Comments (0) |

Lexington to again feel The Deep Vibration

By Walter Tunis Contributing Music Writer

It was one of those Saturday nights when major-name music was everywhere in the region.

In Harrodsburg, James McMurtry was singing about dashed dreams and aging kids in the parking lot. In Millville, just outside of Frankfort, Kentuckian Chris Knight was rocking out with tales of small-town mean streets. And at the Christ the King Oktoberfest, Justin Townes Earle — son of Steve — performed as though he were a carnival-barker reincarnation of Hank Williams.

Somehow, there still was room for the ripple effect of The Deep Vibration. Packed into the ultra-cozy confines of Al's Bar on North Limestone, the new and unknown Nashville band was awarded one of the busiest concert nights of the year to introduce itself.

The Deep Vibration made an appropriately deep impression, with songs full of gray-sky, Americana inspirations. You heard the crunch of Zuma-era Neil Young, the black literary streaks of Nebraska-era Bruce Springsteen, and even a melancholy hint of Being There-era Wilco.

Those were mere suggestions of the music at hand. The modus operandi was no-frills rock 'n' roll, but with a roots quality that one would expect from a non-country act out of Nashvillle. And given that The Deep Vibration's debut five-song EP, Veracruz, was a month away from release at the time, the audience at Al's seemed more than a little taken with what it heard.

On Thursday, The Deep Vibration returns to town with a little less competition for a headlining performance at The Lower 48, the newish bar and live-music venue in Victorian Square.

"All we want to do, all I want to do, is just play real, honest music," said Deep Vibration vocalist, co-guitarist and principal songwriter Matt Campbell. "It's a good feeling, I guess, that influences like Neil Young are all out in the open. I love Neil. All I listen to is that kind of music, so it's inevitable that some of it is going to come out."

The Young connection runs pretty deep. Last December, the then-unnamed Vibration gathered for informal recording sessions, and its members were introduced, through an engineer pal, to Niko Bolas. A versed producer and engineer, Bolas has worked on recordings by Warren Zevon, Melissa Etheridge, My Morning Jacket, The Waterboys, Kiss, Don Henley, Spinal Tap and more than two decades' worth of albums by, you guessed it, Neil Young.

"When we started talking about doing an EP, the label (Dualtone) was asking us who we should get to help produce it," Campbell said. "Well, we're big Neil Young fans, so we were like, 'Let's get Niko. Later, when we hooked up with him at Dualtone, he seemed to dig our tunes. That's how we got to know him."

The Bolas connection is one of several chance encounters that, while hardly overshadowing the vitality of The Deep Vibration's music or the immediacy of its live shows, have helped draw attention to a band that isn't even a year old. For that matter, such connections extend to The Deep Vibration's very makeup.

Drummer Luke Herbert, for instance, has studied with esteemed beat keepers Bernard Purdie, whose recording credits include Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin and dozens of other giants; and with Joe Morello, the drummer during the ground-breaking mid-'50s to late-'60s jazz reign of The Dave Brubeck Quartet. And, no, Herbert is not from Nashville. He hails from Australia.

"We managed to get him in the band for those sessions last December," Campbell said. "He was just traveling around the world and stopped in Nashville to hook up with a buddy. We just kind of stole Luke away from his friend and started playing with him."

The Veracruz EP also boasts harmony vocals by famed Americana songstress Gillian Welsh on one of The Deep Vibration's more reflective and plaintive songs, Tennessee Rose. But the biggest brush with greatness wound up providing the band with its name. For that, Campbell went to the backstage door of Nashville's Ryman Auditorium after a performance by one of his heroes.

"We were going through a bunch of band names trying to find something that wasn't already taken," Campbell said. "The ideas we came up with we just didn't like. So we were going to see Lou Reed at the Ryman and thought, 'OK, we're going to meet Lou, ask him for a name and whatever comes out his mouth, providing it's not already taken, we're sticking with it."

Lou Reed? The iconic New York rocker who famously walked out on a live interview with NPR's Terry Gross? He's going to provide a name off the top of his head to an unknown band he has never heard or met?

"I didn't know if he was approachable or not," Campbell said. "But we approached him when he came out of the Ryman. I asked, 'Lou, I need a band name.' He was signing autographs and being nice to everybody, but I wasn't sure he even heard me. Then a minute or two later, he looked up from what he's signing and says, 'Deep Vibration.'

"And that was that."