Culture
Bobby Vylan talks about representation in punk music, the festival atmosphere, and writing music for himself
By: Nicholas Kobe
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LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (WOUB) – UK duo Bob Vylan is one of the modern champions of rap, punk, and rock’s ability to be a larger-than-life force of nature.
Combining the griminess of underground hip-hop and punk rock with extremely potent political messages, Bob Vylan stands out as a genre-pushing and ground-breaking band in the modern rock sphere Made up of Bobby and Bobbie Vylan, the group was formed in 2017 and has been consistently releasing a steady stream of music.
This has most recently manifested in their newest studio album Humble As the Sun, which has received lots of positive attention from critics and fans alike.
WOUB’s Nicholas Kobe had the chance to speak to one half of the duo – Bobby Vylan, ahead of the band’s performance in September at the Louder Than Life Festival. Find a transcript of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.
Photographs by Ki Price
Nicholas Kobe: If you had to describe Bob Vylan in one sentence, what would you say?
Bobby Vylan: Extremely important and necessary.
And what makes you say that?
Vylan: Because there is a lack of representation in this genre of music, rock music – in punk music specifically, I suppose. And if I can’t see myself in it, then there are plenty of other people that can’t see themselves in it because I can’t be alone in that. So I think the band is important and necessary in that instance. There are some other instances that I can imagine as well, or that I can think of that the band is important, but that is the one that sticks out the most to me right now.
What about punk rock in particular do you think is important for people to be able to see themselves in?
Vylan: Well, I suppose for me as someone of color who is into this genre of music, it’s important to just see my presence there on stage and know that I can have a voice too. And so obviously there are some instances of that. If you look at Bad Brains, who is arguably one of the most famous hardcore punk bands in the world. Extremely important, but I can look at them and see myself in them in certain aspects, but how far back do I have to go to look at to find that?
Do you know what I mean? And so I think it’s just important that people can see themselves represented in the space that they’re occupying and if they can’t see themselves represented in the space that they’re occupying, and that’s not just music, it’s not just punk music, it’s not just music in general, but it’s in all aspects, all things. If you don’t see yourself represented, then maybe you might want to take it upon yourself to be the representative. Do you what I mean? Try to bring an awareness of the lack of representation, but also push for more representation and more inclusion and be Bad Brains or any number of these bands that have acted as a symbol of inclusion and ‘oh, I could do that too.’
Absolutely. In your time in Bob Vylan, would you say that representation in punk rock or just hard rock music, in general, has gotten better over time? Do you think it’s moving in the right direction or not?
Vylan: Yeah, I think it’s definitely gotten better. I mean, it’s definitely not gotten worse, do you know what I mean? So with that, it has definitely gotten better. There are more bands now that I can look at and see and see them representing people that might not have been represented in the past. And especially they’re representing those cultures or communities on stages that are quite big and platforms that are quite big. And I think that’s also important so that it doesn’t necessarily just seem like it’s a niche subgenre of a genre that is also a subgenre of this bigger genre. So it’s quite important I think. And yeah, it’s something that I see more and more getting progressively better, and I’m very thankful that we as a band Bob Vylan get to be part of that.
The band put out a new album, Humble as the Sun, about two months ago. How have you been feeling about that record now that it’s had some time to sit there out in the public and kind of make an impact with your listeners and your fans?
Vylan: Yeah, I mean it’s been great. It is an album that I really needed to make for myself personally in terms of the lyrics and the writing on there. And so it feels kind of strange because it’s written from the lyrics, it’s written for myself to enjoy and I regularly enjoy the album. I’ll listen to it when I’m driving or when I’m cleaning or when at the gym, or any number of tasks. But it is weird to put out something that you’ve made for yourself and have other people enjoy it and find their own meaning behind certain things.
Because there are lines in that album that I wrote and I have a very specific thing in mind when I wrote it and I listened to it and I can smell where I was when I was thinking of that and I know exactly where I was and what I was thinking. And people find their own meanings in it. And so that’s really, it’s like a beautiful thing. I mean, there’s not really much more you can ask for.
I think as an artist, to have one, a cathartic experience with writing something or creating something, but then two, for other people to have a similar experience when listening to it. It’s like the greatest feeling ever. And then to be able to enjoy that communally with people at shows and festivals and all of those sorts of things, it’s fantastic.
Absolutely. I know some artists focus on writing material for themselves, and others focus on writing material for their audience. Why do you choose to write for yourself?
Vylan: I don’t feel like I have a choice in a weird way. Because I could write a song for somebody else. I could write a song that has no, or seemingly no, attachment to my life. It has no applicable kind of meaning to my life. I suppose somewhere deep down it would, but on the surface level, it wouldn’t. It could be a love song for any artist to sing or whatever it is, but that’s not what comes naturally to me. And so I would be doing an unnatural thing.
Maybe the pendulum one day might swing and I’ll start writing for other people, I might have said everything I have to say about my life. And then writing for others may become more natural, may become an easier thing for me to do. But at the moment I just think it’s something that I don’t really have much say in. I write as a form of therapy type. It’s very therapeutic for me when I’m writing. And there are things that I’ve written that aren’t for public consumption, they’re just for me to read and for me to be happy about and for me to get off my chest and talk about. And so yeah, that’s really the reason why – I don’t know how else to write at the moment.
Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. So obviously I’m interviewing you ahead of a bunch of performances, but namely the Louder Than Life festival. You’ve been doing quite a few festivals. What in particular do you think makes the festival environment special or makes it different than just a normal show?
Vylan: Well, there are some things that stick out to me. When we are doing a club show and it’s like a Bob Vylan show, it is just us and it’s just the crowd and maybe there’s a support band, but when you’re doing the festivals, it’s like there’s the crowd that is there for Bob Vylan, there’s also the crowd that’s there for this band, then this band and this band and this band and some of those crowds crossover. There’s like in the Venn diagram, they sit in the middle and then some of those crowds are polar opposite, but they might wander around and they might catch a glimpse and they might find something new that they’re into or they might find something that they never knew existed and they hate it from the moment they hear it. But that’s quite an exciting thing to be able to experience that.
It really keeps you on your toes as a performer because you realize you’re going to this festival and not everybody is there for you. Your name is not by itself on the marquee, there are so many other bands there and there are so many other crowds there. So it’s cool to be kept on your toes with that. But it’s also really cool to introduce yourself to new people and for them to maybe find something in your music that they like and they may have never known that this thing existed. They’re now suddenly aware of something new, something maybe that they needed and they didn’t know that they needed or something that they’ve heard, ‘Oh, we’ve heard this band name, but we never really checked out the music,’ or whatever.
So I really enjoy that and I really enjoy connecting with other bands as well – that happens backstage and watching some of these bands that I grew up listening to or that I’m a fan of currently. And just being able to connect with people. I think that is also a very beautiful thing to be able to connect with other artists and have certain experiences with them.
Yep. Are there any artists, on the Louder than Life lineup, that you can think of, or just any artists recently that you’ve had really good connections with?
Vylan: Well, we have met some of Sum 41. And that’s really cool because I remember listening to them when I was younger and they’re a fantastic band and they were one of those bands that I thought that I didn’t fully understand at that age. Sum 41, Blink 182, Green Day, Avril Lavigne, that kind of pop-punk thing was my introduction to punk music. And so that’s really cool to be able to connect and meet some of those guys. Rachel Chinouriri is a UK artist who we met when we performed on Later… with Jools Holland on the BBC over here, but then recently again saw her at Glastonbury and kind of got reacquainted with one another briefly backstage.
So it is always nice to bump into people that you’re a fan of or that you’ve seen once in passing, but not really spoken words to, and people that are your music friends, you don’t see them outside of certain environments, but when you see them in these environments, it’s always pleasant.
Absolutely. Speaking of festivals, I was able to catch the end of your set at the Sonic Temple Arts and Music Festival a few months back. And one thing that I noticed was how forward the group is so far as the political messaging behind your songs. What kind of goes into not being afraid of what people may think when you talk politically in a big festival environment like that?
Vylan: The fear of getting up and saying something that you believe in is a strange thing, but it is like we’re only speaking about our experience with a thing. So if we’re talking about the police, it’s our experience with the police and our experience informs how we feel about that institution. And you don’t have to feel the same way. That’s the beautiful thing about life is that we can share different opinions. That doesn’t mean that we can’t share a conversation or that we can’t sit and talk about something else. Do you know what I mean? Outside of how we feel about this thing politically or whatever.
I think getting up on stage and talking, especially in America because it’s different from over here because everything feels more intense. It feels heightened over there. People over there as well can have a tendency to be extremely patriotic in a way that is not necessarily found over here. When it is found over here, it’s very different from how it is in the States. And so there is obviously sometimes when you get on stage and it’s not your crowd and you say something and people get upset or angry and that’s fine. They have the freedom to leave and come back when a band that they want to see is on stage. They don’t have to stay.
Nobody’s forcing them to, some of them decide not to do that. They decide not to leave, and they instead seem to stay there and let their disagreement be known and maybe they shout out something or whatever. And so that also provides for fun interaction, which I’m all for. If it adds to the show, let’s go for it. But it’s something that you kind of navigate on a case-by-case basis. With guns being so accessible over there and the country being so divided at the moment and people’s political stances being something that they create their whole existence around it can be worrying sometimes, of course. We’ve seen things happen before some of these festivals that have had violence happen at them, and even you having mass shootings over there, that’s something that just so it’s such a foreign thing over here. Do you know what I mean? We don’t have that. And so of course sometimes it’s like a little worrying, but we can’t allow that to get in the way of what we believe in and the message that we want to get across.
Yep, absolutely. That makes sense. One more question before we wrap up. Looking into the future, what do you think the future is for Bob Vylan? Where are you as a band looking to take this project as it kind of rolls along?
Vylan: Well, the easiest answer to that question is to take it anywhere it can go. We enjoy every part of the process, like building it up slowly, slowly and kind of slowly collecting new listeners and new people that come to the shows and that find meaning in the music. But it’s also something that maybe we use as a vehicle for other things that we care about. And so for me, I would love to get into acting, and at some point, I would like to get more into writing in, I suppose a more formal kind of setting than maybe writing a book and writing academic papers and academic journals. A PhD is something that is on my list of personal accomplishments that I wish to achieve. So we just take it step by step and anywhere it goes, we will kind of steer it the best way that we can. But at the moment we are just enjoying where it’s at and we’re not putting too much pressure on it and it’s working out so far.