicians. We sing about the same things, the same attitudes, just sped up.

MH: What are the best songs about?

Vacancies: We don’t really sing any love songs. The best ones nowadays are just about being down
and out and feeling good about not always having good things happen. We have always kinda tried, not
tried, but it’s always worked out where we took something negative and tried to turn something around
and make something positive out of it I guess, more so on the last album ("Beat Missing or a Silence Added")
our last had a lot of positive message to it. It pointed out things that we thought were wrong and singing
about trying to rise above it. But this record is along the same lines. We just sing about stuff that we
think is lame and stuff that pisses us off and , we’re just regular dudes that work jobs and see a bunch
of crap that’s going on that we don’t like, so what else is there to sing about.

MH: You ever sit down and try to write a love song?

Vacancies: Well, a lot of us are married (3 of the 5 members).

MH: What? You can’t write love songs if you’re married?

Vacancies: I feel that if you sit down and try to write a love song it’s gonna come out like crap. Yeah,
you gotta feel it. A good song, that you feel, I think we all think so, comes out like a fart. Just comes
out and you’re like ‘Look guys, this just popped in my head.’ We usually feel too, that if you have to
work on it, it might not be a good song. Although, sometimes it does work out… so we’re constantly
contradicting ourselves. I think a lot of the songs that we get excited about are when somebody brings
something to the table and we all jump on it. You kinda know. Everybody just kinda looks at each other
and we smile.

MH:How often to you guys practice. You’re all in the same area and you all work other jobs,
what is it, 2 or 3 times a week you get together in somebody’s basement?

Vacancies: Twice a week for 8 years. We still screw up though. Unfortunately we don’t have a
basement to practice in so we rent a space, but we share it with some other bands so it’s not too
expensive. But yeah, you gotta practice. It’s kinda like a little tree fort that we get together and hide
out in a way for a couple hours. We put the no girls allowed sign up.

MH: I thought punk rock bands wanted the girls to come out? What do punk rock bands want?

Vacancies: Beer. When three of the 5 members are married then… woah, let’s go back to your first
question. This guy (Dave) wants to put Hot Sauce on titties.

MH: Alrigbt, The new album "Tantrum" just came out a month ago, how’s that doing do far.

Vacancies: We have no idea. We are the most naïve business people you’ll ever meet.

MH: Can’t you get weekly updates from the label or something?

Vacancies: No, no. It got good reviews. So far we’ve gotten good feedback but I couldn’t tell you if it’s
sold 50 or 5,000. We’re just happy that somebody wanted to give us money to put a record out. Honestly,
I don’t care if it sells or not. We would be putting it out ourselves if somebody didn’t help us out. So it’s
just a great way to get our records out and not have to dig into our own pockets.

MH: Is it the ultimate validation that you guys can play music well enough, with 3 beers in you,
that Joan Jett wanted to sign you and pay you to record your stuff.

Vacancies:That’s really what it’s all about. This is a fun thing. That we would no matter what. I always
say some people build model airplanes, we play in a rock band. It’s just what we do cause it’s what
we wanna do. It’s a big kick and it’s a good chance to get out of the house, drink some beers and tour
around the country. If we could make a few dollars in the process for gas money to get to the next spot,
that’d be nice.It got a little more fun when Joan Jet said ‘Hey we wanna put out your record.’ We got to
do a lot more things, but overall that’s really what it’s about. As long as we can get some free beer out
of it and play some shows. Really it’s about playing live and then making records. Above and beyond
that it’s just extra bonus. As long as we can play shows and we can make a record, especially when
we have somebody who is gonna put it out for us, we feel pretty lucky I guess, just to have that.

MH: How did it come about that you got signed to Blackheart?

Vacancies: We played a couple shows with Joan and the Blackhearts and the second time we played
with her she said ‘Would you guys be interested in doing your next record with Blackheart?’ and it was
a no-brainer. Just like, yeah, of course. I grew up a fan of Joan Jett and it was awesome to meet her
and play with her and to have someone like that offer to work with us, was an honor.

MH: Were you guys kissing ass a lot at that second show. Playing some Joan Jett covers to get on her good side and stuff?

Vacancies: No. Somebody we know, a friend of ours, sent our first record to her, she was playing a show
in Sandusky, to try to get us to open the show. And she usually doesn’t have opening bands and they
called us up and said ‘Joan likes the record come on out and do the show’ and at that show they asked
us to do another show and she asked us to put a record out. And we were like ‘fuck yeah dude.’ Anytime
you can hang out with Joan Jett in New York, that’s something I can tell my kids about.

MH: So you recorded the album in New York?

Vacancies:The last one ("Beat Missing or a Silence Added") but this one we recorded at home, the new record, "Tantrum".

MH: Is Joan Jett still hot?

Vacancies: Totally cute.

MH: You guys have been around 8 years or so, but she’s been around a lot longer, did she give
you guys any advice as a young band? How to go about yourselves?

