Life Behind Bars is a milestone record for Vandoliers in more than one way.
A decade into playing together, the DFW-launched cowpunk band has established their alternately brash and sentimental blend of genres, with a heavy emphasis on electrifying live performance and sing-along-friendly power-pop choruses.
Heading into their fifth album, however, the group placed themselves under heightened scrutiny. It’d be the first music they’d release since lead singer Jenni Rose came out as a trans woman, transitioned, and got sober, acknowledging the role self-medicating with alcohol had come to play in her dysphoria. At the same time, 10 years of touring was beginning to wear the artists thin.
Heading into the studio to record with Ted Hutt (the Gaslight Anthem, Flogging Molly, Lucero), multi-instrumentalist Cory Graves declared: “It has to be the best record it can possibly be.”“If we’re going to possibly stay together and it’s going to be big enough to keep us going, then it’s got to be a really amazing record,” he recalls thinking.
“There was a lot of hope that it would be something that could change our lives, and it did,” Rose says. “But it happened outside of the studio. For me, at least, it happened in my room where I figured out that I had dysphoria. This will be a pinnacle record for me for the rest of my life, no matter what it does physically.”
Rose’s internal resolution seems to resonate with audiences. The proof, as these two see it, is in the boisterous audience participation at their shows, and the bigger and more diverse crowds the melody-driven group is drawing.
“After coming out and announcing my transition, it’s also growing in a different space,” Rose explains. “I’m seeing more women, more queers, and a younger crowd come to the shows. They get [to be] a part of the sing-along aspect of it and then it just becomes really cathartic, especially with everything going on,” she adds, alluding to the political challenges facing Texas’ queer community.
“Right now, to be a Texas band, at least for me, is a little complicated. But, I love it here. I love my home,” Rose admits, despite her claim that “I wish I was from somewhere else” on “Bible Belt.” “I love the sound that it’s produced, and I love the countryside that inspires the prettier side of my lyrics. I hope I get to stay here. I hope I get to keep being a Texan,” she says.
Performing in dresses in protest of Tennessee’s anti-drag bill in 2023 first helped Rose come to terms with her trans identity. An upcoming single the outfit has already taken to performing, “Girl on the Run,” is Rose’s first song from a trans perspective – and one she’s especially proud of. Now, onstage, the embrace of the Lone Star-grown rambunctious sound and religion-rebelling lyrics is what keeps Vandoliers playing.
“The more people sing, and the louder they sing, and the more they do stuff, the crazier we start ramping up on stage. It really is this energy exchange,” says Graves. “We try to bust out some new dance moves and we run around back and forth on the stage, and it gets really wild when the crowd’s participating.”
Vandoliers play tonight, Sept. 1, at Sagebrush.
