The Vulgar Boatmen are an archetypal cult band. Those of us who love them really, really love them, but the three albums the Indiana/Florida band released between 1989 and 1995 never reached a wide audience. So, the reissue of debut You And Your Sister, bolstered by a pair of new remixes and three previously unreleased tracks, is a gift. Dale Lawrence and Robert Ray wrote strummy, propulsive tunes that could recall Good Earth-era Feelies, the Velvet Underground or Stax/Volt soul. The band will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Q&A with Lawrence.
Lawrence: Coincidences can be, by turn, unnverving or entracing, the perfect embodiment of the surrealists’ notion of observations that “present all the appearances of a signal, without our being able to say precisely which signal, or of what.” I always take special note of coincidences. (Like that tree falling in the woods, if one doesn’t notice it, do coincidences even exist?) Here’s one that has stayed with me.
Around the time of our first album, the Vulgar Boatmen were in need of a violist to play live shows. One day, word came of one, the girlfriend of a friend of a friend. Her name was Vicky, and she was an amateur who had not played at all in several years. It would require a lot of work, but she was enthusiastic about the project, so we gave it a go. One afternoon, Vicky and I were rehearsing at the house she shared with her boyfriend. We got done around 3 p.m., and, it being December, I decided to do some Christmas shopping at a nearby antique mall. I was there for maybe an hour. When I went to leave, I suddenly realized my keys weren’t in my pocket. My van was parked on the street, locked, and I could see they weren’t in the ingition. I looked all around the van, up and down the sidewalk, then retraced my shopping route, going to all the booths I could remember visiting, looking in the restroom, asking at the front counter. No luck. It was just dusk as I stood beside the van, wondering what in the world to do next, when Vicky’s boyfriend Jim drove by, coming home from work in his own van. I doubt I would have even noticed him had he not rolled down his window and shouted my name. I spread my open hands, palms up, and said “I can’t find my keys.” “There they are,” said Jim, pointing to where they lay, in the middle of the street.
