deas vail tour

• Birds & Cages · 2009
• All the Houses Look the Same · 2007
• Light As Air
• Standing...
• Deas Vail · 2011
• Follow Sound
• All the Houses Look the Same · 2006
• Puzzles and Pieces
• The Things You Were
• This Place Is Painted Red

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About deas vail.

The christian rock band Deas Vail (translation: "God's Humble Servant") features the falsetto vocals of Wes Blaylock along with guitarist Andy Moore, drummer Kelsey Harelson, keyboardist Laura Beth Hudson, and bassist Jonathan Childs. Formed in central Arkansas in 2003, the band spent several years on the road before attracting attention from dc Talk's Mark Lee Townsend, who signed the group to his own label, Brave New World Records. An EP titled Collapse followed in 2006, with the full-length album All the Houses Look the Same appearing one year later. ~ Kenyon Hopkin

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July 13, 2011 By Joshua Hedlund in Interviews | Comments closed

Hello I’m here with Wes from Deas Vail.

Thanks for taking some time, Wes.

My pleasure.

We’re here at Cornerstone 2011, and there’s been a lot of new things going on with the band since the last time we saw you. First things first, there’s a new drummer.

There is. He’s got a good name. His name is Wes, so there’s two Wes’s in the band now. Kelsey is back in school, getting married in October, so he’s got other things going on – just something he needed to do, needed a change in his life and stuff, so we parted ways. End of story, there’s really nothing more to it, it was a really really easy transition. He just needed to do it, and we were like, go for it, do it! Change is awesome sometimes, we’re not worried about it at all, and then Wes just kinda jumped right in.

You’ve got the new record coming out.

September 6. We’re really excited about it. And Kelsey did record the album, so it’s like his last project with us.

What are you excited about with the new album?

We co-produced it with Matt Hoopes from Relient K. He’s just been a good friend of ours for a long time. He’s never produced albums before, but he just understood where our vision was for the new songs, and was like, I can get you guys into a studio and I think I can make this work really well, so we agreed. There wasn’t really anybody else that understood what we wanted to do.

And what we wanted to do was capture more of our live sound. We’ve tried to do that before, we tried to do that with Birds & Cages , and we got closer but it wasn’t there yet. And I felt like this album is definitely closer than we’ve ever been. We were really careful, it’s so easy for us when we get into the studio to start putting in more than we need to – start putting in more guitar tracks, strings, or auxiliary percussion, or three piano parts, you know – you have that freedom in the studio, and I think Birds & Cages taught us how to not do that as much. So with this one, we didn’t. So what you hear on the album is what we’re playing, and there’s not really a whole lot more to it, not a whole lot of polish to it, it’s just kinda there, and it is what it is.

So that was our approach to recording. I think we did a really good job of capturing that energy, and we learned a lot because we got to be a lot more involved in the production end of things.

I noticed you’re playing some acoustic guitar, and you used to have a second keyboard. Any specific reason?

I just love to change it up, and we just needed to. We used to use tracks as well, and with Wes coming in, it was just a good time to drop the tracks – he plays with a click but it’s loose, it’s kinda secondary… it’s a lot more free now than it’s ever been. There’s an acoustic track on the new album. We’ve been writing new versions of stuff. When we started the band we started playing songs that were solo songs that I had written. So we started doing that and then we started writing together, but I kept playing the acoustic. So for a couple years at the beginning of the band I was playing guitar. We dropped it and I was playing piano for the bulk of our career, and now it’s kinda like, let’s pick it up again. It’s just fun. It helps me grow as a musician too – I’m so nervous, playing that acoustic track night I was so scared. I think it’s good for me and hopefully it adds to the sound we’re going for.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see Dan Smith. Is he on the album?

No, we asked him to do it today. He had never even heard the song before. We sat in the van, and he did this part for us in the van. We talked about the lyric and what the song was about – the song’s called “Quiet Like Sirens” and it’s about this sneaky, brooding monster slowly overtaking something or something, the monster being like addictions or anything that’s captivating in a negative way and it’s kinda holding something down, so it’s calling that out a little bit. The lyrics are kinda haunting a little bit. So we talked about that, and he had a piece from some of his music that fit, so he tried it. He had something prepared, and he’d never heard the song before, jumped in the van, and it fit measure to measure, perfect fit, so we ran with it. Did you record that by any chance? Good, cuz I don’t what it sounds like. [Watch the whole song]

Did you write these songs more thinking about the music, or were there certain messages you wanted to get across in the lyrics?

