Roomful Of Blues-Interview

A new beginning – Interview with D.D. Bastos & Chris Vachon

by Matteo Bossi

Steppin’ Out, the new Roomful Of Blues album, out now on Alligator Records, marks also a new chapter in the band long career. It’s the first time they have a female lead singer, DD Bastos. “Actually five people left almost at once so it was quite a task to get everything going again, but it really worked out well”, says longtime guitarist Chris Vachon. “We put out the last record in 2020 and it was the pandemic, it all happened then. I think we didn’t play at all for a year and a half. So we had to rehearse when we got back playing live, you know we had not performed that record. But it’s a new thing now”.

On that record you had a lot of original songs.

Chris Vachon: Yes, I worked a long time for that…I’m glad we did but I just wish it had been a different circumstance, that’s all. And here we go with another record.

When did you join the band D.D.?

D.D. Bastos: It was june 7th 2024. Our first show was at the Spire in Plymouth, Massachussets and what a great night that was! We received a standing ovation at the end of the night. It was great.

Chris Vachon: That’s the very night people starting saying why don’t we get a record with her on it? So we said, Ok we’re gonna have to do that. It took a little to get it out but it’s coming.

You obviously knew each other before, I remember on one of your records as DD & The Road Kings you had some great players from Roomful.

D.D. Bastos: Yes, I had members of Roomful as well as members from Sugar Ray & The Bluetones…

Chris Vachon: We actually played together, we have a band together, The Sons Of Providence, every once in while we do a gig so we’ve known each other for a long time.

Bastos: It was the Nineties when my band, DD & The Road Kings opened up for Roomful for the first time, in Rhode Island and that’s when I met Chris and the rest of the band.

Vachon: Since we had experience playing together I thought-hey let’s try this-. And things have worked out well. After investigating the whole thing, we said let’s give her some jobs and I  knew she was gonna be able to do it…That happened to me also when I joined the band. They said oh we’ll give you an answer and it went on and on…

Bastos: So far so good, I’m very happy about.

Did you have to make adjustements with the repertoire, being a different singer than Phil Pemberton, the previous lead singer?

Bastos: Well, I’ve been performing since I was very young, a child and I’ve always felt comfortable in front of an audience. Then in my teenage years I started recording in a studio, I was also classically trained, I received a scholarship to study music. I’ve got bitten by the blues bug in my teen years and I’ve always loved that style of music, I really connect with. But I love the technical aspect of classical music, understanding how to use your voice…that’s very important. And that’s what allows me to sing on stage night after night without losing it. And also because I got into blues and I had my own band, I had a lot of material that I could bring to the band. And it’s all music that they learned from the masters, just like I did. So it was sort of a perfect marriage, for lack of a better word.

DD Bastos & Chris Vachon photo Sonja Lemoi

So when it was time to cut this record, you met and picked the songs together.

Bastos: Absolutely, there were songs I brought to the table that Rich already had horns charts for…he had those arrangements and we thought oh that’s fantastic. Chris and I picked out some songs. Songs that he already loved and wanted to do and once I sat down and listened to them as well I picked some other songs that I could get behind, there was good story there. And with the instrumentation it worked out beautifully.

Roomful does not have a history of female lead singers, except the six months that Lou Ann Barton was with the band in the early Eighties. Were these any of the songs the band performed with Barton then?

Vachon: Oh I think it was three months. But yes we did a couple of songs where Rich said, -we’ve done these before with Lou Ann- so we thought, these are cool songs, let’s do them. I had songs from other albums that we considered over the years, so we went through those too, something that could fit her of course.

You do songs by Big Mama Thornton, Big Maybelle, Etta James, but also some lesser known tracks from New Orleans R&B singers.

Bastos: Yes, the Big Mama Thornton and Etta James songs were mainstays in my repertoire, I’ve loved their music. And Big Maybelle as well. I also used to do some Ruth Brown that would fit perfectly. These other songs were just jams, we thought they were exciting, new and fresh and we could put our own personal spin on it. And be able to sing it your way. And it makes sense as opposed to something that band had already done. That way I have to sing it the way they did it or interpret it but not stray too far from the way it was done.

Chris, you produced every record of the band since the late Nineties, how do you work in the studio?

Vachon: We did it the same way we always do it. We rehearse for a couple of  days and then we just go in and cut live. There’s not a lot of overdubbing going on and stuff like that. We’ve always done it that way. The band is prepared and everybody is ready to do it. No big surprises there. I take a lot more time mixing it, once the tracks are done I take them here at the studio and I spend all the time that I need…that takes longer. This time we also had to wait a little time for vinyl, it probably added three month of waiting for that. The past records we didn’t have vinyl but this is the new age. I have a lot of vinyl but  I don’t buy them anymore, I got tired of carrying them around! We’re gonna see how it goes with us, people of our demographics…what’s the trick where you are?

I think vinyl is back, even with reissues.

Vachon: Right, and I think all of Alligator’s releases now they go with vinyl.

Did you record more tunes and then narrowed the choice to the ones that are on the record?

Vachon: No, that’s not what we do it, we decide what we’re gonna record before we go. We don’t have the luxury of staying in the studio for days and days, we have and get down to business. There’s nothing on the cutting floor.

DD what was the thing, if there was one, that gave you the blues bug, like you said before, when you were a teenager?