Vacancies: Not so much on a business side. But, she did from day 1, it was always about
‘don’t drink too much’ and ‘you should probably quit smoking if you want your voice to improve’. I don’t
know if that woulda been her advice 20 years ago, but she takes the business very seriously. Being the
best you can be live, and she is, she’s awesome live, incredible. She was really courteous to the point
of like, when you’re there and you’re nervous and you don’t know how to react, she was like ‘these are
important songs, you’re saying stuff that people aren’t saying to often anymore’ and she was encouraging
and I think that’s what she added to our band.Not, just go through the motions, but be passionate about it,
‘cause she’s passionate about it and I think that’s what she added to us. And she, she coulda stopped
years ago if she wanted to, but she put out another record last year, she’s still doing it.

MH: OK. So Joan was in the studio and produced your album.

Vacancies: Yeah, the last one, "Beat Missing or a Silence Added".

MH: Who recorded the new one "Tantrum"?

Vacancies: We did. Joan kinda gave us the go ahead to do it ourselves.

MH: How was that different?

Vacancies: When we did the New York one we recorded in like 6 days. We did 16 songs and it was
nerves and energy and it was, ‘lets try this, now this, let’s do this again’ and we were hectic and I
think it came across, as a really aggressive record. This one we did at home so we could spend more
time on it. We worked our jobs during the day and went to the studio at night. We took more time with it,
so it wasn’t just boomboomboomboomboom, we recorded it a little differently. I don’t know if it was just
| better, it was just different.

MH: So, the songs, do you feel like your delivering and saying something new and something relevant
on the new album?

Vacancies: I don’t know if it’s anything new, new ideas, it’s more like, I think it’s relevant. I think we’re
saying something that’s important. We have songs about poverty – which is kinda a big deal right now
especially in Cleveland – we have some anti-racism songs, just anti-hate songs – cause it seems like
everybody hates each other still and we’re supposed to be growing and being better as a population,
and at times it doesn’t seem like we are – and I think we’ve got better as song writers. I think a bunch
of bands come out and you always remember that first record as the great one and I like to think that
we’ve gotten progressively better and that [I]Tantrum[/I] is our best one, and it makes me kinda excited
to see what’s gonna happen next. Basically we used to suck pretty bad and now we’re OK.

MH: Punk rock overall. Is it getting better? There’s a lot of ‘pop punk’ now but it doesn’t seem like there as many straight punk bands, what do you guys, as a punk band, think of the punk scene and where it fits in with the whole musical landscape.

Vacancies: As far as the scene goes, I’m a little scared right now. We just got back from playing the
Warped Tour and it broke my heart to see the direction that that Warped Tours going. We were standing
out there with stickers and looking for t-shirts of people walking through the gates, trying to get anyone
who is real punk rock fans over to come see us play and we would look for Clash shirts and stuff and out of thousands of kids, it was hard to find a punk rocker. And it was the Warped Tour. It just blew my mind.
The types of music that we’re fans of, that style, is not a real popular thing right now. It was in the early
90s or whatever, but its not now and it makes it hard for a band like us to play what we like playing.
It would be easy for us to jump on any sort of bandwagon and probably get signed with a major and get
on the radio very easily and make money and actually get a tour bus, but that’s not why anybody should
be in a band. I think we are just getting older too. And when your parents used to say ‘what is that crap
you’re listening to’ we’re doing that now. Like ‘what is this crap these kids like’. You can’t really knock it
because kids are lovin it. There are a lot of talented bands out there, but it’s just not necessarily what
we’re into. We are older now and the stuff that we grew up with is what we like.

There are bands that are new and are great too, we’re friends with The Vandals, that bands still doing it.
Against Me, I think is a great band, there are still bands that are popping up that are great but there just
aren’t as many. There’s not as much an audience for that. But, trends happen and people will get tired
of stuff and.. we wanna be that band that kids graduate to. Like, the listened to Backstreet Boys
when they were 12 then in high school they listened to ‘ what’s this Clash band that everybody keeps talking about’ – I’m not comparing us to the Clash, but we wanna be that band that kids take seriously after
the trends are over. Right now it’s really scary times right now locally and everywhere, we tend to have
the pop music push because it’s lighthearted and you can listen to it and not think about anything,
but during all this there’s an underbelly that’s growing and there are gonna be bands that’ll come
around full circle, bands that give you something to think about. We might not be part of it, but
they’ll be there.

MH: Are you guys going on tour now to get out the new record and spread the punk rock?

Vacancies: In September. East coast and Mid West tour with a band called the Tossers, they’re
kinda like Flogging Molly. They’re Chicago dudes.

MH: And that’s for a couple weeks.

Vacancies: Yeah. Then after that we don’t know what’s going on we just kinda going one day at a time.
Hopefully we’ll put out another record

MH: You guys just gonna walk around in Cleveland and see if you see some more sad things to write
songs about.

Vacancies: You gotta live life to write a song. You can’t write about TV shows

 

interview by: Mike Hammer