In My Own Words

“You guys sound like Nirvana”

No, we don’t.

I started writing music before I knew how to write music. Back then my favorite bands were the greats from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Rush, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, and Pink Floyd were my all time favorites and I wanted to grow up to be like them. It wasn’t until about 12 or 13 when I discovered, in my opinion, the greatest era of music so far, the 90’s.

I say the greatest era ever because I think it’s when the culture of the U.S, as well as music, really hit it’s stride. We all know the 60’s counter culture movement changed music and the way of life in this country completely. By the 90’s, I’d say we really landed onto some great material.

Pop, Country, Hip-Hop and Rap, R&B, Techno/Dance, and Metal music all were crushing it in their respected divisions of the industry. But Rock? Rock really went balls to the wall with what they were doing. I’ll talk more about this in a different post, I don’t need to fall into a ranting rabbit hole during a short history of Three Vultures.

My mother was a police dispatcher for a small town, and in the early 2000’s, when people would find random cd’s on the street, believe it or not, some people would take them to their local police departments “Lost and Found” in hopes of the rightful owner retrieving them. After many months, and even sometimes years, my mom would empty the cardboard box, and bring me home the cds. This is when I really stepped out of the “my favorite music is my parents favorite music because that’s what we listen to on the way to the grocery store” and finally began to learn a whole other world. One with Gangsta Rap, Grunge, Heavy Metal, and a plethora of other stuff I’m sure I’m forgetting.

Most of the cd’s I was given were just home mixes that somebody burnt on their pc to smoke weed to. I’ll never forget my dad coming home and yelling at me, asking me where the hell I got Eminem’s “The Slim Shady EP”. I had to listen to that one in private from there on out.

At the time I didn’t realize that my mom bringing me home burnt cd mixtapes was changing my life, but now that I look back on it almost 20 years later, it definitely was. This is where I heard Slipknot, Korn, Pantera, and Mudvayne for the first time, and really experienced something heavier and a little crazier than Metallica or Black Sabbath. I heard Red Hot Chili Peppers, 311, Sublime, Eminem, Dr. Dre, No Doubt, and Limp Bizkit. Most of these were so scratched and damaged from being tossed out of a car, rolled down a street, picked up, and left in a box for half a year, I sometimes only recieved a little taste of an intro or maybe a hook. But if it was good, I listened to it until the skipping drove me insane.

But then I heard it.

A heavy beat. Distorted guitar chords mimicking the drums. And then this crazy voice harmonizing with all of it.

Who is this guy? Is it Ozzy? He kind of sounds like Ozzy.

“Did he just say ‘Buried in my shit?'”

Once the third line of the lyrics rolled around, I was mesmerized. Vocals being harmonized unlike I’ve ever heard before. Then the hook, my god, the hook. This man is the greatest singer I’ve ever heard in my life. Who is this band? I needed to know before the song was over.

You have to remember, this was before technology is what it is today. You couldn’t pull Snapchat up to Shazam a song. You had to hear it, and I mean really listen to that shit. You had to listen over and over and be sure you were getting the lyrics right. Then pull up askjeeves.com and type the lyrics in asking the little butler Jeeves if he knew the song. If you got the lyrics right, good on you, but that still doesn’t mean that you’d find the song. And I remember the moment I hit the “Enter” button.

No results.

So back to the cd I go. Track 2.

“AHHHH”

The second song literally starts off with him screaming at you. And I couldn’t have loved it anymore.

It wasn’t until watching something on MTV probably many months later that I realized that I fell in love with the voice of the late, great Layne Staley, and this cd I was listening to was a homemade copy of Alice in Chain’s Greatest Hits, with “Man in the Box” and “Them Bones” starting off the album.

Once I finally had a name I could go to Jeeves with, it was all over. My prepubescent mind was being swarmed with all the music Seattle could throw at me, and I was eating every bit of it. AIC, Soundgarden, and Silverchair really became my favorite bands but of course I loved it all. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Mudhoney, Melvins, Temple of the Dog, Mother Love Bone, Mad Season, I couldn’t get enough. Add some Deftones, My Bloody Valentine, Failure, Starflyer 59, Queens of the Stone Age, Acid Bath, and a whole hell of a lot of The Smashing Pumpkins and you have the recipe to my music taste.