Bastos: Well, it’s interesting, because every Sunday afternoon they had a tv show called the Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, actually it came out on Saturday night but it was too late for us to stay up and watch so they played it again on Sunday afternoon. And I would always tune in to watch. One time the band Journey was playing and I’m not a particular fan of them but my brother loved Journey, so he was watching intently. And they said, -right now we’re going to bring on someone that greatly inspired us a musician that we love and we like him to join us- And B.B. King came out onto the stage! It was the most amazing thing. I had never heard of him, I looked at my brother and said, -B.B. King? Have you ever heard of him? No he said. Once he started playing and singing that was it, this is amazing, I thought. It sounded like gospel, which I was familiar with from church…but I had never heard anything like that.

So the next day I asked my music teacher at school-have you ever heard of a musician called B.B. King? Oh yes! He said, he grabbed his guitar and started playing Lucille. Every couple of weeks we would go to the library, and they had huge record collection there, so I started looking and found a B.B. King record, it was the  “Live At Cook County Jail”, one of his quintessential recordings. I kept playing over and over. And then the curiosity got to the point where I was, there must be women who did this too? So I discovered Etta James, Koko Taylor, Ruth Brown, Big Maybelle, Big Mama Thornton…you go down the rabbit hole. What was interesting for me is I could hear blues in popular music like of course Led Zeppelin or The Rolling Stones, so that fostered a lot of different styles of music that I got interested in. What a great trip it has been!

 Chris, was B.B. King a game changer for you too?

Vachon: Yes, the first blues record I have ever got is B.B.’s “Live At The Regal”, I was probably fifteen or sixteen. It all started there. My buddy gave it to me and I said, wow this is very cool. One of the reasons I loved Roomful, way before I was ever in the band, was they had the horns and that same B.B. King set up. But it took me a long time to get here, because they had great guitar players. I think I was in my thirties when I got to try out for them…Ronnie was gonna leave, but then he didn’t he stayed for six or seven more years. They hired somebody else after he finally left, his name was Tommy K, but he ended up leaving. So they put me on a tour and they kept me but they didn’t tell me for a long time that I got hired. I was on a kind of trial basis…but it worked out well and I’m in the band for 36 years.

You were in other band before joining Roomful?

Vachon: Yes, I played with a lot of band regionally…but I was playing blues anyway. I played bass with some bands and I used to sing but the thing is once I joined Roomful there were so many great singers that I was like, OK. I can stay in tune pretty good and that’s about it.

Roomful Of Blues photo Sonja Lemoi

How did you manage to keep the same identity as a band, despite the personnel changes over the years?

Vachon: It stayed pretty much the same and as consistent as possible because every time somebody leaves we find somebody who’s got the same background and knows the band. It’s been the same concept the whole time, nobody expect us to be a rock band.

DD when you joined did you feel a responsibility being with a band that has so much history?

Bastos: Oh absolutely, it’s a huge responsibility because you have all these years of history, as you said, that you basically are representing. With Roomful what’s amazing is that it’s a well oiled machine and the concept behind it being the first female lead singer to record with them I felt like -wow I really need to step up and make this happen. As the lead singer you’re the first spearhead, the first connection with the audience, because most people like to listen to music that has words and they also want a story. So I felt it was important for me to make my mark in a way that kept the history and was true to Roomful’s style but at the same time develop my own style. So that the fans would enjoy it and not feel it was something completely different that they could not relate to. That’s why I needed songs I could get behind but were in the Roomful vein.

Have thought about including original songs that maybe you could write together?

Bastos: Oh yes, that’s the plan for the next record, to write as many originals as possible. And collaboration. That’s what makes it.

Will you be back touring more? I guess it’s not that easy touring with an eight piece band.

Vachos. Well no, it’s a big challenge. We’d love to go internationally again but it’s tough with that many people. Hopefully we’ll be able to do it, things are taking a while to get going again. We’ve done so many things in the past but it’s way more difficult than with a three or four piece band.

What are some of the high points of your years with Roomful so far?

Vachos: Eating the food in Italy! (laughs) We’ve had a lot of experiences, travelling has been incredible, I’ve never thought I’d be in all those different countries, even if you’re not there for that long…when I was a kid I thought if I get a couple of gigs locally I’d be something. And it was so much more. I joined when they had done the Pat Benatar and Colin James things…so I haven’t been able to record with anybody other than Roomful. But we had people stop and check us out, like Billy Gibbons or Lowell Fulson, and that’s always a thrill, it makes you a little bit nervous. I remember one time we were playing in Memphis at B.B.King’s during a slow blues, I stepped off the stage, I was walking on the floor and all of a sudden  i look and there is Albert King blowing a puff of smoke of his pipe right in front of me…I thought -Oh Jesus!- We’ve done a lot of fun things, you could write a book about it.

Bastos: One of my most treasured moments with Roomful was that very first night, it was memorable, because it was the first. I was nervous but at the end it was fantastic, like -OK, I’m in!-. But also being able to have some of the experiences that I have in my life, for example here in the USA every state does a competition when you are in high school, you join a chorus and then you try to get into the district, the all state and the eastern,  and all nation…I was very fortunate to be able to do that. We got together with an enormous chorus, we went to a University and the performance was at a country club in New York. I was blown away by it. You have to audition for certain parts, in high school I was a soprano one, we were singing high notes, but they wanted just a small group of us for that. I was only one of five that was chosen. For me it was very important. The only thing that can top that would be a Grammy Award! That would be not too shabby.