After interviewing Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse, Norah Spades of The Vaudevillian reached out and wanted in on that hot Racket interview style. We shot the proverbial shit about their 50-date tour dubbed “Under The Big Top Tour,” with little quips from bandmate Jitterbug James as he loaded up the Oldsmobile for their seven-hour trek to Ottawa.
Ten years on the road is a hell of a circus — what’s been the wildest act under your Big Top so far?
Hey there Yost! Ya, it’s surely been a wild ride and we’ve been holding onto our hats trying to stay upright all the while. In 6 weeks we did 28 flights and that was nuts, got sleep when we could mostly in a big metal thang flying over the Atlantic! Wildest show yet was playing Modest Mouse’s Psychic Salamander Festival in Seattle. Isaac put on a banger and we’re still finding confetti in our boots.
Touring with Modest Mouse and Old Crow Medicine Show sounds like a fever dream of fiddles and chaos. Any tour-bus stories you can tell without getting anyone in trouble?
HA! Give us some dough and we’ll sing like birdies. Just kidding- they’re gems. Great time playing with OCMS- they’re marvellous showmen and we were tickled that after our rowdy set before them, they had us playing 5 tunes with them during their shows. Such a talented act. Holy hell- MM is the real deal, we played some auditoriums in Canada with them before playing their festival in the US and we loved every moment. After the shows Isaac wanted to play my washboard and it was hilarious watching him dink around. Thimbles kept flying off.
Your new record, “Sellin’ Jelly,” was tracked on ½-inch tape. I worked with two-inch tape when I thought I wanted to be a recording engineer and it SUCKED. What made you go old-school analog, and did it make things gloriously gritty or gloriously stressful?
Mmm, ya. Tape is a finicky fucker. BUT worth it. All our 4 records have been recorded on tape and we twist the sound engineers arm every time we record an album but the beauty of its warm gritty low fidelity is a tip of the hat to old ragtime & blues artists we grew up loving.
“Dirty ’30s” isn’t just a vibe, it’s an entire aesthetic. If The Vaudevillian existed in the 30s, what kind of shady carnival gig would you be running between shows?
Oh ya buddy, we’re most definitely carnies with instruments. Travelling town to town in our circus car, (an Oldsmobile 1984 Delta 88 Royale,) selling our wares (CDs and Vinyl) and pushing our trinkets (tee shirts) all the while hooting, hollering & heckling each other to the audiences in front of us dancing and blushing away under big tops. We used to sell moonshine from our trunk, but with us putting down the bottle for 5 years now, that ‘lil avenue dried up. If it was the 30’s we’d be moonshine runners and most likely have a busy brothel- closed only on Tuesdays.
Three of your shirt designs have cats — but have you ever met a cat that was a shithead?
Ya… every band tee shirt I’ve whipped up has a cat on it. I can’t help myself buddy. I LOVE cats. Kittys are so nice. Never met a bad kitty. Our kittys Dolly & Stetson are on our newest record, “Sellin’ Jelly.” On our rendition of, “My Girl’s Pussy,” our kitty’s meow in the opening to start the tune out right. If you’re clever and you notice there’s 4 meows in the opening, that’s because I also meow AND even more importantly- our parrot Margie knows how to meow and so she’s featured too. She was the most expensive to record and was a bit demanding, shes a good looking bird so she’s a little sassy.
When you’re not slinging tunes, you’re hand-tooling leather — what’s more satisfying: nailing a guitar solo or carving a leather strip that smells like pure cowboy energy?
Being on stage & causing a ruckus for the audience is the most satisfying by far. Spring, Summer & Fall we tour here, there & everywhere. We go hard. In our Olds, or sometimes in our 1984 Fleetwood Pacearrow 34 foot RV. (Our janky version of a tour bus.) In the Winter in Canada though, the lousy snow is taller than us so we’re home most of the time unless it’s a fly out. 6 years ago, we made a little leather slinging business called Woodstove Leather Goods where we handcraft custom leather goods; guitar straps, dog collars, wallets, belts, ect. All entirely made by hand; Hand cut from the hide, hand carved, hand tooled, hand dyed, hand painted & hand stitched. Only open from Nov-May each year.
You’ve tattooed yourself and Jitterbug on the road — be honest: which one is your favorite, and which one is the one you most want to fix?
I’m a tattoo scratcher and love inking Jitterbug up. He’s got around 15 tats from me, my favourite is a 2 headed cow on his leg. His favourite is a zippo on his arm or maybe the straight razor. Both our least favourite is a sailor Jerry wolf I did on his thigh. Whoops.
If “Sellin’ Jelly” had its own sideshow act, what would it be called and what bizarre talent would it feature?
Well if it was ethical to employ our cats we totally would. They’re good folks and last I heard they’re looking for work. They’d probably be mid acrobats or pretty good tight rope walkers to open the show and warm the audience up.
After a decade of festivals, what’s one thing you’ve learned to always pack — and one thing you’ll never bring again?
Despite the room it takes up, always an extra pair of boots as we run around the stage alot and the soles give out sometimes. Dont wanna have to wear crocs if we’re in the middle of nowhere and our boots broke down.
Never pack the confetti canons. Always thought it was a good idea to be prepared-never know when you’ll need one. Though we learned the hard way a couple times before it stuck that airports don’t like confetti canons. Hard no apparently, with no wiggle room. Now we have them shipped to venues and they wait patiently for us.
When this “Under the Big Top” tour finally rolls into the sunset, what’s next — more cats, more ink, or another weird and wonderful project waiting to pounce?
This 10 year festival tour “Under the Big Top,” tour has been none stop & wild and our slogan has been Hunter S Thompsons, “Buy the Ticket, take the ride.” We’ve toured 4 countries on this 50 date run and loved our time in Europe, The UK and the USA but we’ll head home to Canada soon to record another album and book up our 2026 tour routes across even more countries. This Winter we’ll be by the woodstove handcrafting leather goods and getting ready for the circus to pack up the Oldsmobile and hit the road again come Spring when we’re at ‘er again going stage to stage playing washboard and steel guitar tunes making the audience blush and dance the night away.
If you want to hear more of this ragtime blues jug band, they’ll be around playing prohibitions-era jams, minus the prohibition (thanks, FDR, what a champ). They are touring across four countries with Modest Mouse and Old Crow Medicine Show.
Here’s a bunch of links they asked me to share:
http://thevaudevillianmusic.com/
https://thevaudevillian.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/thevaudevillian/
https://www.facebook.com/thevaudevillianmusic/
https://youtube.com/c/TheVaudevillianMusic
Record Label- https://bustedflatrecords.com/