And that’s where Three Vultures comes into play.

I knew Three Vultures was going to come to fruition before I even knew how to play an instrument. So, that was first on my list. Get a guitar, and get really good.

I got a guitar, and by the time I was a senior in High School, I had been playing for 2 years and got pretty decent, fairly quick.

I started a band with a guy I had met working at a horrible temp job at a recycling factory right out of high school. With a good friend of mine and a good friend of his, we started The Wrath of Elizabeth (mind you, this is early 2012, deathcore and deathcore band names were all the rage). I played rhythm guitar and sang clean vocals, while we held tryouts for a lead guitarist. I was the oldest one in the band at 19. Our drummer was 17 and our new lead guitarist had just turned 16. A 5 piece death metal band and all of our girlfriends moved into a house in the hood, the oldest one being 21. We thought we were experienced adults with the shit that we were doing, but I guess we’re all experienced adults now since we survived those few years.

A few years go by, a lot of shows and traveling, a new guitarist here, a new drummer there. One kid’s parents shipped him off to the military, one kids parents called the cops on him and basically forced him to stay home. Fighting and arguing everyday because of little money, teenage relationships, and a lot of testosterone made for a living hell there in the end. Finally, when my mom had some health issues and was in a hospital over an hour away for over a month, I decided to grow up and call it quits. Our relationships had soured and were just getting more and more toxic with every day. I packed up, moved closer to home, got a better paying job, and decided to make music a hobby. Picking strings on the porch was better than being miserable everyday, and I always knew I’d pick it up and try again.

I had started an early version of Three Vultures towards the end of what I call “The Wrath Era” called The Other Side. It was just me playing songs I had written in the grunge style with The Wrath of Elizabeth’s drummer and bassist playing for me. They didn’t like it as much, since they both were big in the “scene/emo” phase and strictly listened to metalcore/deathcore, but I appreciated them helping me get some structure to these songs.

My break from music lasted 2 months. My mom got out of the hospital and was doing much better and I just realized I couldn’t not play music. After wanting to play on stage my whole life and then doing it nonstop for a solid 2-3 years, it was hard to stop. I started The Other Side up again with my old bassist, who was my longtime best friend from school, JRob, as well as a name change, Three Vultures. We started writing, and learning how to record our own music. We worked incredibly hard, if incredibly hard means smoking weed and dreaming up future scenarios and bands we’d want to tour with. Though, throughout all of that, we did work a lot. We wrote an entire EP, actually almost an entire full length. We got artwork commissioned, started social media pages, and even got into connection with some big time musicians and producers down in Nashville to work with. We held tryouts for a drummer and finally landed on one. Now, anyone who knows Three Vultures music, pretty much knows where we stand on political and religious issues, and to say that this new drummer stood on the opposite end of that spectrum was an understatement. But when you’re holding tryouts for a drummer in Columbiana County, Ohio, the pickings are slim. He was 1 of 3 that tried out. The first drummer who tried out had only been playing for a few months and wasn’t where we thought he should be at the time (remember him). The second drummer came and said he wanted to play guitar and sing and write the songs, he must’ve misread the email saying “DRUMMER TRYOUT”. The third one was here, played well, and even played keys, AND knew how to record, mix, and master music. So, you see our almost literal rock and hard place we were sitting between.

When The Wrath of Elizabeth had broken up, we still had a show, what we considered was a big show, and the biggest show that gets put on in our county, Abelweenfest by Steve Abel and his family. It’s a huge Halloween show with horror movies projected over your head, costume contests, booze, and a lot of bands. Great time for networking. The Wrath broke up in early spring and I didn’t want to miss that show. I told Steve I would get a band and a set together for it, and damn it, that’s what I was going to do.

Through another mutual friend, I had been approached to play a show for a GOREgous Girls event (think Suicide Girls of the early 2010’s but more fake blood and less clothes), and I hesitantly said yes. I wanted to say no because we still hadn’t found a drummer at the time but I said yes because, well, it’s playing on stage again, and, naked girls.