I didn’t have plans. We had 27 songs going in, so we had way too many ideas. So in pre-production we just had to whittle away a lot of stuff. And that changes the lyric a lot when you do that. When you have 27 ideas, a lot of times you love one part of a song, so you try to make that useful in another song if you can. The lyrics generally come last, and for this album I tried really hard to stick with the songs lyrically that wrote themselves and kinda showed me what they were about as they were written. Those tend to be different – not always better, just different – and they fit what we were doing musically better, for some reason, in my mind. I don’t know if that makes sense on the outside or if it works for people, I have no idea, but those songs that kinda fell in my lap or we were there and caught them. Sometimes you feel like you’re trying to write songs and you can’t, and then you’re trying to write songs and they write themselves. Or, you sweat them out, and either sweating them out, or songs that write themselves, they can be equally good. Sometimes working on a song for months really does make a better song. But on this project I really wanted to be songs that their own thing, that I was discovering as well, kinda fun that way.

Is there anything else you wanted to say about the new album?

No. [laughs] This album – I’m so excited about, I feel like it’s really special to me. There’s a few tracks that are really special to me. The involvement we had in the project was above and beyond what most people get to do, when they’re working with record labels and managers and producers and stuff like that with their fingerprints on it. This is a really personal project for us, and a step in a direction we’re really proud of.

On Birds & Cages , the last track “Atlantis,” sometimes I felt like that song was almost a metaphor for the band, like you had this message you’re trying to get out to the surface…

That’s a metaphor for anybody that has something to share. I started something there that I continue with on the new album in September. I started writing with a more fictional storytelling… it’s pretty vague actually, it’s not a good storytelling song, but it is like a fiction kind of thing – it’s not about something that happened to me. It’s literally about the city of Atlantis being in this globe under the water that nobody knows about but there are people there, and they know about us, and they’re trying to get our attention because they have something special to share with us. And that is a metaphor for a lot of things in life. People have so much that they don’t realize they can share with people, they just need the opportunity, or they need the support, whatever it might be, for them to get that out. I think God puts things in us that we have no idea how important it is, in every person. And sometimes it’s really hard to discover that – or maybe you don’t, and it just happens and you don’t even know it. That’s kinda where “Atlantis” comes from.

Thinking about where the band is at right now, has it been what you expected?

Deas Vail has never been what I expected, ever. We started the band and it was, like I said, doing solo stuff, friends getting together and playing music for fun in college. We played a few shows, and all of a sudden we were doing a recording. The response was good, so we kept doing it, and we just haven’t stopped. It’s become something we never expected it to and it continues to do that. When we started playing Cornerstone, we were playing a generator stage for ten people, maybe, that were just people walking by that would stop and listen. Today we got to play for a packed tent at the Gallery Stage, and we were invited here, and we have an agent that booked us, I mean, it’s like, what? How did that happen to a little band from Arkansas? I have no idea. We’re just doing what we love to do. Somehow it turned into something we get to do all the time. So I try really hard not to take it for granted because it’s special. There are hundreds if not thousands of people that would love the chance to do it, I try not to forget that. I’m just really honored to be able to experience life this way right now.

Do you guys have jobs at home or do you just work on writing?

For the past few years we’ve doing the band full-time. We toured a lot for Birds & Cages .

Owl City tour…

Copeland, Mae, Lydia, Warped Tour.. it was just a bunch of stuff. So we had been on a break for seven or eight months, and we hadn’t really been generating a lot because we hadn’t been working, so we’ve been doing other stuff. I’ve been teaching piano and guitar at a music school, which has been really interesting, and Laura has been working at a restaurant in downtown Nashville booking special events. We’ve been really blessed – Laura and I just moved to Nashville in September, we relocated there, and that’s been really cool.

Are the other guys still in Arkansas?

Andy and [his wife] Kristy are in Arkansas. Justin is in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Wes is in Gainesville, Florida. We are all over the place right now.

