Voxhaul Broadcast take on the world

In the first days of 2009, a hard-rocking, fun-loving group of guys from California made a huge impression on me. I was leaning up against the fence of the Beauty Bar in Austin, Texas with a friend, bored and unsure of what to do that dreary weeknight, when some tall, scrappy dudes boisterously busted through the Beauty Bar’s doors, musing aloud, “We’ve gotta find some people to come to this show!” Our eyes immediately met, and they asked, “Will you come to our show?” Asked who they were, they replied happily that they were in a band called Voxhaul Broadcast, and their buddies with them were in a band called the Union Line, and that their other friends, the Local Natives, were soundchecking inside. At the time, none of these names meant anything to us, but their chutzpah was so endearing that we headed inside. About ten other people joined us and we all had our minds collectively blown. A few months later, the Local Natives exploded at South by Southwest.

I’m forever indebted to the Voxhaul Broadcast guys for pulling us into the venue, and I’m both thrilled and unsurprised that they’ve met so much success since then. The band put our their debut full-length album, Timing is Everything, in late March, and are currently on tour with Rooney and Skybomber.

Though the first Voxhaul Broadcast recording, the EP Rotten Apples, came out in 2008, the band has been jamming together since their early teens, and a couple have known each other since they were in diapers.

“Tony [Aguiar] and Kurt [Allen], the guitar player and the drummer, they’ve known each other since they were like 3 or 4, playing out in the street,” lead vocalist and guitarist David Dennis says. “And I met Phil [Munsey] when I was 14, so we’ve all known each other quite a while.”

Dennis says the group’s longtime bond is reflected in the group’s music. “We pretty much learned how to play our instruments with each other. So, it’s really comfortable. It’s really comfortable to write and be in a band with each other and be with each other on the road, ‘cause we’re like brothers as much as friends, you know? It’s been one of those things where I think it makes for honest music. When people have known you for that long, they call you out on your shit; they really know who you are. You’re not fooling anybody.”

The guys have had musical leanings for a long time. Aguiar remembers when he and Allen were around eleven years old, yearning to somehow make it out to Woodstock ’99. “Instead of going, me and Kurt just decided to get a boombox and overflow my mom’s whole front yard with water and mud, and just jumped in it,” Aguiar says. “We destroyed my mom’s entire front lawn. And little did we know that they put insecticide in the grass that day, so me and Kurt ended up with rashes all over our bodies for, like, weeks.”

The band’s occasionally wild enthusiasm has not died down over the years. Touring around the country has allowed for many more adventures. “One time we were in Santa Cruz, and these people wanted us to come over to their house and we were like, ‘OK! They seem cool!’ And then we go buy a bunch of beer, and everybody’s drinking and having a good time, and then this person walks in and starts yelling and freaking out, and we suddenly realize that we’ve got a bunch of people living in a halfway home drunk. That was pretty bad,” Dennis says.

More recently, the guys had a brief encounter with the law that ended up winning them a few new fans. “We got pulled over two days ago by a state trooper, and he took all of Phil’s pot,” Dennis says, laughing. “But he was really nice. He let us go, and the cops were making jokes. We ended up giving them a CD and they never gave us a ticket. They were like, ‘Ah man, I’m gonna look you guys up!’”

In their early touring days, Voxhaul Broadcast had to rely on the kindness of strangers to make things work, sleeping on floors and sharing gear with their fellow touring bands. Still, there were rough nights.

“We were driving through the mountains, up this hill, and there were semi-trucks slipping down the hill from the black ice,” Dennis says. “We didn’t have chains on our tires and the police wouldn’t let us go any further, so we pulled over in this town. This is in the middle of a blizzard, and all the hotels were taken up, because they already had turned a bunch of people in. We ended up – all four of us – sleeping in the van during a blizzard. It was one of the most awful nights ever.”

Things have improved since then. Now, the guys are trying to learn from veterans like Rooney. “Rooney have this air about them,” Dennis says. “I really like to hang out with dudes that tour that much, they kinda know how it works. We haven’t gone on a lot of big tours, so it’s been cool to chat with them.”

Even though Voxhaul Broadcast aren’t as veteran as Rooney, they know the ropes and know what it takes to make it in a band. “There are so many great bands in L.A., so many that I feel are as good as us, if not better, you know? And some of them don’t get recognized at all. So it’s really about the people believing in you and pushing you,” Dennis says. “And it’s one of those things that you really gotta love doing. If you think you have something else that would be worth your while and make you just as happy, you should probably do that.

“You’re not gonna make a ton of dough. Well, I mean; no … that’s not…true. You will make a ton of dough. But it might take a really long time. And you have to give up a lot of other things. It’s really hard to be in relationships and all that kinda shit. To keep friendships. You really have to be committed. There’s a lot of hard times before the good times, for sure.”

It would seem Voxhaul Broadcast are hurtling into their good times. After a killer run at this year’s South by Southwest music conference, and back-to-back tours with Rooney and the Airborne Toxic Event, the band is hoping to keep plugging along and making progress. They’ve also already outlined the Holy Grail band goal they want to achieve.

“One of our ultimate goals we always talk about is, like, if we were as big as U2 and we just needed to go a step further, we would wanna be the first band to record a record on the moon,” Dennis says. With one eye on the moon, the band is pleased with where they’re headed on Earth for the time being.

“If we just keep on playing shows and hope that people like the music that we’re writing, we’ll keep on enjoying what we do and we’ll hope that other people do, too.”

Voxhaul Broadcast will open for Skybomber and Rooney tonight at Emo’s. They’ll be back in Austin May 22, opening for the Airborne Toxic Event at La Zona Rosa.