CIVICS CLASS
Interview with Vatican Assassins
Antelope Valley
It only took one call to the cops.
That was the nail in the coffin for the Antelope Valley’s Fallout Fest, which ended just about as swiftly as it had originally began as simply a way for the organizers’ out-of-town friends to play an all ages show. It was a place where artists, musicians and all other makers were invited to share their art. But a fight during the fest and subsequent call to the police, mixed with general fatigue by the organizers—the members of Lancaster punk band Vatican Assassins—put an end to the fest’s nearly two-year run.
“It was illegal first of all and then this time the police came because someone got into a fight and it was just kind of becoming hard to coordinate with the property owner and we were just burnt out,” said Vatican Assassins bassist Susie. “It was a lot of work for three people.”
The three would be herself along with Vatican Assassins singer and guitarist Joe and drummer Travis.
Fallout may have been short-lived but it was an exercise on what can happen when individuals actually take action for the broader community, especially one as small, yet diverse, as the Antelope Valley’s music scene.
“There’s a market of music and art out there and there’s not a lot going on for people,” Joe said. “When [Susie] put that together, a lot of people thought that was real cool.”
“Yeah, we didn’t shut out any genres,” she added. “We had a mariachi singer and video artists—just whatever you wanted to do, you could do if you wanted to take responsibility for it and do something there. Our friends started a catering business to sell tacos there. So a lot of cool stuff happened because of it.”
The effort that was funneled into Fallout is now fueling the resurgence of Vatican Assassins, which hadn’t been playing as much or as far out beyond the local scene during the time of the Fest’s run largely because much of the energy was being diverted to organizing and running the event. Then again, that was also because the band hadn’t had a consistent drummer for a couple of years, until Susie and Joe met Travis at one of the Fallout shows last summer.
He was welcome relief.
“We’ve had a couple other drummers before Travis and drummers are just hard to rein in,” Joe said.
“There’s a limited supply of people where we live, too,” Susie said.
“And, I’m really a guitar player,” added Travis, who is also into jazz and is in another local band, a bluegrass group called String Theory Jug Band.
But Vatican Assassins—a reference to Joe’s Catholic school upbringing—goes farther back than the meeting with Travis. It starts in 2002 when Joe left Chicago to come out to California after he met Susie. He had been playing music off and on since he was a kid. Vatican Assassins originally was a four-piece formed in 2008 with the two other positions in the band filled out by friends Sandy and Jason of The Gashers, in Las Vegas. Joe and Susie were going back and forth to Vegas for the next couple of years or shows until they decided to call it quits.
“They were playing in their other band all the time and then this band and they could never make it out here,” Susie said. “And that’s my oldest friend and we didn’t want to hate each other so we just decided to kind of call it quits before it dissolved.”
Vatican Assassins released an EP several years ago but is now anxious to put out and record new material with a solid lineup and more time to devote to the band and playing shows beyond the Antelope Valley.
“The audience is finite out there,” Susie said.
“There’s only a certain group of people going to shows and they go to every show,” Travis added.
Their observations about the local scene aren’t to be confused with complaints either. They appreciate the tight-knit community but are curious to play their music in front of new crowds with different musical tastes.
“We’re not hardcore, so kids don’t always want to have a mosh pit while we’re playing. But we don’t really know where we actually kind of fit in with other bands,” Susie said.
“It’s more like old school punk,” Travis said.
Take a look at their list of influences and you’ll get the picture: Husker Du, The Clash, The Ramones, Naked Raygun, Stiff Little Fingers, The Stooges, Black Flag and on. Their songs range from political to social to everyday life events.
”We’re trying not to pigeonhole ourselves,” Joe said.
“The bands that are really popular in the Antelope Valley are more like hardcore—or they have a shtick,” said Susie. “We don’t really do that kind of stuff. We just want to play good music. We don’t wear costumes or have mohawks so I don’t know if they relate to us.”
They’re planning a tour for next summer with another local band, Thoughtcrime, that will take them to Chicago and back. And the two are also planning a vinyl split that’s close to being submitted for record pressing. The split will be self-released and could also be the start of another independent project.
“We’ve been talking about a DIY collective to help other people put stuff out,” Susie said. “We’d pool our resources.”
And much like Fallout, they’re open to a variety of genres.
“In the market we’re dealing with, I think that when you limit it, it’s not wise really,” she said. “There’s so few people, you really can’t afford to alienate anybody.”
And it doesn’t make sense, they all agree, considering they themselves like all kinds of music.
“I’m personally from the old school of punk rock where it was a wider range of sounds that was considered punk rock anyways,” Joe said. “So, to me, a lot of different things are punk rock, even if we did call ourselves a punk rock label.”
Whatever it ultimately turns out to be is commendable, creating a community and giving people who may not necessarily have had an opportunity otherwise, access to a platform to be heard. It’s the very definition of DIY.
“It’s key to the DIY part of music and I think DIY is where we need to go as far as a collective scene because it’s us that’s going to support each other,” Travis said.
“Yeah, because the music business is not about music really anymore. It’s about cranking out a product, sadly,” Susie added. “I grew up in the 80s where singers could be fat and ugly and it didn’t matter; you didn’t have to be pop star material to be famous. There were all kinds of people making good music and it’s kind of a bummer that people are shut out because of the way they look.”
The conversation at this point turns to social media and, in some ways, the perpetuation of stereotypes and body shaming.
And if you haven’t already guessed it about the three of them by this point in the story, the wheels have already begun turning on yet another project.
Susie and a friend, who is doing the art for the vinyl split, have floated the idea of putting on an event with no social media—just word of mouth or physical invitations—in a kind of social experiment where selfies and camera phones would be banned just to see what happens.
It would be more work in addition to full-time jobs and, of course, the band that they’re looking to push out there more in the new year. But that’s the point, really. This is a band that’s more than just a band and while it’s more difficult, more stressful and more time consuming to do everything yourself, they’re driven by the music whether it be related to Vatican Assassins, another Fallout Fest or a DIY record label.
“I just love to play. I mean, really, I just love to play music,” Susie said.
“And sharing it with other people,” Joe added. “I want people to hear and enjoy our music. We don’t have any ideas that we’re going to be some famous rock stars or anything like that.... I think that’s kind of part of being a musician or an artist. You want to share it with people; you want to get some acceptance that it’s good.”
“I always think, I don’t care what you think of [my art] but I just want you to look at it,” Travis said. “If you looked at it, OK, yes I’m good.”
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