The Vincent Black Shadow

The Vincent Black Shadow (also known as TVBS) is an alternative rock band that was signed to the Bodog record label in 2006 and to Beef Records in 2008. Originally consisting of Cassandra Ford on vocals, brothers Rob Kirkham on guitar, Anthony Kirkham on drums, and Chris Kirkham on bass, with Mary Ancheta on keyboards. As of 2010, Nikki Hurst replaced Ford as lead vocalist. The name is derived from the motorcycle of the same name, the Vincent Black Shadow. Fears in the Water was first released on July 11, 2006, and their sophomore effort, El Monstruo, on September 15, 2008.

History

The Vancouver quintet was formed out of a friendship between Cassandra Ford and Rob Kirkham. In 2000 the two met at a bar, becoming musical collaborators from then on. Kirkham then recruited his two brothers Chris and Anthony Kirkham. The brothers had extensive musical training from their father, a trumpet player for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Finally, Mary Ancheta joined the group later on. The band signed to the Bodog record label in 2006. In 2007, The Vincent Black Shadow played on the Vans Warped Tour having ‘rocked’ it the previous year. The Vincent Black Shadow have also toured with Wednesday 13, Joan Jett, Halifax, Greeley Estates, Bif Naked, Kosheen, and Snow Patrol. Following on they have also appeared on bills with Silverstein and Blessthefall among other bands. In August 2008 the band announced in an e-mail sent out to fans that they had parted ways with Bodog Music, and were releasing their sophomore effort «El Monstruo» through Beef Records on September 15, 2008. On December 8, 2008, the EP «Head In A Box» was released on the bands official website as a digital only release. The songs included on «Head In A Box» are B-sides from «El Monstruo». Cassandra Ford departed the band in early 2010 and was replaced by Nikki Hurst, the band’s original keyboard player and former lead singer of her own Vancouver-based band.
Trivia

* Before being in band full time, Cassandra Ford worked with vocalist of Dance Punk outfit Fake Shark – Real Zombie!, Kevin Maher as a game tester for EA Games.[1]. She is also a huge fan of video games outside of her job with EA.
* The group derived their name from the British made motorcycle Vincent Black Shadow
* There is another band named Vincent Black Shadow from Baltimore, MD.
* Chris’s other band in which he sings and Tony plays drums is called Nim Vind.
* Tony is a fully sponsored Vic Firth Drummer.
* Cassandra Ford is an active designer for the illustrations used on the bands merchandise.
* The song «White Rabbit» on the «Head In A Box» EP is a cover of Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 hit of the same title.
Current members

* Nikki Hurst – Lead Vocals (2010–present)
* Robbie Kirkham – Guitar (2006–present)
* Anthony Kirkham – Drums (2006–present)
* Chris Kirkham – Bass (2006–present)
* Mary Ancheta - keyboards (2007-present)
Albums

* Fears in the Water (2006)
* «El Monstruo»(2008)

EP’s

* Head In A Box (2008)
* Menu
* Home
* About Us
* Contact
* MySpace

* Media
* Photo Galleries
* Concert Reviews
* Album Reviews
* DVD Reviews
* Interviews

Related Info

More information about The Vincent Black Shadow can be found by visiting the following links:

» TVBS MySpace

» The Vincent Black Shadow

» Warped Photos

» Fan Photos

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The Vincent Black Shadow - Fear In the Water

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Type 3 Media Interviews

This Road Is Going Somewhere

An Interview with Rob Kirkham of The Vincent Black Shadow

Interview Date: August 9, 2007

During our trip to the Warped Tour in Mansfield, MA, we had a chance to sit down with Rob Kirkham, guitar player for The Vincent Black Shadow.

Later on we also checked out their performance on the Hurley.com stage (photos coming soon).

Rob T3M: How is the Warped tour going so far?

RK: The tour is going fantastic. It’s been really good for us. Last year we played the smallest, shittiest stage possible. This year we started out playing main for the first bunch of shows, and then we moved around from Hurley to Hurley.com to Smartpunk. Now we’ve kinda settled on the Hurley.com stage in the amphitheater. It’s been really good.

T3M: We recently spoke to one of your label-mates, how do you like being part of the Bodog family?

RK: It’s very good. They’ve been very generous. You can get on a very big label, and if you don’t sell a million or five-hundred thousand albums on your first or second try, you’re gone. With Bodog, they believe more in nurturing an artist and having them find themselves creatively until they’re making really good, inspirational music. It seems to me, as corny as it sounds, it seems to be a lot about the music. Obviously, they want you to sell well.

