INTERVIEW: VEN from VENREZ – August 2023

According to a recent press release: “Fast-rising melodic rockers Venrez are back with a new single and upcoming live dates. The single “Each and Every Day” featuring Jane’s Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins and mixed by Malcolm Springer (Tantric, Collective Soul, Matchbox Twenty), was just delivered to rock radio and was #3 most added for the Billboard Rock Indicator Chart. The song is the follow up to “Show Me” which previously hit #16 on the Billboard Rock Indicator Chart.  Both tracks are taken from their current EP, ‘Purgatory Awaits,’ released via Pavement Records. The EP features 4 songs with Jane’s Addiction’s Stephen Perkins on drums. And come next month, the band will be playing a set of US tour dates this August, supporting Buckcherry.” We get frontman and band namesake Ven to discuss new music and much more…

Toddstar: Ven, thanks for taking time out. I know it’s early in the morning for guys on the road. Let’s talk about what’s going on with you guys. You have a radio single out there; you have a tour with Buckcherry. There just seems to be some turn it in the tide for you guys. What’s it like for you guys to get that radio single out there, especially when you got Steven Perkins on it with you? What’s that feel like to have a single that you can say is a radio single, you’re not just tossing music out there hoping somebody will listen to it.

Ven: Well, when we finally got a record deal and signed with Pavement Entertainment in April, 2021 and we were going to for the first time since being indie artists actually get our music on the radio, I was just really curious how it was going to do “Show Me,” which is one of the six songs up our new EP Purgatory Away hit #16 on the charts and the current single each and every day featuring Steven Perkins from James Addiction on drums is sitting at 41 with the new charts coming out on Tuesday. So, I think we’re going to be looking at having two singles off a six song EP end up being Top 40 radio hits, which blows my mind.

Toddstar: That being said, two out of six tracks. That’s more than some of what we’ll call big label bands will get out of 10 or 12 songs so you’re swinging a better average than they’re at this point.

Ven: Yeah, it’s just blowing my mind. I talked to the radio promoter, Eric Baker, when the label wanted to, we were going to release this song first and the label wanted to go with “Show Me” and I said to Eric, do you think we even have a shot at the Top 40? If I even have a song in the Top 40, I mean, oh my God, definitely a bucket list thing. He’s like, you’re going to go a lot higher, and he was right. We went all the way to 16 on the Billboard BDS chart and we hit number 2 on the Foundation’s secondary market chart. Recently the Foundation and Billboard BDS charts went away and now it’s the SS&R Rock chart. So, after four weeks, we went from 76 to 54 to 47 to 41. Tuesday we should be in the Top 40 somewhere.

Toddstar: That’s awesome. In addition to these singles, I read there’s just tons of stuff in the can. If what I read is correct, you have over 60 songs that you demoed up as well. Are you guys going to follow up this EP and bang out another set? Are you guys thinking of a full album this time or are you thinking of another EP?

Ven: We don’t really know yet. I don’t know if we’re going to exercise the option to do another record with Pavement. If we do, it’ll be another six song EP, but there’s a strong possibility that we could be signing with Universal and if that happens it’ll probably be a full-length LP. Either way, producer and engineer Malcolm Springer who mixed “Each And Every Day,” which is currently on radio, will be producing and mixing the record.

Toddstar: You mentioned going in and potentially doing something with Universal and you mentioned when you guys got signed by Pavement back in 21. What’s it like doing this stuff under a label, whether it be Pavement or the thought of doing it with Universal compared to when you first started laying down demos and tracks and recording as a total independent artist? How differently do you go about the process of writing and recording at that stage?

Ven: The biggest difference is you’ve got commercial radio support and Eric Baker’s the top guy in the business, so that’s the biggest difference. Going into April of 2021, I was depressed about the pandemic, and I was thinking about walking away. I mean January, I was going to be another year older, and I had conflicting feelings about getting out there in 2022 trying to get to where we should be. Then in 2021, Jason started writing the music, he’s the guitar player and I wrote the lyrics; we just put my vocal on the 64th demo that we wrote for recorded between March of 2020 in January of this year. I have a recording studio at my place, and he has one of his. I do all my vocals in my own studio. He was bouncing the track and sitting at the desk with the recording studio computer and then I have my office and my desk and computer there and I’m thinking, oh my God, I think I might tell Jason I’m done. I just logged on my email one morning and there was a recording contract offer from Pavement. So I said, “Hey Jason, we just got a record deal offer.” So, at that point it obviously wasn’t over, it was just beginning. So, the other aspect is it gives you a fresh boost, it rejuvenates you because no matter how long you’ve been at it as an indie artist, when you finally get signed to a label, it all just begins right there. The good thing is we have a wealth of material to record. I mean we got four or five albums worth of stuff and I’ve been sending Malcolm Springer demos and I think I’ve sent him a fraction of the 64 to 70 songs we have, and he’s already picked 19 that he loves, so probably another 40 he hasn’t even heard yet. It’s a complete change when you finally get signed – you got radio support, you got great publicists, and as a band it’s like, even though it’s like it really is all beginning now, that’s exciting. So, it rejuvenated us, and we did the second show of the Buckcherry tour last night. The first one was August 12th in Grand Island, Nebraska. Last night we played in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and I mean this band is just on fire, but everything has just come together in a way that I’ve never experienced and we’re still growing, and the crowd is really digging us. We’re growing on stage together while we’re playing, and the crowd is part of that growth and there’s this telepathic chemistry and connection between all of us on stage and the crowd simultaneously. It’s very hard to describe, but it’s quite wonderful and all these things we’re discussing right now really stem from finally getting a record deal.

