Kenny Vasoli’s present-day appearance can come as a surprise to some fans. As the former frontman for pop punk band The Starting Line, Vasoli has traded in his skinny jeans and straightened hair for wooden beads and a more relaxed look to match his new music with Vacationer. While some of his fans followed him throughout the musical transition to indie electro pop, Vasoli says there are always a few surprised looks in each crowd.
“Well, I look a bit different now, and some fans didn’t catch on I was doing this,” Vasoli says. “Sometimes when I go on stage I see people get this look on their face of thinking they recognize me and then they start Googling away.”
Despite experiencing early success with The Starting Line, Vasoli wasn’t 100 percent satisfied. The lyrics he was singing didn’t match what he was really feeling inside, and he soon started “rebelling” against the 2005 image of himself.
“It’s been a really lucky life, and I can’t believe the luck I’ve had in my musical career,” he says. “All I ever wanted was to do music, but a lot of those [The Starting Line] songs I was singing were a 16-or 17-year-old trying to write some vocals, and that’s not who I am anymore.”
When Vasoli made the decision to take a hiatus with The Starting Line, it was for a “creative rebuilding” for him personally, musically and physically. Screamo music was taking its toll on him, and he says he often lost his voice after each show.
“The split really made me want to focus on making different music that’s just more of a long-term project for me,” Vasoli says. “It’s easier for me to physically play this kind of music than it is to play The Starting Line. I was 14 when I joined that band, and I’m 31 now. It’s very practical, too, because I can’t be like a 50- or 60-year-old man up on stage. I haven’t lost my voice once with Vacationer.”
Without a background in electronic music, Vasoli has spent a lot of time working on “bedroom” sets to help perfect his new style. Almost weekly, the artist sets up a camera in his room to experiment with different beats and vocals.
“The bedroom sets are supposed to be like my own private boiler room to help me DJ and get comfortable with recording something right away,” Vasoli says. “I figured I might as well set up a camera because I sing with my DJ sets, and not a lot of people know that I’m singing live and not just along with a track I’m playing. So now I throw on some trippy visuals in my bedroom with a projector I used from earlier shows and just get to work.”
Vasoli says initially, he just wanted to make music that walked the line between electronic and shoegaze. It wasn’t until he linked up with Matt Young and Grant Wheeler from Body Language that he started to get more creative with his work. After the two showed him the ropes of production, Vasoli began to get more comfortable with producing his own electronic music.
“They just blew my mind open about creating beats and taught me so much about the art of sampling,” Vasoli says. “Everything that they showed me just taught me how I could incorporate more production into my songwriting, which was never really possible before. With rock you just plug stuff in and play with each other, but with electronic music it’s like you’re building with Legos and creating different things together.”
Now in their fourth year, Vasoli says that Vacationer has evolved into a collab orative and meaningful project for the group.
“Vacationer has grown into its own really satisfying thing,” he says. “I like the level we’re at with it, and I think we’re at this really sweet spot where people continue to be catching onto it, and we still have this loose sort of freedom. I like to think of us as ‘vibe dialers’ on a good night.”
Even though Vasoli is enjoying the success he’s now experiencing with Vacationer, he wants the former fangirls and fanboys to know that The Starting Line is still very much a part of who he is and influences the music he plays now.
“I think some of those kids are sort of like me in a way, growing up with emo and pop punk and then going down the rabbit hole and transitioning into a more indie sound over time,” Vasoli says. “I’m still moderately active with The Starting Line, though, and I’m really proud of my past. Pop punk and emo [are] coming around again, and for some reason my band had a little bit of staying power with it. There’s still relevance in those records, and that’s awesome.”
ON THE BILL: Vacationer. 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 13, Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder, 303-447-0095.
