{"id":7657,"date":"2024-04-06T23:24:01","date_gmt":"2024-04-06T23:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/?p=7657"},"modified":"2024-04-06T23:24:02","modified_gmt":"2024-04-06T23:24:02","slug":"inside-the-mind-of-justin-vreeland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/2024\/04\/06\/inside-the-mind-of-justin-vreeland\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Mind of Justin Vreeland"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Illustration courtesy of Rachel Nanos.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the woodsy terrain of New York\u2019s Hudson Valley comes a wayward songwriter with a seemingly infinite flow of inspiration: Justin Vreeland, a now-Savannah resident and sound design student at SCAD. Whether he\u2019s plucking acoustic originals at The Sentient Bean or rocking out at El Rocko lounge, he and his music are taking Savannah by storm. In essence, the singer-songwriter has an ever-growing catalog of heartfelt, lively tunes, and he shows no signs of stopping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, Vreeland released his debut EP, This is Justin Vreeland, <\/em>and shortly after, his debut album, Death to Alt Rock, <\/em>a spin on the punkish soundtrack of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World<\/em>. Death to Alt Rock <\/em>includes songs that parody the local New York alt rock scene such as Woodbury Commons, <\/em>which pokes fun at the serious tone of the scene while alluding to the titular Orange County mall. \u201cAnd that was just made in my basement in 2020,\u201d Vreeland told me. \u201cI had very little knowledge of recording.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vreeland made his humble voyage to Savannah shortly after the peak of the pandemic. Little did he know his musical journey was only just beginning when faced with the vast environment of the Hostess City. \u201cComing out of New York, I thought I was hot shit. I got a band together in middle school and we played a bunch of school functions\u2026I played one show in New Paltz, and I played one or two graduation parties. So I thought I was pretty good,\u201d he told me. \u201cThen I came down to Savannah, and I realized, no one\u2019s hiring this underage kid\u2026I had to start busking on the street. I was a busker on River Street for about four months from September 2021 to about May 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His most recent album, I\u2019d Be Invisible, <\/em>showcases notes of southern rock and classic blues with folky, intimate, singer-songwriter lyricism, a contrast from his previous alt-rock and punk records. \u201cThere [were] a lot of recordings that were built into that. Some of them were made when I was in high school,\u201d said Vreeland. \u201cI wanted an album that represented my live sets, what I liked to play. Before that record came out, [at] most of the shows I was playing, either in New York or Savannah, the only reference people had was my very first EP, and then just Death to Alt Rock<\/em> and A Space Tale<\/em>.\u201d In essence, I\u2019d Be Invisible <\/em>is Savannah\u2019s formal introduction to Vreeland\u2019s music. Songs like King of a Ghost Town, <\/em>a lonesome bluegrass tune, was written years before the recording itself. \u201cLyrically, I think it\u2019s a song about growing old,\u201d Vreeland said. His inspiration stemmed from seeing Gordon Lightfoot for the first time, applying his storytelling approach to lyricism and \u201cmetaphorical voice\u201d to the record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d Be Invisible<\/em> is story-driven, and while one might expect the album to be autobiographical, that\u2019s not the case entirely. \u201cA lot of my songs are based on pure fiction. You know, if I wrote songs totally about my life, then my discography would be pretty boring.\u201d The authenticity stems from his fluid songwriting process. \u201cA phrase pops into my head,\u201d Vreeland said, referring to his ideation. \u201cI mean, you know, a lot of [my lyrics] come from watching around me\u2026sometimes you gotta just see things. You pick it all up.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His observational, semi-fictional method of songwriting dates back to his first EP, This is Justin Vreeland, <\/em>particularly on the track It\u2019s A Tragedy. <\/em>\u201cThe second verse kind of parodies my first ever meeting with Patton Magee, who’s the lead singer of The Nude Party\u2026I remember talking with him and you know, what do you do when you run into a musician and you’re a musician too? You don’t know what to say, so you start talking gear. So Shaun Couture, his lead guitarist, had this Danelectro DC \u201859 12 string. And I said, \u2018hey, man, is that your guitar?\u2019 He said, \u2018oh no, that\u2019s Shaun\u2019s guitar.\u2019\u201d As Vreeland wrapped up the conversation, a run-of-the-mill musician-to-musician exchange about the struggle of finding gigs, \u201cwe shook hands. He walked off. He didn\u2019t say it\u2019s a tragedy, but I <\/em>said it.\u201d And a songworthy story was born from there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Vreeland finding inspiration from every angle, his discography is staggering, in fact, it\u2019s so jam-packed with songs that he keeps a second Spotify account as an archive for demos and unreleased tracks: Justin Vreeland\u2019s Workshop. When asked about his drive to produce such an impressive quantity of music, he told me, \u201cIt\u2019s feverish\u2026I just love writing, seeing if I can outdo myself. For the past three years, I’ve set a quota for myself, that I have to write 100 songs a year. And I’ve been doing that, I think, successfully. The idea is not 100 record ready<\/em> songs each year. It\u2019s kinda like working in a brewery. You\u2019re throwing it all together, getting this massive vat of it. And all the cream that comes to the top is maybe those eight songs out of the 100 that you [put on the album].\u201d And how do you even know which songs to include from such a collection? \u201cIt\u2019s just whichever ones stick in your head the most.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justin Vreeand is a musician in every sense of the term: a singer, drummer, harmonicist, bassist, guitarist, and songwriter. A storyteller at heart with an uncontrollable urge to create, his current rig is stationed in SCAD\u2019s own Barnard Village, where, naturally, more music is in the works. In terms of what\u2019s next, Vreeland told me, \u201cI’m going to try and parody all those old records from the 50s. I love those old blues players, like Howlin\u2019 Wolf, John Lee Hooker, the old Muddy Waters records.\u201d Vreeland is always creating, driven by his nonstop passion and mighty need to rock. In other words, there\u2019s always something new brewing inside the mind of Justin Vreeland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Illustration courtesy of Rachel Nanos. From the woodsy terrain of New York\u2019s Hudson Valley comes a wayward songwriter with a seemingly infinite flow of inspiration: Justin Vreeland, a now-Savannah resident and sound design student at SCAD. Whether he\u2019s plucking acoustic originals at The Sentient Bean or rocking out at El Rocko lounge, he and his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":7658,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[265,530,48,1422],"tags":[330,50,504,60,576,59,1419,129,97],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7657"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7657"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7659,"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7657\/revisions\/7659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scadradio.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}