I produced the first record for our band. Who ever gets to do that as a band member? We didn’t have to have writers write with us, or anything like that. But they put the money behind us like a major would.

T3M: They allow you to be creative?

RK: Yeah. They’re not coming in going ‘you only have one single on this album, we need five.’ It wasn’t like, ‘okay, we need to bring in a team of writers… this is what’s hot right now… we need you to sound like this.’ They were like ‘wow, there’s some really great songs here, let’s go record them and make a record.’ Completely opposite. It took a while to do, but it’s good.

T3M: It seems like Fears in the Water has been received fairly well.

RK: Yeah, critically especially and fan-wise. It’s been a bit slow getting it out to people. We had a bad distribution deal to start. But we have a real good one now, and re-released in January. Since then, off the heels of our single Metro it’s got a bit of radio play, and a decent amount of play on Fuse. It’s sold quite well from that.

This is the first real tour that we’ve done where we’ve hit-up a lot of markets that we’ve never been to. So, just having people come out there for us has been a really great experience. We’re still a young band.

T3M: Have you had a chance to tour overseas yet?

RK: We’ve done Europe once with a band called Kosheen, who are huge in Europe. I had never heard of them until we got over there. There like this electro/clash/dance/rock band with a female singer. They were really great, and we got to play at some great venues. Touring Europe is a blast because it’s a whole different culture. It was nice to be a part of something different for a while.

T3M: Are there any particular bands on the Warped tour that you’ve enjoyed seeing, or are looking forward to seeing perform?

RK: It’s funny, because he just came onto the tour. Cassie [Ford] and I have been excited to see MC Chris. He does a lot of the voices on Adult Swim’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force. He’s also a nerd-core rapper… he raps about Boba Fett, he raps about why kids love hip-hop… it’s so awesome. You should check it out.

I’m also excited about Bad Religion. Circa Survive is cool… Red Jumpsuit Apparatus.

T3M: Have there been any crazy or memorable moments for you during the tour so far?

RK: Yeah actually. This just happened the other day during our day off in West Virginia. We had done 19 shows in 20 days, and finally had a day off.

When we stop on a day off, there’s not enough time to stay overnight, so we just get a room for the band to shower and for the driver to sleep. We hang on the bus, go take a shower, and just chill. Nobody ever has a problem.

Someone comes banging on the door, I open it up, and the first thing this guy says is ‘what’s going on, on this bus?’ Then I realize that it’s the guy from the Holiday Inn. I say ‘I’m just on my computer, what’s the problem?’ He goes ‘We’ve had a number of complaints from the people staying in this hotel, saying that your bus is really loud with the generator, and I’ve seen six or seven people come in and out, and you’re not allowed to that, this isn’t a camp site.’

I said ‘whoa dude, relax. We do this at every place we stay at.’ He then goes ‘this place is independently owned and operated. I’m just going to have to ask you to leave.’ It went that fast. I was like ‘they’re kicking us out?’ I guess he thought, with my recently shaved head and tattoos, that I looked like a bad-ass. So then he goes ‘I think it would be best if you moved on.’

Right then, our tour manager comes up and asks about what’s going on. The guy says to him ‘you guys are disturbing our clients here.’ There’s nobody at this hotel. There were only three cars there.

So later we go inside, and the guy tells us that we’re going to have to pay twenty dollars per room to stay. I said, ‘I’m not paying a dime for this.’ So he goes ‘this place isn’t a camp site, so I’m going to call the police. There’s a camp site up the road if you want to stay there.’ I told him ‘well, there’s a douche-bag store up the road if you want to work there.’ He then goes ‘that’s it, you’re out!’ He was yelling and screaming and threatening to call the cops.

T3M: That’s crazy. I hope you found another hotel.

RK: Yeah we went across the street to the Comfort Inn. We still can’t believe it happened. Maybe the guy was going through a divorce or something. I don’t know.

T3M: I was just looking at the tattoo on your arm [of the Virgin Mary]; do you consider yourself to be religious?

RK: Yes I am, but not in an overt way like some of the other bands on the tour are. Not that I want to put anyone down. I’m Catholic, born and raised. I even taught seventh grade at a Catholic elementary school before I was in the band.

A lot stuff I’m into is not very religious… in terms of music. I’m not going to go out on this tour and say things like ‘go to bible study’, or get onstage and say ‘Jesus loves you.’ Weird shit like that… it just comes across like they’re trying to exploit people…like the way the recent President of this country did, in my opinion… exploit the beliefs of a lot people to get them to come over and either buy their CD, or vote for him.

If something is that personal or real to you, I don’t know why you have to make the public think about it. You don’t see a Jewish man jump onstage and say ‘this is for the Jews!’, or stuff like that.

