Still greasy: The Vaselines’ Frances McKee and Eugene Kelly.
The Way of The Vaselines is one of those records that, for me, has always been the mark of someone’s good taste. Sure, nobody would have gotten into The Vaselines—an obscure Scottish band from the 1980s—if Nirvana hadn’t covered its songs, but having the smarts to dig up the band’s hard-to-find material was proof of something special.
So last year, when the group played a show at Southpaw—one of its first shows in 20 years—it was a huge deal to those of us who’ve listened to The Way more times than we can count.The fact that the band was completely fucking amazing live didn’t hurt in the slightest.
This week, the group’s released another album, Enter The Vaselines, which includes everything from The Way in addition to two EPs, the Dum-Dum LP, demos and live tracks.To back it up, the band will play two New York shows. Here, band member Eugene Kelly talks about the new record, a big U.S. tour and playing well-known songs live for the very first time. — Adam Rathe
The last New York show you played was part of a two-city tour. What made you decide to go on a big nationwide outing?
Eugene Kelly: We’re a working band now. If we’re offered shows, we’ll take them.What’s happened since last year is that we have an agent in America and people are offering us shows and we’re gonna keep playing them.
Is that what you expected to happen?
Last year, there was no likelihood of us reforming The Vaselines, but then we played this charity show.We didn’t expect anything, but now that they’re reissuing our back catalogue there’s a reason to continue playing. But that wasn’t the thinking behind it.
Are you writing any new songs?
We’ve written about five new songs but we’ve only arranged two of them to play live.We don’t want to be on a nostalgia kick playing the old stuff, so we got to work straight away.There’s not a plan for a new record right now, but we’re hoping to do one eventually. Now we’re happy to perform the songs live, but we’ll see.
Were you surprised that you had such rabid fans in Brooklyn?
That was a great show.The audiences have been really warm to what we’re doing, and it’s a total shock.We knew people had bought the record, but the reaction was a total surprise.The audience’s reactions were amazing, they were totally there. Definitely people got into us through Nirvana covering our songs; for the last 20 years that’s what people have been picking up on.There’s also word of mouth, once people pick up on us and pass us along to other people.
Is there anything that’s not fun about playing with the band again?
The difficult thing is that we’ve never had management, and we’re used to doing a lot of stuff ourselves. Now we’re dealing with a lot of paperwork because we’d barely played outside Scotland. Frances and I get along great, and it’s always fun.
What about this tour will be different for you than the last one?
We only played three shows.We’re doing seven or eight shows this time, so we’ll get to see a bit more of America and maybe Canada.We’re hoping to play to more people. Last year we spent most of our time in New York in a hotel room; I’ve been to New York so many times that I didn’t need to do any touristy things. I took a walk in Brooklyn and that was about it. It’s going to be very hot this time; I’ll have to get sun block.
Which songs seem to get the greatest reactions from crowds?
“Rory Rides Me Raw” always gets a really strong reaction. It always gets a definite reaction, more than any of the rest. I’m totally surprised that people react to any of the songs.We’re playing a lot of these songs for the first time because we never played a lot live and after we recorded the album we split up, so they’re really fresh too.
Since Nirvana got people into your band by covering your songs, have you ever considered doing some of theirs?
We couldn’t do that.We’d rather play our own songs.
> The Vaselines
May 17, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. (betw. Bowery & Chrystie St.), 212-533-2111; 8, $25. Also May 18 at Music Hall of Williamsburg.
