Page 12 - Rocknation Issue 28_Neat

PAGE 12 ROCKNATION ISSUE 28

Interview with Chris VanDahl

Hi Chris, your Angels In Vein “Self Titled” CD will be in March 2023, how excited are you to be able to hold a CD in your hands
very soon.
Chris: To be honest, it’s very surreal. We’ve had this record essentially done for years and every time we’ve talked about releasing it
something has come up which caused us to hold off. Early on it was member changes and scheduling conflicts. Later, the pandemic
put a stop to live music and there have been other more personal things too. Regardless, it’s just gotten to be so long that there almost
didn’t seem to be a point anymore. Still, you wake up one day and think what the hell am I doing? The record was great then and it’s
still great now! It’s way past time to pull the trigger and we’re excited to finally be sharing it with the world.

You have two cover songs on this release. How did you pick those?
Chris: You know it’s interesting, Taz and I were talking about choosing a song to cover for the record and although he didn’t know it,
“Don’t You Forget About Me, has always been on my shortlist for remaking someday. There were a couple of things that really helped
to lock it down.The first was that I discovered it was originally offered to Billy Idol to record and he passed on it and that kind of got me
thinking about what sort of direction I would take it in if AIV did it. The other is, that when I brought it up to Taz, he laughed and told
me that he had actually worked up a version of this song at one point and had a rough recording that we could start working with right
away. From the first moment I heard what he’d done I knew it was going to be special. Because straight out of the gate, It just felt right.
The other track, Bang A Gong (Get It On) is just a blazing old school “Feel it in your bones” kind of rock song. I mean who doesn’t love
Marc Bolan and T- Rex? I think we just did this one because we wanted to. It’s pretty much as simple as that. I can tell you that a song
like this is where having some extremely talented good friends comes in really handy. When you listen to the version we did and I mean
really listen closely. You can almost always pick something out that you didn’t hear the time before and a lot of that is due to the fact
that we enlisted the help of Smokin Joe Escriba to handle not only the entire horn section but piano and organ parts as well. Also, we
were fortunate enough to get the amazing Jackie Wiatrowski to lay the back up vocals for the chorus section of the song. Without either
one of them it just wouldn’t be the same. The big difference with this track in particular is that while I feel like we took some liberties
with the arrangements, instruments, etc. we kept the vocal and melody true to the T- Rex version. So all the things that people love and
identify with about the song are still there but there’s also something a little different and new.

Do you have any videos for this release and any details about them?
Chris: Oh yeah, we’ve released a number of videos through the years. Including some alternate versions. There are two different
versions of 1973. Which also happens to be the first song we released. There’s the official video and the demo version. Which is to
say the one Taz and I were originally working on before anybody else was actually in the band. There are also two versions of Trip of a
Lifetime. The radio friendly version and what we call, The big kids version. That’s primarily for the lyrical content.
You have a very well known bass player and drummer in AIV. Please tell us about that.
Chris: Well, in the beginning, there really wasn’t a band. It was just Taz and I writing and recording. We did everything ourselves and
figured maybe someday we would put a band together around it but that was never really a priority. At least not when this started. The
only thing that really mattered then, was that we were writing music that we would want to listen to ourselves. What changed was this.
Stacey, David Blades heard like three of the tracks and asked for a copy of them. Apparently he liked them so much that he played
them for a bass player that he knew. He said the guy flipped out over the songs and then he told me that they wanted to form a band
based on the material that we had written. That bass player was Eric Stacy formerly of Faster Pussycat and while it seemed like a good
idea at the time things with Eric just weren’t meant to be. Of course we didn’t know that then and when I talked it over with Taz and he
was open to it. So…Originally, it was Eric who suggested that Vik Foxx Enuff Z Nuff, Vince Neil, The Veronica’s, might be a good fit
for the drummer slot and Initially Vik seemed interested but then he became busy with personal stuff and recommended Troy Patrick
Farrell. For the record (Pun intended)Troy has also played with Enuff Z’Nuff, Gilby Clarke, White Lion and Tantric. So, on Viks recom-
mendation we reached out to Troy and he agreed to step in. Troy is a killer drummer with a great reputation and his résumé speaks for
itself. So however things might have worked out with Vik, we are lucky to have him. As far as our bass player Adam Kury goes. Adam
and I have a long standing history. both as friends and bandmates going back to the early 90s. We first became friends when he was
playing with Legs, Diamond and Taz and I were with Cherry Street. Years later Adam and I would play together in Pack Of Wolves
with Kenny Olson, who was the lead guitarist for Kid Rock. We knew asking Adam to join AIV was the right call but also a little tricky
because not only is he the bass player for Candlebox
but he’s got quite a reputation as a live sound guy and a
studio engineer and that meant that he didn’t have a lot
of free time. So right out of the gate, we knew that very
much like Troy he was in demand so there was definitely
going to be compromise with regard to commitment and
scheduling. Either way it was a no-brainer. We asked him
to step in and he agreed.Not long after Adam came in
David Stacey Blades made the decision to depart. You
have to understand that this is a guy who has always
made his living on the road and at the time had just
recently parted ways with L.A. Guns and we just weren’t
getting to that place fast enough. Especially with member
changes and scheduling conflicts. As far as Stacey goes
now. He seems to be doing extremely well with his band
Crashing Wayward and the rest of us couldn’t be happier
for him.

Photo by John Charles