When I put this on my arm, because I never got a tattoo on the last Warped tour, I was like ‘If I’m going to get one, what would mean something to me?’ I wanted something that I could look at and feel like it’s cool and inspirational. Not like I got Woody Woodpecker hitting Daffy Duck with a golf club or some random stuff like that. I wanted it to be personal.

The religious thing means a lot to me, but I’m not going to tell anyone else how to live.

Rob T3M: Do you miss being home while on tour?

RK: The road is kind of our home. We’re from Vancouver, Canada, so I guess we are a long way away. We have family in New York, because we’re dual-citizens, so that was cool being able to see them. But I do start to miss home. It will be bitter-sweet at the end of the tour because you get used to playing every day. So when you come home it’s like ‘huh?’

I definitely want to start writing and recording when we get off. We hope to start touring again pretty soon after that, in October or something.

T3M: That leads into my next question; what’s next after the Warped tour?

RK: We’re working on bunch of different bands to let us come out and tour with them. A couple bands on this tour have come and said they’re interested, but you don’t want to say anything until it’s confirmed. So we’ll see what happens. We definitely want to go out again.

We’re just releasing a new video for Fears in the Water, the album’s title track, which is supposed to come out within the next week, so we’ll probably have to do another set of touring for it.

T3M: Can you tell us which bands have expressed interest?

RK: I can’t really say. I’ll just tell you the bands that have really liked us have been Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and Circa Survive.

T3M: How’s the music scene in Vancouver? It seems like there’s a few bands coming out of that scene lately.

RK: The funny thing is, none of really came up in the scene. To me, it’s more about Canada. A lot of cool stuff has come out of Canada, even as far back as The Band, or as far back as Robbie Robertson and Neil Young. We’ve always had real good Canadian representation. Now it’s bands like Avril Lavigne, Nickelback, and Sum 41, who are Canadian and have done something down here [in the U.S.].

Up there in Canada, they won’t really recognize you until you’ve done something here. We were on the cover of a weekly entertainment publication in Vancouver, but it was only after we were on a main stage at Warped, and selling more records.

T3M: What’s been your favorite city to play in?

RK: I would say Denver, just because they’ve treated us well. There’s a radio station there that’s been giving us a lot of play. We went there and headlined a show. It was our first American headlining show before we did our tour in Halifax, and it sold out. We were like ‘Are you serious? There are eight-hundred kids waiting to see us?’

So when we came for Warped, it was great. And now, that same thing is starting to happen in a bunch of places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, Calgary, and Salt Lake City. A lot of places are really starting to feel the vibe on the west coast, and it’s slowly moving toward the east coast. You just have to be patient.

You see bands that get in a fad, and they’re successful in like a year and a half, and you go ‘how did you do that?’ But, if you look at them in three years and go talk to them they’re probably going to be clamoring to do anything, because that fad may have passed along. The best that you can do is not to be a part of any fad. Do your own thing.

T3M: Where do you see yourself in three years?

RK: Hopefully we’ll have climbed. I never want to be a million-billion-selling band, where we’re on the cover of every magazine. My ideal is to be where Mike Patton is with his stuff. He can put out anything he wants, and he gets the same fifty-thousand people to buy his records every time. He owns his own label, and makes a killing off every CD. And he’s making influential music. I thinking he’s making something that we’ll look back at in thirty years and say ‘remember him.’ At that point it’s not about sales, it’s not about money, it’s about how you influenced people.

Look at the Velvet Underground. At the time, who gave a shit? But now everybody says how great they were.

T3M: In my opinion, Mike Patton is already at that point. If you look back at his career, you can name so many bands that have been influenced by him over the years.

RK: Totally. I think he’s a huge influence, and very under-rated.

T3M: Any closing thoughts?

RK: Check out our MySpace; www.myspace.com/tvbs. If you write to us, we write everybody back. So say ‘hello.’

T3M: Thank you for taking the time to speak to us today.

| 08.09.2007 | Interview by J. Pierson and Kristen Pierson |
BAND: The Vincent Black Shadow
INTERVIEWER: Liz Wise (Liz@bandvibe.com)
INTERVIEWEE: Rob, Anthony (Tony), and Chris Kirkham
DATE OF INTERVIEW: 07.23.06
BV: Is this your first Warped tour?
Rob: Yeah, this is the first one.
Chris: It’s virgin territory for us.