By the time we got Matt, our new drummer in the band, we had 2 weeks until the GOREgous Girls show, and a week after that was Abelweenfest, where we’d really be tested as a new band. I did my best to throw a set together, I figured a 30 minute set was close to 6 or 7 songs if you spend enough time bullshitting in between. I went with 6 songs, 3 originals and 3 covers I threw together as quickly as possible. I can’t even remotely remember how the 3 originals went, but I can tell you I went with a very basic 3 chord setup for each of them. The 3 covers were the easiest and closest to our sound I could manage, while still being familiar to the crowd. I figured “I Hate Everything About You” by Three Days Grace and “Heart-Shaped Box” by Nirvana would get us some love from the crowd and then I added one of my personal favorites, “Out to Sea” by Smile Empty Soul in there so I could at least enjoy playing one of the songs.

Both shows went amazing. The crowd loved us at both locations and they were simply amazed at the fact that we had really only been a band for about a month, maybe less than. I told them to just wait for the near future, since we weren’t cramming material and rehearsals in for shows that were already booked before the birth of Three Vultures. We finally had as long as we wanted to really sit down and plan out what we would like to do. I continuously reminded Matt and JRob of that as well. Every time one of the three of us were annoyed with playing Three Days Grace or the same simple, 3 chord original we had written in 2 minutes, that soon we’d be able to write more progressive, intricate songs, as soon as we get these shows out of the way. I’m a man of my word and I don’t like letting people down, so all we had to do was get through those shows and honestly we’ll be better for it if we do.

Unfortunately, Matt left after the Abelweenfest show. He packed his stuff off stage, into his car, and drove away, never to talk to us again. It’s been almost 7 years and I still have no clue what happened to him. He could’ve been eaten by a shark right down the road from the venue that night and I wouldn’t know. He had told us at the show that he was going on vacation with his family for the next two weeks and that we couldn’t practice, and honestly all three of us needed the break. We were rehearsing 2-3 times a week to get this material down pat before that first show 2 weeks away. During his vacation he never replied to our future ideas in the group chat, and about 3 weeks of not hearing from him after his vacation was supposed to have ended, we finally realized that he left us high and dry. We knew the vibes weren’t there when he brought his entire religious, right wing family to the GOREgous Girls show. I mean, damn, my folks are pretty open minded people and I don’t think I even informed them of this show until years later. Half naked women covered in fake blood isn’t necessarily a place you should invite your grandmother to, and maybe I wasn’t clear enough to him with what was going to happen at the show. I would’ve thought it was obvious what was going on at how excited I was in the days leading up to it, but hey, to each his own.

There we were, Three Vultures, a few months down the road, enough material to fill a double cd deluxe edition release, and no prospects on a drummer to help us record or perform it. The stress of that as well as stressors from life finally ended up dampening our longtime friendship, and we were growing into actual adults with lives that weren’t based around music anymore. The end of 2013 was a dark time for me. Here I was, chasing my dreams of becoming a musician for 3 short years and thanks to location and naivety, it looks like it’s already ending.

I’m solo. Tired of everyone’s bullshit and lack of work ethic, I’m making Three Vultures a solo project.

I’m gonna Dave Grohl this shit.

I’m going to write the songs I want to write, I’m going to release them the way I want them released, I’m going to go to a studio, record guitar, bass, and vocals, and hire a studio drummer to do that part. I planned on dropping a 5 track demo to give to the world and to say “Hey! I’m serious about this shit!” Whether a million people buy it or no one even gives it a single stream, I was going to do this.

I had about 2.5 songs written when my own worst critic came in and started tearing it all apart. I scrapped about 6 songs and had writers block on the last two. Remember that first drummer who tried out and wasn’t experienced enough at the time? Yeah, well that was John Alfred Lane IV. He had left our tryout and went to join a punk band, High Class Kicks, and right at the time of my writers block, they put out an EP. I gave it a listen, not my style of music, but it was good, and well wouldn’t ya know it, John had gotten a lot better at beating those drums. With Three Vultures music I wasn’t looking for Neil Peart, I was looking for John Bonham. Someone who can carry a rhythm while simultaneously beating the absolute hell out of the drums. See, John and I went to the same small high school together, had known each other all throughout school and playing sports. I wouldn’t say we were ever that close of friends but we got along great when we were around each other. I gave him a call and asked him if he could come over with his set and just help me get through this writers block.