Does that make it more complicated…

It’s a new challenge, it’s just a different challenge. Life changes, you have to change with it. If you’re gonna stay a band, you have to be flexible. If you’re not, it just doesn’t work.

Is there anything else you’d like to say to the world?

Keep an eye out for that album, September 6. We’re really excited about it.

Self-titled?

Self-titled… Deas Vail… We are doing vinyl as well. I love vinyl…

I just bought my first vinyl.

I just picked up Mumford & Sons yesterday…

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Indie Vision Music

The christian rock band Deas Vail (translation: "God's Humble Servant") features the falsetto vocals of Wes Blaylock along with guitarist Andy Moore, drummer Kelsey Harelson, keyboardist Laura Beth Hudson,…

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Deas Vail self-titled out now

News 24 Oct 11 By Doug Van Pelt

DEAS VAIL’S NEW SELF TITLED RELEASE AVAILABLE NOW

ALTERNATIVE PRESS PREMIERES ACOUSTIC VIDEO

FOR SONG ‘SIXTEEN’

BAND ON TOUR WITH 2 SHOWS AT CMJ

“Are we primed for another indie rock revolution?” asks Amplifier regarding Deas Vail’s new self titled release out now on Mono vs Stereo.  Produced by Relient K guitarist and Mono Vs Stereo A&R Matthew Hoopes. Campus Circle calls it “Soaring Alt-rock” and Absolute Punk says “The band continues to shine” as the band embarks on a club trek with two shows at CMJ.

See the new acoustic video for the song ‘Sixteen’ exclusively at Alternative Press today: http://www.altpress.com/aptv/video/deas_vail_sixteen_acoustic_video

Hailing from Arkansas, Deas Vail is – Wes Blaylock – Vocals, Keys, Laura Blaylock – Keys, Synth, Wes Saunders – Drums, Andy Moore- Guitar and Justin Froning- Bass.

As the follow-up to Deas Vail’s last CD Bird’s & Cages the new release is 12 songs that rise to any occasion with sweeping melodies and textured layers of guitars and keyboards fronted by singer Wes Blaylock’s wailing vocals.

Follow Deas Vail’s Tumblr at: http://deasvail.tumblr.com/

See them on tour:

Oct 18 Broadway Bar                                                Amityville, NY

Oct 19 Sullivan Hall    (CMJ)                                        New York, NY

Oct 19 Dominion (CMJ)                                              New York, NY

Oct 22 The Space                                                     Hamden, CT

Oct 23 Kingdom                                                        Richmond, VA

Oct 25 McRaney’s Tavern                                           Winter Park, FL

Oct 26 The Orpheum                                                 Ybor City, FL

Oct 27 Propaganda                                                    Lake Worth, FL

Oct 28 Jack Rabbit’s                                                  Jacksonville, FL

More dates to come…

www.deasvail.com

www.monovsstereo.com

About the Author

Doug Van Pelt

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JFH Concert Review

The 2009 "March N2 Madness Tour" was originally supposed to be the headlining Spring tour for Tooth & Nail Records' Showbread, but due to a death in the family of the band's drummer, the guys had to pull out of the tour. Originally the tour appeared to have been altogether cancelled , but indeed the show must go on, and so The Fold was given headlining duties and many of the dates continued as scheduled.

On St. Patrick's Day in Allentown, PA, the March N2 Madness Tour rolled into town and took up residence in the basement of the Crocodile Rock bar/club. When we arrived, the second of two local bands playing this evening were wrapping up their set. They didn't exactly embody professionalism, but it's something that can be forgiven due to inexperience. They drew one of the biggest crowds of the night, attracting a nice amount of local friends and fans, despite not really fitting with any of the evening's acts... especially the one that followed.

