Vince Spano Q&A: A Solo Artist
Q: Let me just start off by saying that your song “Over & Over” was on my Spotify Wrapped for two years in a row. I’m a huge fan of that song!
Vince Spano: Wow, thank you! It's really cool that you like “Over & Over”. A lot of people have told me that they like that song. There was this one couple that lived in Austin that I didn't know very well, but the now-husband had proposed to his now-wife with “Over & Over”. I actually ended up moving to Austin and he reached out to me and asked me to play that song at their wedding. I was like, “Dude, what?! Yes!” That was a super cool experience.
Q: That’s so special! I know when I first heard the song I had wished I could write a song that beautiful, tell me about your process.
Vince Spano: I wish I could tell you. Honestly, like most artist’s I write all my music just in my bedroom, like at 2 or 3AM in the morning. I'll sit down, write a bunch of songs, and then pick whichever ones I feel like are good.
Q: How long have you been songwriting? What made you start?
Vince Spano: I've been songwriting pretty much my whole life. When I was a kid, I basically learned English off of an Eminem tape. I used to walk around with it and, at the time, I wanted to write my own raps. Turns out I wasn't good at rapping, but that’s what I was writing at the time. I think the thing that really got me into wanting to write songs was the guitar. My sister had this guitar that my parents bought her but she never played it. It was this acoustic guitar that hung on the wall, I just felt drawn to it. When I was in eighth grade, I finally grabbed the guitar and tried to figure it out. I couldn't really figure it out so I went to a guitar lesson. It sucked so I ended learning from YouTube. I started writing music once I got to high school. The reason diving so deep into writing music was because I felt like time was going by way too fast. I never felt like I could catch up- I still feel this way. Songwriting helps me process the idea of time passing.
Q: Have you ever collaborated with other songwriters?
Vince Spano: I very rarely write with other people. I have collaborated with a close friend of mine, George. He’s in another band called Ten Foot Overhead. He's a really great guy, one of my greatest friends. I've written a couple songs with him, but we’ve only released one of them. I feel like every time I'll get together with him, we definitely come up with something special. I want to collaborate with more people though. I like to get into their headspace and see how they write music.
shot by @jeremysbox
Q: What do you think you would be doing if you weren't songwriting? It sounds like you've always been attracted to music in one way, shape, or form. Has music always been a prevalent thing in your life or did you really just fall in love with it in high school?
Vince Spano: Music has always been there. I probably fell in love with music when I was five years old. My dad got me a Guns and Roses CD, it was the Appetite of Destruction album. One time, we were on this road trip and I would play that album to death. I played it until it got all scratched up and didn't work anymore. I was really into Eminem at a really young age. I was inspired by John Mayer and like a bunch of rock bands that I love. I don't know what I would be doing if I wasn't pursuing music. I feel like that has never been an option. My parents really wanted me to be a doctor, so I went to medical school. It was fine, but it wasn’t me. I felt like I was drowning. There was so much going on. I don't know, if I wasn't in music, I'd probably be making movies.
shot by @jeremysbox
Q: I think it's funny that you went to medical school, and the EP you just dropped is called The Prescribed Project did you do that on purpose?
Vince Spano: Oh yeah, for sure! I did that on purpose. I remember I was talking to this one group and they told me that their parents wanted them all to be lawyers, so they had named their band around that idea. It's like the number one form of sticking it to the man, right?
Q: Tell me about The Prescribed Project.
Vince Spano: The Prescribed Project is basically a reflection of my life and how it’s been for the past four years. It’s a collection of moments in my life. I took these moments of what I saw and what I felt and put them together to fit this narrative. I love movies and films. I've never made a film, but I think the way that I approach my projects is the same way that a director would approach movie. You have a storyline and you have to flesh it out with all these scenes. I think of each song as a different sort of scene; put all of that together and you have a cohesive piece.
Q: So you’re a fan of concept albums?
Vince Spano: Yes, everything I make I want to have a narrative. I also feel like when someone puts out an album, it should be an event. I feel like that's something that has somewhat been lost with time. I see artists put out an album and it’s like hot for about a week and then everyone moves on to the next thing. I remember being so excited when one of my favorite artists was putting out an album and the singles were coming out and it was so cool to be a part of the anticipation. They would release videos and you would hear their album everywhere, and then they go on hiatus for another couple of years. I really just miss being that excited for music. Everybody's attention span is short since things have become more instant. I feel like there isn’t any room for an album to be like a huge event. I want to create that kind of anticipation with my work.
Q: Now knowing that, I hate to ask if you have anything in mind for your next project. I want The Prescribed Project to get all the time it deserves to breathe.
Vince Spano: That’s okay! My next project is kind of like a follow-up to a lot of what I did in The Prescribed Project; consider it a trailer to this next project. It'll make a little bit more sense through time, but that’s definitely the best way to put it. I've been kind of working on trying to figure out a really good way to put this storyline together in a cohesive way. I’m always at my home studio just working everyday to get it done. Hopefully it’ll be done by this year.
Q: Since this project is a “trailer” to the next upcoming project, how are you going to elevate your sound from where you started?
Vince Spano: I think in general, my sound is like a love letter to the music that I loved growing up. I listen to a lot of rock music and I feel like what I make are rock songs. My songs will always have that kind of alternative like nature to it. My song “been there before” is not technically a rock song but it does have rock elements in it like the solo for example. I think this next album is going to be more in the pocket of rock but it's experimental for me. I like to blend things and see how far I can go into creating something new. I feel like I'm trying to explore my ability in this album and see what it is that I can actually do.
Q: What do you think is going to is the biggest challenge so far with this new project?
Vince Spano: The biggest challenge so far is the fact that I'm making it alone. I made The Prescribed Project with a good friend of mine, Caleb Lemons. He’s an audio engineer in Austin. I spent a lot of my time last year in Austin working on this project. It came out well. I made my first EP, which was just a bunch of demos, the Letters from the Spaceman demos. I made that one completely by myself in the span of like a week, during the COVID lockdown. After everything that I’ve done in the past year, I wanted to come back to my hometown and record this on my own because I wanted to see how much I learned. I feel like I learned a lot, but there's still so much that I don’t know. I want to see what I could do on my own, so I just started kind of like working on like this home studio. There's like a vocal booth over here in the back. It's half built. I think that's definitely my biggest struggle. I don't have that much experience being the engineer and the producer of this, but I'm figuring it out as I go.
“Vince Spano: a storyteller, a visionary, and one hell of a songwriter. With grungy vocals and strong hook lines, his music is likely to frequent the air waves.
-BlueGirlHours
