{"id":12093,"date":"2017-01-20T05:30:34","date_gmt":"2017-01-20T10:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=12093"},"modified":"2016-12-13T15:56:23","modified_gmt":"2016-12-13T20:56:23","slug":"the-verve-pipe-learns-from-its-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2017\/01\/20\/the-verve-pipe-learns-from-its-mistakes\/","title":{"rendered":"The Verve Pipe Learns From its Mistakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Verve Pipe<\/strong> got its start in Lansing, Michigan in the early 1990s. Led by singer-guitarist Brian Vander Ark<\/strong>, the group got its first big break when RCA signed the band to a multi-album deal. The Verve Pipe’s first RCA album, Villains<\/i>, went platinum (one million units sold) and spawned four Top 40 hits on various charts, most notably \u201cThe Freshmen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noticing that as the primary songwriter Vander Ark made the most money from The Verve Pipe’s success, the other band members now wanted to write songs, too. \u201cEven though we all gave each other a percentage no matter what was written, I [earned] the lion\u2019s share from Villains<\/i>,\u201d Vander Ark tells me. So for the band’s self-titled 1999 album, \u201ceverybody was writing. Because they knew that the way to sustain a life in music is through publishing.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The problem with that approach is that not everybody in a group is necessarily a very good songwriter. Vander Ark explains that in a band democracy, \u201cyou have to vote and decide which songs are worthy of being on a record. I don\u2019t care who you are; you\u2019re going to have hurt feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, encouraged by the runaway success of Villains<\/i>, the band let other matters get out of hand. \u201cWe recorded The Verve Pipe<\/i> in New York City; we had a three-month budget for $400,000,\u201d Vander Ark says. Pausing for effect, he continues. \u201cWe took nine months and spent $1.2 million.\u201d Riding on Villains<\/i>‘ success, the group expected big sales for its follow-up.<\/p>\n

That didn’t happen. Vander Ark says that he figured \u201cat least 10% of the people who bought Villains<\/i> would buy the next record, right?\u201d He remembers thinking, \u201cIf 150,000 people buy the record, then it pays for itself, and we can make another record.\u201d The Verve Pipe<\/i> tanked, selling only about 30,000 copies.<\/p>\n

While the group would get to make one more album for RCA \u2013 2001’s vastly superior Underneath<\/i>, produced by Fountains of Wayne<\/strong>‘s Adam Schlesinger<\/strong> \u2013 the rot had set in. The Verve Pipe fractured not long thereafter. It would be seven years before Vander Ark’s band made another album; by that time, only he and drummer Donny Brown<\/strong> remained from the original lineup. And the band had taken a very different direction: both A Family Album<\/i> and 2013’s Are We There Yet?<\/i> are children’s records.<\/p>\n

But in 2014 The Verve Pipe rallied back with Overboard<\/i><\/a>, their first rock album in nearly a decade and a half. With yet another new lineup (Brown had left by this time) the group’s seventh studio album was a return to the catchy songwriting and playing of the group’s heyday.<\/p>\n