VAULTRY Interview
VAULTRY
Written by Kayla Aquino-Gualderama | Photos by Gabrielle Larsen
Vocals: Leith Hynds
Guitar: Bradford Davis, Damian Anthony
Bass: Josh Christensen
Drums: Skye Mclean
Victoria, British Columbia
An interview with Leith, of Vaultry.
Hello, Leith! I am Skyping you due to obvious distance. Tell us where you’re from?
I am from Victoria, BC. It’s like, a 2 hour ferry ride an island away from Vancouver. So, yeah! It’s like the capital of BC, but nobody knows where the hell it is.
Do you have any future plans of touring to the US or other countries?
Yeah! The idea is that we are going to try and tour the U.S. at the beginning of next year. The thing about the U.S. is that for Canadian artists, it’s becoming exceedingly more difficult because you have to get visas. Visas are extremely expensive for bands who are just starting out. Most visas usually cost between 450 to 500 dollars as an American, and for Canadian, our dollar is not very good. So It’s another 600 bucks per person. So usually a tour can cost you from anywhere as like, for a 3 piece band, 18 hundred dollars to 32 hundred dollars depending if you expedite– say you get a tour for two months away, that’s not enough time to process your visas. So it costs you like, 32 to 45 hundred dollars in visas. It’s ridiculous, but we’re trying to plan it out that way we can come through as soon as possible. So we’re giving it about 6 months because that’s usually about the time it takes to get the visas. And yeah, we’re definitely trying to tour Europe too, that’d be really cool. Its just that when someone says, “Hey, come do this thing.” , it’s really expensive when it comes to booking all the planes and everything else, so money is the big factor.
How did the band name originate?
It’s like, the dumbest story ever… Our band name is a totally made up word. Basically what happened was, our bass player has this little vault boy from Fallout, and there’s a statue that says “Vault Tec” on it, and he was like “hmmm… Vault Tec…” and he was trying to come up with a bunch of names off of it. And then he cane up with Vaultry and we thought, “yeah! Whatever. That sounds cool. Sounds good.” It’s a totally regular story, but the nice thing about it is that it’s a made up word. So when you try Googling it and stuff, its really easy to find.
That’s really smart! Speaking of other band mates, how did you all meet and become a band to begin with?
So I used to work at a grocery store, kind of in the central hub of where all our band mates live, except for me, and our drummer. Basically, my guitar player Brad came into my work everyday (he works right next to it). So we just started talking. It was him and Josh, our bass player, and then 2 guys who used to be in our band. They kind of already had a band, but their singer quit. I said, “Oh, I can sing, can I send you some demos?” So I sent off some demos, to them and they said “yeah totally! Come try out!” So I tried out, and now I’ve been in the band for 3 years now. We’ve had some line of changes, the biggest being our guitar player, Chasen Frasier, last year passed away of cancer. So we got our new guitar player Damien, who’s been really good friends with me for quite a bit. He actually knew all of the guy in the band for years, for like 6 years actually, and so he was a really nice fit. He’s been a really big help and has been a very positive source of inspiration when we were dealing with the grieving and stuff. We’re really glad to have him in the band.
First of all I’m so sorry for your loss! I hope you are all doing well with every thing. So your newest Album Eulogy is inspired by a fallen friend/band member. Tell us the story.
So Chasen, our guitar player was diagnosed with cancer about 4 to 5 months after I joined the band. It was not super serious, originally he just had a large legion on his lung and they said, “ Oh its fine, we’ll just get rid of it.” And just through months and months of chemo, just it didn’t really work at all and it started to spread to his kidneys. Eventually he passed away from Lymphoma. But we were writing a bunch of music with him to make sure we had a lot of music of his before he passed away, so we could keep on his legacy. So it spiraled into this thing where we wanted to make an EP with him before he passed, have him just record his guitar while in the hospital, stuff like that. But we didn’t get enough time, unfortunately. So we all sat down an decided to make an LP and write it about his entire life. Originally it was going to be about a bunch of different stuff, but sitting down with him in the last days with him…he was like, “No, man. People need to hear about this and what I went through.” So I rewrote the entire album about him. Its kind of just about his life, what he went through when he was in the hospital, and how he felt after he was outside of the hospital. It was a really long process. It took us almost about a year, I mean that’s what kind of happens when you know… things fall through. The plan originally was to get things done within 6 months, but it just didn’t happen. But I’m super stoked that it’s (Eulogy) out now. We’ve been getting a lot of good feedback about it. Its really nice to see people connect with it and , not just taking the story from what you heard from it, but I’ve actually talked to some people who had their own interpretation of what the lyrics are about and stuff, which is really cool.
What is your goal, and what do you want to achieve as a message to yourselves and your listeners?
With our music, its kind of like I like to tell stories, write music that people can connect to. The goal would be just to do that, and you know, travel the world, and you know, be able to feed ourselves? Most musicians don’t get the opportunity to go out and do what they love and it’s a difficult road, and there are so many people trying to do it, so the competition is high. But I think it’s the people who really persevere, and work at it. It really shifts what you can do. Being in an indie band is tough, and I always tell people don’t give up at it because, I mean, Everyone is going to be listening to music until the end of time, so you might as well do it. We need people who are going to be creatives. So, Yeah! Pretty much our goal is to be able to do it full time.
Thank you so much!
Thanks for having me! It was really nice to talk to you, even if it was for a couple minutes. In the future we’ll have to do it again!
CLICK HERE TO READ A REVIEW OF VAULTRY’S ALBUM – EULOGY