The band once called Glass Joe finds a new angle on an old form
by Mike Gibson
Knoxville's Vestle (formerly Glass Joe) are in many ways indicative of a new era in punk rock, an era where punk is a music of inclusion rather than one of alienation, a common language rather than a hermetic patois.
Wearied of hip-hop clichés and nu-metal permutations, too young to have any enmity for '80s metal and classic rock, Vestle and other bands like them bring a renewed crispness to tired three-chord formulas; more than just pop-punk, theirs is a wedding of standard rock's most durable mechanisms to punk's irrepressible soul.
"I've been in punk bands since I was 14, and it's changing," says 21-year-old Vestle guitarist Jake Jones, seated on an amplifier in the band's scattered practice space, a rental unit off Kingston Pike. "Bands are playing their instruments better, playing more parts. The ethic is changing too. Punk used to be something you wanted to keep people from knowing about—'the underground.' Now it's blowing up, and everyone's trying to get exposure."
A discussion of Good Charlotte ensues, one of many rock/punk/pop hybrids chewing up MTV2 airtime of late. And though Vestle blanch at the notion of being compared to Charlotte, they agree that the Baltimore-based outfit with its glammy posturings and L.A. Guns-cum-punk-pop sound is likewise a product of tectonic shifts in conceptions of what defines the music.
Underscoring those attitudinal shifts are two nearly wall-sized Skid Row (that's right: the '80s-era hard rockers of "Youth Gone Wild" fame) banners pinned to the rafters in Vestle's hovel, hanging without irony next to all the requisite punk-rock posters and icons, NOFX stickers and graffiti scrawl.
"I loved hair metal when I was growing up; I loved every bit of it," Jones says. "I loved coming home from school and watching MTV. '80s metal was so melodic."
"When we were growing up, metal wasn't something we felt we had to rebel against," says bassist Derek Ashe, 23. "We liked rock as well as punk. We're the kind of band that isn't afraid to start partying and throw on some old Rod Stewart, either."
Jones and Ashe founded Glass Joe little more than two years ago after they met in the weightroom of one of the University of Tennessee's student rec buildings. Conversation sparked over an Operation Ivy T-shirt one of them was wearing, and collaboration ensued.
It was soon thereafter that Ashe, Jones, and the band's original drummer connected with singer Patrick Wilson, who answered a post-up want ad in a music store. Wilson was the first of two potential frontmen they were set to audition on the same day; after hearing Wilson's earnest, punky squall, they sent the other aspirant home without singing so much as a verse.
Since then, Glass Joe have acquired a new drummer—in the person of 22-year-old Tom Burley—as well as a new name, Vestle, an explanation for which no one in the band can really provide without begging further inquiry.
"We had a show coming up, and we needed a new name," says Jones. "We don't really like the name Vestle. We were spitting out random words, and it was just the first one we all didn't hate."
Their only recording to date, the local CD Angst for the Memories released under the Glass Joe moniker, is a set of tuneful teen-punk anthems thickened and set crackling by Jones' oft-squealing, appealingly punchy guitars. And while Wilson's raw, boyish voice sometimes quavers on the ragged edge of dissolution, his ardency and lyrical directness never fail to win the day.
Theirs is sometimes a hard lot; playing shows at local venues like Ivey's, Java, and occasionally Blue Cats, they've performed to crowds of well over 100 and well under 15. A recent sojourn to single-stoplight Whitesburg, Ky., to play at a shack called the Garage, ended when they pulled into an empty parking lot to a "show cancelled" sign on the club door.
"We drove six hours to eat a pizza in a dry county," says Jones. "We did get some good pictures of us posing in front of the club with our instruments in the middle of the night."
But they intend to persevere, says Jones, so long as they can "play on weekends and still keep the roof from leaking." Like so many contemporaries, Vestle are finding their place in the once isolated and highly segregated world of punk rock, a sphere where nativist factions are at last recognizing, if not open borders, then at least common ground.
"Sometimes we play to a crowd full of hardcore or emo kids, the purists that can be pretty hard to win over," Jones says. "But every once in a while, I'll look over and catch them banging their heads right along with everyone else."
August 28, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 35
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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