Vagiant are ready to rise above simply being 'that band from Rock Band'

Photo by Jason Ginman, 2009

Helen McWilliams is back to work at Cambridge-based Harmonix (the birthplace of "Rock Band") and suffering from the post-vacation blues. Worse, she’s returning to work after nine days spent living the dream of every kid who’s ever picked up an air guitar or slapped on Ace Frehley’s make-up for Halloween (real Kiss fans will always go with Ace over Gene). Far worse than coming back to the office after a week spent camping or relaxing at the beach, Helen has to go back to her day job after spending her vacation being a genuine rock star.

Helen and her band, Vagiant, have just completed their first east coast tour, and in a music industry where most bands never get to make a first album, they’re working on their second. For most people, that might seem like a very full plate, but Helen also works as a lead writer/producer for Harmonix, and her fingerprints are all over the first two installments of their “Rock Band” franchise. “Basically I take the word ‘rock’ out of as many things as I can,” she reports. “The less we use the word ‘rock,’ the better.” While the editorial portion of her duties help to keep Rock Band from sliding into cartoony self-parody, she also has a hand in writing the loading screen messages and trivia bits, as well as the pun-laden product descriptions in the Rock Shop.

For someone who works with words and is the outspoken front-woman for Boston’s most prolific all-female punk outfit, most of Helen’s job currently falls into the category of “can’t talk about it.” She’ll talk about the development of “Rock Band 2” and the internal split over whether the inclusion of No Fail Mode made it “less of a game,” and she reveals the surprising fact that MTV has “been a delight to work with.” Any discussion of Harmonix’s present or future however, is an understandably dead end road. Helen can’t discuss details of the much-anticipated 09-09-09 release of “Rock Band: Beatles,” other than to say that, for Harmonix, “it’s everything this year.” The mere possibility of “Rock Band 3” can’t be discussed, nor any hints about upcoming highlights in downloadable content. Even a discussion about what bands Helen would personally like to see join the “Rock Band” roster is retroactively taken off the record. “I should probably have you run that by our PR department in case they need you to take it out.” In an industry where anything posted online immediately becomes taken as gospel, Harmonix knows that the less said the better.

One subject that is absolutely not taboo is Vagiant, the band Helen (aka “The Hellion”) formed in 2005, along with three fellow Harmonix employees. The band’s name (if you feel the need to lower your voice when you say it, you’re pronouncing it right) can be credited to Helen herself…sort of. “I always tell people I came up with the name, but the truth is that I stole it from a friend,” she admits. “The important thing is that I’m the one who came up with the idea to steal the name.” The band’s origins can be traced to Helen’s defining rock moment: “When I was three, I saw Joan Jett on TV and that was it. I went to the bathroom, cut off my hair, and asked my parents to buy me a guitar.” It wasn’t until years later that she actually bought her first guitar at a pawn shop and came to the startling realization that “playing guitar is hard!”

The band’s sound is pure attitude-fueled punk. Urban art specialist Scott Burnham once expalined the appeal of early Guns N’ Roses to an audience raised on pre-packaged 80’s pop rock. “It’s like their music is a tin can on the ground, and they’re saying ‘here’s our music…f**k it and you, too.’ At first it’s startling, until you realize it’s exactly what you’ve been wanting.” That appeal holds true to Vagiant’s 2007 debut, “Public Display of Infection.” Clocking in at a lean, occasionally mean (if you’re a fan of Allston night spot the Kells) seven songs, plus the cleaned-up version of “F--k the Kells” that appeared in “Guitar Hero 2,” the band’s first album cuts a lasting impression in just over 25 minutes. At first listen, it’s easy to write them off as 90% enthusiasm and 10% ability, but it’s the writing that takes you by surprise. It’s not easy to write songs that are uncompromisingly punk while also being irresistibly catchy. The Ramones could do it, Joan Jett still does it, and without question, Vagiant can do it. The songs are heavy on speed, attitude, choruses and riffs that get stuck in your head, and the occasional f-bomb. Correction: lots and lots of f-bombs.

The album, available through the band’s website, took a sales leap of approximately “10,000 times” (estimated by Helen) in the wake of the first “Rock Band’s” release in November 2007. The inclusion of the band’s song “Seven” in the game’s bonus tour swept Vagiant up in a phenomenon known as the “that band from Rock Band” syndrome. Suddenly, this 4-piece punk group went from playing for friends at bars in the Allston/Brighton area to getting e-mail from fans in spots as far flung as Sweden. “We started getting random e-mails like ‘Jah, we love you and we love ‘F--k the Kells,’ but we have no idea what it means!” Despite the massive upturn in sales of the album, the band still takes the time to include a hand written thank you note in each copy they mail out.

Around the same time the album started to take off, Vagiant’s line-up went through a series of changes, leaving Helen the only original member of the band. Lauren “LoWreck” Recchia, who joined the band shortly after inception and played on “Public Display,” also remained. Helen describes LoWreck, with her eye-catching collection of tattoos, as “the most popular member of the band,” receiving frequent fan mail along the lines of “Lowreck is soooo hot I wanna merrrrry her! Has my babys Lowreck!!!!!!” The duo have since been joined on lead guitar by Smokey, who Helen describes as “really sweet, a totally strange bunny,” and on bass by Ivahna Rock, who splits her time between Vagiant and Boston’s all female punk cover band, The Killer Abs.

With the new line-up in place, Vagiant opened for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones during the annual “Hometown Throwdown,” bringing Bosstones singer Dicky Barrett to tears with their cover of Willie Nelson’s “Always on my Mind.” In March 2009 they set out on the “I Sold My Hole for Rock ‘N’ Roll Tour” alongside Boston’s Razors in the Night. In a respectable showing for their first real tour, Vagiant played nine shows in ten nights, traveling as far south as Virginia and as far west as Ohio. Along the way their van was broken into, they ran into former Warrant guitarist Billy Morris, and they found themselves staying in the same hotel as a cheerleading convention.

The band is currently recording material for a second CD (a full 10-song album, according to Helen), scheduled to be released later this year. The tracks posted on their MySpace page (“Sugar Daddy” and “JoEllen”) show a natural progression for a group that’s had the kind of visibility boost that Vagiant has experienced in the last two years. The new material displays a slicker production sound, but also much tighter playing than the first time around. The result is a cleaner sounding product, without relinquishing any of the first album’s aggression or sense of musical misbehavior. “JoEllen” in particular could easily be mistaken for a lost, early Blondie track.

With the first tour under their belts, a promisingly addictive batch of new songs, and a built-in “Rock Band” fan base ready to spread the word, it seems like 2009 is the perfect year for Vagiant to take things to the next level. Helen teases one other song which would make an excellent album title, perfectly describing the Vagiant sound to the uninitiated: “Trash Candy.” (The name was decided upon by drawing random words out of a hat and mashing them together.) Is their music trashy? Gloriously so. You know it’s probably not good for you but you just can’t help going back for more.

***

Vagiant can be checked out playing new material, old material, and plenty of covers this Saturday (April 11th) at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, MA. Considering the show is an opening set for J.Cannibal’s “Feast of Flesh VIII, an event that includes a zombie costume contest, Helen McWilliams promises a few unique cover tunes, tailored to the evening’s festivities. Doors open at 11:00PM, and Vagiant hits the stage at midnight. Tickets are $10.00, so even the late start time is no excuse to miss this one.