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Vintage Trouble: Rock 'N' Roll Finds Its Soul

By: NPR Staff // November 17, 2012
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Vintage Trouble has enjoyed a pretty quick rise since forming just two years ago. The soulful rock outfit has gone from playing small clubs to large halls, and has toured with the likes of The Cranberries, Lenny Kravitz, Bon Jovi and Joss Stone. Now, the band is courting rock royalty: It's the opening act on The Who's current North American tour, playing songs from its recently reissued debut, The Bomb Shelter Sessions.

NPR's Scott Simon spoke to Vintage Trouble singer Ty Taylor and guitarist Nalle Colt about arena crowds, mutually supportive fans and the unexpected perks of new-found visibility.

Interview Highlights

On the quirks of an inter-generational tour

Taylor: "It's amazing, actually. We get to look out at an audience that is maybe 7 years old to probably at least 80 years old. And the craziest part for us is everyone, each generation, seems to know the words. I love the fact that people who love a certain kind of music keep that music alive in their homes. Music that is classic like The Who — when you create these songs that are timeless, and this kind of rock 'n' roll that's not about trends and things — it shows that it does stay around for a long time."

On Vintage Trouble's community of fans

Colt: "They kind of named themselves The Troublemakers. It's been growing, amazingly, all around the world; we have Troublemakers in Japan and Australia and Europe. They kind of take care of their own. Even when some English Troublemaker wants to come to the States to see us play, they kind of figure out how they can pay for their flight ticket for them to get over there."

On Taylor's late mother

Taylor: "Rest her soul, my mom passed away last year. But she had the honor, before she was even getting sick at the end, to hear 60,000 people at one time singing her name, back while we were on the Bon Jovi tour. ... The idea that she got to know that her name was going to live on in such a way, it made me feel like I was actually fine with what I'd done in life at that point. The fact that my mom could pass away knowing that her name would be sung on — through the end of time, hopefully, if we're lucky — it's almost too much to talk about."

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

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