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RECENT
RELEASE:
Vailcode
(eponymous), 2005 |
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1. Black On Black 
2. Something
That Will Last
3. Dark Love
4. Silver Cloud
5. I'll Be There
6. Inside One
7. To The Top
8. Dead Dolls
9. No Name
10. Out On Their Own
11. When You Get That Way
12. Waiting There For You
13. Red
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Other
Releases:
Sam Vail appears on Ebeling
Hughes' Transfigured
Night
The Glasspack's Bridgeburner,
and others.
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Photo by Philip Dürr |
MEMBERS/
MUSICIANS:
Sam Vail: vocals,
guitars
Alex
Anest
: guitars, slide guitar
Jon
Spirendi: bass
Teddy
Ribbens: drums
HOMETOWN:
Ypsilanti,
Michigan and parts unknown
FORMATION
DATE:
sometime
last year, or the year before… maybe
it was 2002?
WEBSITE:
www.vailcode.com |
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Vailcode is the brainchild of one Sam
Vail, Esq..
A guitar player since the age of five, Sam formed his first band (whose name he no longer
remembers) in middle school and played All
Along The Watch Tower at the talent show. Though
it may not have been the definitive version
of the song, it was a prophetic choice, and
Sam's life has been a long, strange trip ever since.
Sam Vail is and has been one of the most respected musicians in the Detroit area, having "done his time" in many area bands throughout his college days and beyond... among these, Rooster, which allowed him to play in every conceivable Detroit venue from the venerable St. Andrew's Hall to the enormous Pine Knob to the insipid Paycheck's. A respected band, they toured twelve states, opening for Peter
Frampton and just about every "Jr." musician one could ever hope to name: Junior
Brown, Bobby Bare Jr., Hank Williams Jr., Jr.,
Joan Jett... you get the picture.
The experience and reputation gained with Rooster led Sam to join forces with a pair of acclaimed Detroit area musicians, Bob
Ebeling and Mark Ephraim, to form Baker. Baker was widely seen as makers of pop masterpieces, and Sam's friendship and working relationship with them led to stints in Ebeling
Hughes and Shining Dying. While working on these projects, Sam learned to hone not only his playing, but also his studio and production skills. He began collaborating with all manner of Detroit's music elite, either recording them or simply jumping right in and playing along to add his singular guitar styling, and he can be heard playing bass on the Glasspack's acid-fried stoner-rock frenzy, to his guitarisms on Ethan
Daniel Davidson's more folk-styled records. He was an integral player in Small Stone Records' upcoming Rustbelt Sessions, a musical free-for-all-ad-lib gathering of the Monsters of Stoner Rock. Singularly, though, in partnership with Ross
Westerbur, Sam showed his considerable songwriting skill. Together, as The
Moonlighters, Sam and Ross produced an as of yet untitled album, which- if never released- will constitute the single largest criminal act in Detroit music history. A gorgeous piece of Americana meets Beatle-icana, bootleg CD burns are legendary among Detroit music scenesters, and they, you might remember, discovered the White
Stripes...
As Vailcode, Sam Vail has finally decided to "get off the pot," per se, and go it alone with a few friends. The results are staggering. While stylistically similar to the
Moonlighters, Vailcode is much more ambitious in scope. Sam's production abilities allowed him to take chances with arrangements that other songwriters might not dare to take, so that songs become soundscapes, sounds become songscapes, if you will. Imagine Big
Star as played by Radiohead on the Rolling
Stones' equipment, and you may begin to get a picture. This, to us, Sam
Vail's more cynical contemporaries, is reason to get up in the morning and cheer. Vailcode, yeah.
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