John came over while I was in the shower, my girlfriend at the time let him in and he started setting up. He was already warming up by the time I came into my little spare bedroom to join him. I told him I had about 2.5 songs written. Needed 2.5 more. When I showed him what I had already written, he just started playing. The chemistry was there from the first riff. We naturally, transcendentally ignored what I had already written and was just improvising new stuff. One song, two songs, three. It was unlike any other time I had working with a musician. By the end of the night we had 5 completely new songs written. We drank some beers and talked on my porch before he left. I asked him if he wanted to be my drummer, and go through this experiment with me. From my understanding, John was in High Class Kicks, and that was his priority, but I guess they didn’t really play shows. They jammed in a garage and just recorded music just to do it. I informed him my plan was to take this as far as we could, regardless of what that meant. He said he was down, would help out musically and financially, and went home.

When JRob was still in the band, I had been approached by someone I’ll leave nameless, who was out of a fairly big post-grunge band at the time and in the early 2000’s, who he himself was discovered by Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit. The fact that this guy reached out to me and wanting to record a single of mine made my young, naive mind think he was just passing it on, trying to help out a young broke musician like Fred Durst did for him. All I had to do was get basic recordings of the song and send them down to him so he can mix and master the song in his studio in Nashville, TN. I was pumped. Here I am, 20 years old, new to music, being approached by someone I look up to, whos toured the world, and for the “low low” price of $850 he would record a song of mine in Nashville. Get me airplay on Sirius XM and on movie soundtracks and all this other shit. Yeah, to say I was blinded by the possibilities is, yet again, an understatement.

I told John about this endeavor and he was rightfully hesitant on the $850, as we all should have been but hey man if it can get us on Sirius XM and in movies it’s nothing. So we split it. We wrote the song, we went to a friend, Nicholas Baronzzi, in our hometown of Lisbon, Ohio to record the scratch tracks, and sent them back. While waiting on that process to finish up, we decided to record 4 more songs with Nick, in his studio The Underground, and release a 5 track ep with that single added onto it. We were still going with the original plan of me doing it all but instead of hiring a studio drummer, I now had one. The song we sent out to Nashville was the title track “Capital Punishment”. The rest of the “Capital Punishment” ep was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Nick at The Underground. Nick had a very basic studio. A great studio for a young kid in his dad’s garage, but a very basic studio that he went into some major credit card debt to finance. He was great at what he did and we had a lot of great times working on that album together, but, like John and I were still learning our craft, Nick was still learning his. That ep is still very raw sounding, which can be good and bad, but it’s obviously not the best quality. It doesn’t matter. We thought it was great, and still do think it’s a great album. It was our first album, and Nick really stepped up, even recording the bass tracks for it, and let me tell you, that man can play the bass. He makes the bass guitar his bitch. One of the best things about that album are the bass riffs. What’s unfortunate is we were scammed. Capital Punishment, the single, finally came back, ready to bring it to its forever home with the other 4 songs, and it was not good. Somehow what two Nashville veterans did was mixed worse than what this 21 year old kid in his dad’s garage in Lisbon did. Like what the hell man. We paid more for this single than we did for the other 4 songs combined. Regardless, the ep was complete, we can finally put this thing out and let the world know there was a new band out. Days turned to months turned to years and here we are, still no Sirius XM or movie soundtracks. That’s okay though.

Our plan was to release this album, get some likes on Facebook, and the shows and bassists would come to us. That’s not exactly what happened. Sure, we got offered your everyday run of the mill Friday night dive bar gigs, but not a single bassist came out proclaiming their love for our music and how it would be such a dream come true to play for the amazing Three Vultures. Again, we agreed to another show that we weren’t sure we’d be able to pull off.

In comes Auston Dunnington.

