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Biography: Virginia Coalition (VACO)
Virginia Coalition is a band that has made its reputation with the blazing energy of its live shows and ability to play almost any style of music. Home This Year sees the band moving in a new direction. They’ve blended their diverse influences into a sound all their own with a maturity and attention to detail that shines on every track.
The band’s core members - Andy Poliakoff, lead vocals, guitar; Paul Ottinger, keyboards, percussion, guitar, vocals and Jarrett Nicolay, bass, guitar, banjo, vocals – have always delighted fans with their ability to confound expectations. On previous albums, their songs often featured arrangements that veered off in unanticipated directions moving from funk to rock, from go go to soul. “It’s good being eclectic,” says Poliakoff, the band’s main lyricist and frequent spokesperson. “It keeps you on your toes musically, and it’s fun, but we wanted to get back to some serious songwriting. In the past few years, we were writing for the live shows, endless groove things that are far from what we wrote when we were starting out. We wanted to get back to that original creative impulse and focus on our songwriting.”
Long-time Virginia Coalition fans may be surprised by the group’s evolution from ‘spontaneous anything goes’ band to introspective, soul-searching songwriters, but it’s a change the band welcomes. “We’ve known each other for 15 years now, and while the music is still getting better, we don’t want to keep writing the same song over and over,” Poliakoff states firmly. “I’m proud to be part of a group of three friends who have gone from the basement and garage to maturity and making music that speaks from the heart. It’s a struggle to make a great album, but we welcomed the opportunity to reinvent ourselves while staying true to the core of what we do.”
Virginia Coalition started building a buzz in their hometown of Alexandria, Virginia in the late ‘90s, releasing their first album, The Colors of the Sound, in 1998. But the three principals are life long friends who have known each other since high school, and in the case of Ottinger and Nicolay, since junior high. Ottinger wanted to be in a band since he was five years old, when his mother let him paint his face like Paul Stanley of Kiss and play air guitar with a tennis racket. Poliakoff had a guitar-playing cousin, who inspired him in the 4th grade. When he was 14, his mother was struck with cancer and eventually died; music and singing provided him with an emotional release. Nicolay’s father played classical guitar. Although he was intimidated, he’d sneak away from the family and pick out melodies on his own.
By 2003 the band had three independent albums in their pocket and maintained an intense touring schedule, selling some 60,000 albums, mostly from the edge of the stage. bluhammock music inked the band and released OK to Go in 2004, as they moved from regional to national tours. Last year’s Live at The 9:30 Club finally captured the band’s live intensity and set in motion the musical soul searching that produced Home This Year.
Taking the music back to their songwriting roots on Home This Year has imbued the trio with a new sense of purpose. The gigs they’ve been doing to prepare for the album release have been drawing raves, leaving fans awed with their emotional and musical intensity. With this new album in hand, the band is ready to write the next chapter in the history of Virginia Coalition.
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