Toddstar: What’s it about a band like Buckcherry taking you guys out that just seems like the perfect fit for you? Is it the music, is it the crowd? Is it the overall vibe? What just seemed like a good fit to you?

Ven: Well, it’s all rock and roll and I mean, Buckcherry is an amazing band and we fit perfectly, although we’re different. We’re a much more current band. We’re very different. We call it epic alternative rock and Buckcherry’s the ’90s man, and you got great guitar, you got great bass, you got singer that know how to perform professionally on stage, great drummers and Buckcherry’s just a very good fit for us. And so the crowd has really gone crazy these first two shows. We have 10 more to go and both bands are just getting better and better with every show.

Toddstar: Ven, if you could go back and talk to yourself when you first started this journey in rock and roll, what would you tell yourself back then knowing what you know now?

Ven: Well, the biggest thing is not to make all the mistakes I made because the music business is a very small pool full of very big sharks, and I give advice to bands that are trying to make it – you got to really be careful how you spend your money. Everybody’s got a handout. It’s just a gauntlet of hands with 95% of them ripping you off. So, I’d be a lot smarter about how I spent the money knowing what I know now, going back to the beginning, although I believe everything happens when it’s supposed to and that everything happens exactly the way it’s supposed to happen. Some people don’t believe in that, but I do, and we just had divine intervention. So, I think spending money more wisely would’ve been a great help. But again, it took me, our first tour was in 2010 and I didn’t really have this lineup until 2018 and there would’ve been no way to put this lineup together prior to 2018 because the players I have had on stage with me since 2018 and I have on the road with me right now is insanely superior to any lineup I had prior.

Toddstar: Looking forward from this tour, what are the one or two things you really hope to gain in the next year or two, whether it be, do you want to build that fan base or do you want to make sure you’re locking in security with a record contract? Or do you just want to start hammering away and making sure you’re building your musical legacy so that at the end of the day people look back?

Ven: Yeah, I mean all of that. We did our first tour in 2010 on our second tour in 2011, and they were both in Europe and the UK. We did our first US tour in 2012 with Fuel. That summer we toured with Alice Cooper and then Buckcherry was doing a massive European tour. We did a tour with Slash in the summer of 2013 in the US. We were starting to really build some momentum here. Coming into December of 2013, Buckcherry was doing a co-headline tour on a massive European and UK tour with Hardcore Superstar out of Sweden, great band live and The Last Vegas was supposed to be on the bill. Two weeks before the tour, they pulled out and decided to do the same tour we were doing two weeks behind us as a headline band. They’re a great band. So, the agent at TKO for Buck Cherry called our management, asked us if we would jump on that, and we did. So that went all through December 2013 and January 2014. Between 2014 and early 2018, we were just touring overseas. We can headline over there. So right now, I really want to concentrate on the US. I’d like to get with Universal because they’ve got a great roster. They could get us out on tour with huge names like Smashing Pumpkin, even Aerosmith. We can get a lot more tour support and go ahead and build that huge following here in the US now until we can brand this band and be a headline touring band.

Toddstar: Is that the key to you in your mind, just as a follow-up that you build the brand?

Ven: I think we’ve done a pretty good job. I mean, we have about 620,000 real fans, but if we were on a major label earlier, that number could be a lot higher. Also, what we’ve kind of been keeping under the hat, I can’t say what television station it is because I have an NDA I signed, but beginning in August of last year when we had headlined The Whiskey, which was our first show in three years after the Pandemic, a very big streaming television station started filming a documentary on me and the band, and that full crew will be filming the two shows near Chicago and then they’ll be staying in Chicago to interview Tim, the vice president of Pavement who signed us, and then they’ll be going to Nashville to interview Eric Baker, the radio promoter, our manager Bob Ardi at Concrete Marketing, and also Malcolm Springer. They’re all in Nashville. Then the first week of September, they’ll complete the last interviews in Los Angeles, and so sometime between April and May of next year, the film is called If You Believe, Everything Is Possible. I was 55 when I did my first tour and I’ve toured with two Hall of Fame Rock Stars Slash and Alice Cooper. No one’s ever started a band that late in life and really accomplished what I’ve done. It’s a great message that it’s never too late that you can live your dreams. Rock and roll documentaries are hot right now, so I’m proud that they wanted to do that, and millions of people are going to see this documentary film, so that’ll help brand us too. That’ll help along with this Tour and two Top 40 Rock Hits off a 6-song EP. All that helps.

Toddstar: Absolutely. Ven, I wish you well on your travels as you weave through the Midwest and then down into the southern area around Texas as you’re working this Buckcherry tour, and we look forward to the third single off the EP and then new music in 2024, man.

Ven: Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to put another single on the radio after the tour. We’re going to decide if we’re going to be with Pavement or Universal and we’ll go into the studio right away and make a record. I’ll look for that to be released in February or March of 2024 with the first radio single and accompanying music video for that. I would say that we would be going on tour beginning in April, and I would look for that to be a world tour where we’ll probably be on the road for 12 to 16 months with maybe a month or two off in between. That’s likely what’s going to happen.

Toddstar: Well, hopefully we’ll get you around the Detroit area and we can sit down and do this proper and catch-up next time around.

Ven: Absolutely. I look forward to it. It was a pleasure talking. See you brother.

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Category: Interviews