Q&A: Vegas Water Taxi
PILOT had a chat with Vegas Water Taxi to discuss stripped back music, stepping into the unknown, and the Creative Director starter pack.
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Can you tell us a bit about everybody in the band?
It started with me (Ben) and Leo Lawton, who’s the drummer. I used to be in a band called Lazarus Kane and then that ended and I was sort of looking for something to do musically. I bumped into him at a show and then met his brother Fred Lawton who also plays in the band, so it was just the three of us and then Charlie Meyrick, who is the other guitarist/bassist I live with. We lived together in Bristol and then we just started playing for fun, the three of us, and then people seemed to like it and then we just started playing a bit more when we've got a bit of time, basically.
What music genre would you classify yourselves as?
We started out when it was just the three of us. It was pretty loud and pretty fast. We weren't really thinking about it, to be honest, we were just having a lot of fun with it, it’s kind of genre-less.
It definitely takes a lot from country music, I’ve always really liked the storytelling aspect of country music, but it's always been really hard to do without it sounding really hammy and cheesy, you know, because it’s a genre that's so prescriptive in a lot of ways to the instruments and the song structures and things like that.
The previous things I'd done had always been super complicated arrangement wise and there was always a lot going on. There were a lot of electronics, there were a lot of effects, and I just wanted to do something completely opposite. I wanted to write songs on a guitar that I could play just on guitar. But then also benefit from a proper band arrangement but without everything being too complicated, I just wanted everything to feel like it was in its right place.
I think we're all fans of country music but we sort of just subconsciously fell into playing it. I got a nylon string guitar and we didn't really think about anything, it's all just kind of coming from what we love. We love stuff like The Pixies, for example, and so it's like playing country music through that kind of lens, making it weird and going off on tangents but through very simple tools. It's really hard to describe, but in terms of the music, I think we just want it to be really bare, stripped back, and honest.
Do you think it feels rebellious in any way to say that you are doing country music?
Yeah. It's funny, I totally understand the stereotypes behind it, it’s very closed off. Also, I don't really know anything about country music, I don't think any of us really do, but we just really love the simplicity of it. There’s been a few times where people have been, like, what is it? And then when I tell people it's country music I have to always, suffix that with, but not like the cheesy kind of, you know, drinking a beer in my truck kind of thing. I think there's definitely space for re-exploring it and I have noticed that people have been really receptive to it because I think it's just something that people aren't really doing. It's just been, again, really natural for us.
I think the bits of it we really like are the outlaw country stuff. So, the Willie Nelson stuff and Towns Van Zan and all that kind of thing which, at the time, was quite rebellious against the traditional country stuff from Nashville. It’s nice that it feels like a good time to be doing that when a lot of guitar music is in this sort of post punk thing, which I love, and which I've made. But now it feels like if I was gonna start another project, I want it to be songs. Not just a vibe, or another white guy shouting over loud instruments. I was like, OK, if I'm gonna put time and effort into this, I want to write proper songs that have structures and melodies and properly thought out lyrics, and country music is just a really accessible way of doing that. Especially if you're not particularly good at your instruments like me, for example. It’s a very easy way into it. So, yeah, I love it. It's really fun.
Did you feel like you were able to explore country music without feeling too intimidated?
That's a really good question. I always think about this. For example, we’re just about to start recording our first album and I'm gonna mix it, direct and shoot the videos, and I don't know anything about it — I have very basic knowledge of mixing. I’m shooting on a VHS and I have very little knowledge of how to do that, or editing.
Thankfully when I was getting into music there wasn't any social media being like “I'm a successful creative director, or I'm a successful producer, or musician”. There was nothing that presented this kind of false trajectory, right? And now I've been making music for well over 10 years to varying degrees of success, and I feel like I see those people and I'm like, oh my God, I'm not doing it the right way. But there is no right way to do it at all, like in any creative thing there isn’t, and I’ve learned that the hard way. It’s so easy to think "I need to do something like these guys because they're successful”, but every time I do that it makes the thing that I'm making, whether it's like a song or a video or artwork, way worse.
I've always found that the best part is just doing it, even if you don't know what you're doing. That’s my favourite bit, like taking country music and saying “I don't know anything about country music, but I'm gonna make a country album the way I want it to sound" and just try it and usually nine times out of ten, it will be great. If other people enjoy it, it's awesome, but don’t obsess over people on social media who say they're successful and stuff, because you fall into it and you think, oh, I have to do this or that, but you don’t. Just make it, put it out, and enjoy it.
I get it though, these people want to build a brand of whatever it is that they are good at, and the best way to do that is through social media, but it makes you feel terrible, it makes me feel terrible seeing it. And then you don't make anything because you feel like “what's the point? I'm not gonna make anything”. That's the saddest bit, I always think about how much stuff I could have done if I hadn't been on Instagram.
What was the inspiration for your track about the ‘Creative Director’?
I always feel like there's a lot of people on the periphery of artists, you know, managers or agents, and they're great, but there's a lot of people just sort of hanging on at the edges of stuff. I was talking to someone about it and I was saying “it's so weird because those are the people who make all these big decisions and are sort of the gatekeepers to stuff and yet they're not actually doing anything”, it just feels like the gap between the artist and the finished product is just getting so wide.
I would see a lot of it on Instagram, the guys who say “I'm a creative director”, and they all dress in a certain way, they all live in a certain bit of London, and I just thought “but, what do you do?”. I feel like they all have the same ideas and they put these ideas out and they just circulate around social media, and then everyone ends up having an echo chamber. It's just mad how the cultural zeitgeist moves like that. It's like, is this actually an original idea? Or is this something you've just stolen off someone else, who stole it off someone else, who stole it off someone else? I found this idea of being a creative director so funny, because it's such an ambiguous term. It's so broad, and yet it means nothing at the same time.
Most of the songs are a character study of people, or relationships and stuff, and that one in particular was a character study of that kind of person who's wedging their way into a situation because they say that they have this creative title.
It's tongue and cheek though. It's not meant to be mean. It's meant to be funny. I get really worried because I'm like, oh God, these songs aren't meant to be mean, they're meant to be relatable.
What would the creative director in your head be wearing? What's the fit?
Oh, that's a good question. I always imagine it as a guy. I don't know why, but I just have this image in my mind. I'm so bad with clothes, but maybe those Salomon trainers. I imagine he's got a sort of ironically shaved head too, like he could grow a full head of hair but he's like, “nah, man”. Maybe some wrap around speedy glasses too. And then a nineties Billabong fleece, and some sort of boot cut Carhartt jobs on the legs, oh yeah, some nice boot cut denim straight on top of the Salomons. Yeah, we’ve all seen the look.
What’s coming up for you?
We're going to record that album next month, hopefully that will be out before the end of the year. We've got a few shows coming up, London shows, which people can find on Instagram and we’ll do an album release show when the album's ready. We'll do a big show with some mates. But I was gonna say, check out my good friends The Golden Dregs, they recently put out a beautiful record called On Grace and Dignity. Check it out!