Auston is another kid we went to school with. A few years younger than both of us. In a school our size, you pretty much at least know the name of everybody in the building. So I knew of Auston, but I really didn’t know him. I got to know him really well when he was dating my former girlfriends sister. Even then I thought he was just some goofy 16 year old kid the played acoustic guitar every now and then. I knew that if you could play guitar, you can basically play bass. At least root notes, that is. I had him come over one night just to see what his skill level of guitar really was. He was pretty good considering he hadn’t been playing long. He could really strum out some chords and could play a few riffs. I figured if he would be down, he could play root notes, and after the show I could show him some exercises and help him start off on really teaching himself bass. I told him, “Go get a bass and a rig from a pawn shop, it doesn’t matter what you get as long as it’s loud, we’ll replace it later.” And that’s what he did. I can’t remember what the bass or the amp were, but he got them at a pawn shop and they did the job, for quite a while honestly. We had a show two weeks from the day he bought the stuff, and we started busting out rehearsals. Just like with John, I could feel the chemistry we all had instantly. It was crazy. We’d practice the songs off the ep, and then jam in between them and it just came out naturally.

Once again, we didn’t have enough material to fill the set, and we had to add a few covers. I know we covered Smile Empty Soul and Nirvana but I’m not sure what else. Again, the crowd seemed to love it, but what was more important was we loved it. We had a great time. The sound at the bar was terrible and it was incredibly dark, that, as well as it being our first gig together, so you can imagine just how hard of a time it was for us to stick together. I can only imagine how many times we messed up or just how bad we were, but that didn’t seem to matter. The booze were flowing and the party was bumping and everyone had a great time, including us. From that night on, we started booking every show that was thrown at us. Whether we played for 3 people or 300, got paid nothing or $500, we accepted it. We accepted almost every show thrown at us for a solid two years.

We were hitting cruise control about two years in. A decently full merchandise table, another album under our belts, recorded at The Underground. “Rebirth” was our new project. It was a full length. It took two years to write and record, 8 tracks, 44 minutes and 3 seconds of blood, sweat, tears, fights, break ups, and addictions. I came up with the title “Rebirth” because I had felt I had gone through a rebirth. I believe I did, to be honest. A rebirth as a musician, as a man, as a spiritual person, and human being. I had went through a really toxic end to my relationship with my girlfriend, Auston did as well. But with music, and the three of us really being together often, as well as a lot of alcohol, we got through it and grinded out an album we’re proud of. I felt I was a new person, the person I am today writing this. John went through a change and had just started his relationship with his wife, and Auston grew up to be the adult he is today. It’s crazy what we went through but Three Vultures was always there for us. The music was always there for us.

In 2019, we decided to record with our good friend Billy Duganne at In Legion Productions out of Boardman, Ohio. Billy was known locally for his bands Edorra and Legions, as well as recording many well known artists. We were hesitant to leave The Underground. It had become all we had known, but it was time to move on. It was time to take a chance and see what else we can accomplish. The recording process was amazing with Billy. Every bit of fun as it was with Nick. We probably spent more time getting sushi or margaritas than we did working, but the finished product could not have come out better than it did. We recorded “Seneca” as a single in 2019 and dropped in the February of 2020, excited to announce that we were going back in to record 4 more tracks to make yet another ep. As we all know, that’s when the apocalypse came. We weren’t able to get back into the studio until the end of summer of 2020 and finally get started on our long awaited ep. After a year had past since we released a single off of the upcoming album, we were finally ready to release it. March of 2021 we released “Porcelain Angels“. It was very well received. We couldn’t have been more pleased with how it turned out.

The “Porcelain Angels” ep is where we really started to experiment with our sound, go out on a limb a little more with Post-Rock and Shoegaze. Either that, or I just can’t stop buying effects pedals.

In May of 2021 we added Chris Finley as a second guitarist. Chris started out as a friend and helped roadie in the early days of Three Vultures. He adds such a great element and more of an all around sound that we’re unable to capture without him, not to mention he’s ten times the guitarist I am.

I know this was long, longer than you and I both expected, but as you’ll come to learn, I like rambling and maybe going into detail when I sometimes shouldn’t. I appreciate you if you made it this far. I hope your curiosity takes you onto checking out our music, and maybe even coming to hang out at a show.

• FlourishAugust 22, 2021
  From
• FlourishAugust 22, 2021
  Hailing from northern Ohio comes Flourish, and if you want music somewhere in the middle of The Appleseed Cast and Planning For Burial with a hint of Holy Fawn, FlourishContinue reading “Flourish”

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