BV: How does it feel to be a part of this many bands? What do you think sets you apart from other bands on Warped Tour?
Tony: Well we sound very different from most bands on the tour, mainly because we don’t have that emo screamo vibe to us. Well, Cassie does a scream but it’s more like out of frustration.
Rob: We sound more like polka, a punk polka.
Tony: No we don’t…
Chris: I think it’s just such intense volume now. You’ve got to wear earplugs just walking around out here. There are so many stages.
Tony: There are a lot more small stages now. And now I think that those smaller stages are getting more attention. A lot more people go looking around at those stages now, even if to get away from the giant crowds at the main stages.

BV: Do you enjoy touring?
Tony: Absolutely. We’re one of the only bands that’s on the whole tour.
Chris: Just not with each other (laughs). We’re brothers. We stay at opposite ends of the bus.
Tony: You get to pick up new fans and meet new bands, steal those band’s fans. I mean this bus is nicer then my apartment back home.

BV: Is it better to tour on your own or as part of a festival as this?
Chris: At this point yes. For a new band especially. While people are waiting to see the band they really came to see they might stop and check us out, or any of the lesser known bands. It’s good exposure.

BV: Where’s the most interesting place you’ve been on tour?
Tony: Maybe Vienna.
Chris: That room waiting to get across the border.
Rob: I can’t think of anything so I’ve got to say the one time we just stopped and set up on the side of the freeway. That was great. There were all these people driving by staring, but some actually parked.
Chris: That’s not actually true. Don’t listen to him.

BV: Any great stories from the tour so far?
Chris: Sometimes you’ll have this rogue group of Indians come at you.

BV: Any plans for after Warped Tour?
Rob: Touring more to promote the album. It just came out on July 11th.
Chris: More and more touring. The Warped tour was actually sort of a promotion or the album. It just came out and we’ve been on the whole tour.

BV: Are you guys with a record label right now?
Rob: They’re called Bodog records.

BV: How hard was it to find a label?
Chris: That’s the funny thing, we never really looked.
Rob: Have you heard of Biff Naked? She’s big in Canada. We gave some stuff to her. Then her dog ended up biting the head of Bodog Records, Rikki Zazula, on the ankle. Then his company bought out HRM, our label at the time, and there you go.
Tony: It’s still a long process though.

BV: How did the current line-up come together?
Rob: Well I already had a lot of the songs written. I’m lazy… So I just walked downstairs and asked my brothers. Then Cassie joined us.

BV: Do you have any advice for bands getting started?
Tony: Work hard on your songs you know. Don’t go to the dance without any moves. Have a product that you have so much faith in that you’re willing to do everything and anything for it cause you’re going to have to. You’re going to have to be broke, be tired. Have stamina to get through this type of stuff.

BV: So what’s your writing style? I know that some bands write when they’re forced to before an album and others just consider it an all the time process.
Chris: The way I think of it is that you’ve got your whole life to record your first album. Right now the creative time in my brain is about 3 minutes a day. Usually you’re touring so much with your first album that when it comes to the second one you’re thinking, “Uh, ok…” I think we still have a lot of material from the first album.
Tony: It should be no problem if that’s something you want to do. Why should it be hard if that’s your next job after touring? If you’re a creative person it should come easy.
Rob: Then again though, you can’t rush creativity. Just walk around here today and you can see why certain songs get rushed. Some bands have 5 or 6 albums and they all sound the same. They just kept churning it out. It’s hard to write a good song. For every good song someone writes there might be 20 bad ones.
Chris: You can’t force the creative process and I don’t think we did.
Tony: Still, you have to force yourself sometimes- just do it.

BV: So then are you your own influences?
Chris: (Laughs) We are.
BV: Anyone else?
Rob: Well it’s different with each of us. There is some common ground. Our father’s a concert symphony musician and our mom was obsessed with the ‘50s scene. That’s what we were raised on. I really like Faith No More and Blondie, some Bert Backarack.
Chris: I listen to mostly punk but I also like Billie Holiday, Elvis, Roy Orbison.
Tony: I wear it on my arm (shows tattoo). I like Guns N Roses, Iron Maiden, all the So Cal punk.

BV: Who are your favorite bands of the moment? Who’s in your CD player?
Rob: Peeping Tom
Chris: I’ve gotten into NOFX. A lot of other Warped Tour bands.

BV: What would you like to tell your fans?
Chris: Buy our CD, come to shows.
Tony: Put bands to the test, be a militia for change.

BV: What is one question you would ask yourself in an interview? Answer…
Tony: “Have you heard your record’s gone platinum?”
Chris: “Who would you record with if you could?”

BV: Alright, who would you record with?
Rob: I’d say Mike Patton (Faith No More).
Chris: Danzig, if he didn’t kick my ass.