I can definitely say I wasn't aptly prepared for the following set. As we watched them set up on the tiny stage, we observed a man wearing a top hat, curly mustache, formal vest and sporting tattoo covering nearly every bit of exposed skin. He was carrying items like a unicycle, beer kegs, and a tree saw onto the stage. Meanwhile, a woman in a purple dress that exposed her tattoo-clad arms was setting up a small screen and projector that soon was displaying overwhelming statistics about the problem of porn running rampant in even the lives of Christian men and women today. It was only then that we realized this wasn't just an eccentric secular local act, but the first performance as part of the March N2 Madness Tour. Front man T.D. Benton soon introduced himself and his band of performers as White Collar Sideshow and began to share mysteriously about addictions and the masks that people wear in public, while we might do other ugly things behind closed doors. As they played their first song, we soon realized that the band merely consisted of two drummers and a bassist. No singer. No guitarist. The woman in the purple dress now donned a creepy white "faceless" mask, and the other member, whose eyes had black circles of makeup under them, was soon wearing a ghastly pig-face mask, sitting behind a drum set. As Benton and the other drummer performed simultaneously on their respective kits, and the "faceless woman" played bass, clips from old black and white horror films were projected onto the side screen (nothing gory or grotesque). Voices from different films and speakers were spliced together, while words flashed almost subliminally during the movie clips. Benton's drum kit featured a large buzz saw as one of his cymbals, and at different times during the band's set, he'd beat on the tree saw with a drum stick as he bent it for different pitches, or he'd spin the unicycle and smack its spokes. The Sideshow created a surreal and dreamlike experience, fabricating an often creepy feel, which served as an appropriate setting for Benton to share about being a recovered drug addict and porn addict. Phillip, the band's mask-wearing drummer, even took some of Benton's talking interludes as a chance to hop into the audience while wearing the unnerving pig face mask to intimidate members of the crowd. Phillip would then climb back on stage and behind his kit to resume playing. White Collar Sideshow closed their engaging and unique set, after several songs, with "Pardon Thy Monster," and left the stage for a set change. They're the kind of act that would have been an ideal match for Showbread (most likely right before their set, too), so I can easily see why they were billed for this tour.

Brave New World Records indie rock act Deas Vail followed, a drastic change from the spectacle that preceded them. Deas Vail possesses a wonderfully soothing piano-flavored indie rock sound that was a nice way to follow up the heavier message and theme of White Collar. The quintet opened with "Rewind," a cut from their 2007 album All The Houses Look The Same , and followed it with a mix of tracks from that album and their more recent EP, White Lights , including its title track. Their set seemed brief, but the band put forth a strong performance. The new Tooth & Nail Records act And Then There Were None (ATTWN) soon followed. This hardcore-band-turned-techno-dance-band was yet another extreme stylistic shift for what ended up being one of the most diverse shows I've seen in quite some time. Sadly, the audience had dwindled quite a bit by the time ATTWN took the stage. Much of the stage had also been cleared for the ATTWN guys to have more room, and a few green beams of light were set up behind the band to project into the audience, complete with thick clouds of smoke to give their performance more of a club feel. And despite a thin crowd, ATTWN gave it their all as if playing to a packed house. Matt Rhoades and company delivered a fun and entertaining set, performing the single, "Reinventing Robert Cohn," from their recently released debut album, Who Speaks For Planet Earth? , among other tracks from it. If anything, though, much like they do on the album, the songs still tended to run a bit together due to similar beats and song structure. But with a short set - only about five songs - it didn't get too tiresome before the set found its end.

A final set change followed, and Chicago rock foursome The Fold set up for the evening's closing act. Due to time restraints, the band couldn't work into their set some of the new material they've been working on for a forthcoming release, but their seven-song set was a fast and fun one that seemed nearly unaffected by the fact only a small crowd had remained (chalk it up to playing in a small town on a popular holiday). The guys opened with "New Skeptic," from their latest album Secrets Keep You Sick , and continued strongly with that album's opener "Medicine." "Down In Doubt And Living Without" followed, and frontman Dan Castady prefaced the next song "New City" by dedicating it to the fact they had been at Croc Rock before, but never in its basement. The dedications didn't stop there as Castady offered "Faster Still" up for the JFH team, and continued with an oldie, "Backseat Drivers," from their debut, This Too Shall Pass , and closed oh so prematurely with "Gravity." Our later discovery that we were getting two new songs cut from their set (and had to endure less enjoyable local acts before the show) made it all that more disappointing when the night ended after only seven songs.

While the March N2 Madness Tour was a headliner short of what it was originally intended to be, each band performed strong sets to make up one truly diversified evening of music. White Collar Sideshow stole the night with its bizarre and intriguing presence, while Deas Vail, And Then There Were None, and The Fold helped make the night an enjoyable and memorable one!

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