A little over a decade ago, Aaron Wagner and his brother Dominick were already playing in a band that would later dissolve. The two had no intentions of starting a new band…until they met Andrew Black.
Just moved to Colorado from Texas, Black — wearing a pair of acid-washed jeans — ran into Aaron, who said he knew immediately someone wearing those jeans in public must listen to dope music. From there the two sparked a friendship and started the band VEAUX.
Making music but unhappy in Colorado, Aaron was listening to an interview with Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic, also from Colorado. During the interview, Tedder said, “If you’re making music and you’re not in L.A. or Nashville, what are you doing? Do whatever you want to do, but analyze why you’re not there.”
The trio that was VEAUX analyzed and had conversations with their respective families and made the decision to move to Nashville.
Having been in Nashville for a while, they were trying a bunch of different things musically, but nothing clicked until they decided to make what they want to make unapologetically. During a writing session with Jason Locricchio, who Aaron calls “the Energizer Bunny of pop music,” the group made the song “Dark Planet.”
“We were just like, ‘Whoa,’ we had just written out the idea of this song,” Aaron tell us in an interview back in 2022. “These guys came in and made it what it is. It was a song where there’s a catchiness to it, but there’s also this old hip-hop grit to it, in a way. So, we’re like, ‘What direction do we go? Do we keep it down the middle or do we just do what we want to do?’ We did and y’all liked it. We were like, ‘Radio is not going to like this. This is dumb, but we’re just going to make a four-minute song because it’s what we want to do.’ WNXP picked it up almost immediately, which was crazy.”
Over the next two years, the band would release singles, including their most streamed song “Strawberry Blues,” and tour the country. They’ve also played several local shows, from their first Nashville gig at The High Watt to The East Room and Brooklyn Bowl. Their first official project as VEAUX is the new EP titled Love in the Midnight, which is this week’s WNXP Record of the Week.
“We are always making songs together at all times, it is magical in that process,” Aaron Wagner said. “I think we would have just kept coming out with singles forever and I think there’s a point where I think our fans are getting really annoyed. [Laughs.] I think they just want to listen to a group of songs that we intentionally put together.”
Aaron continues: “Love Songs for the Apocalypse was the first title. It was just like, ‘Oh, that’s really heavy.’ But the spirit of it was the same of it because it felt like the world has been in a crazy place, especially for us, like, Millennials. It’s just been one after another, just like ‘What is going on?’ I thought of that title, just kind of sitting on the couch with my wife during the pandemic and there was this strange feeling of not knowing what was going on in the world, but also being with this person that I love being with, being locked in the house. It’s like, ‘Well, that’s kind of nice.’ Love in the Midnight was just like I want to write songs that make people feel good when it just feels like everything is going crazy.”
As far as the approach they took on this EP, VEAUX went back to the mentality they had while making the song “Dark Planet,” simplifying the creative process and just making what you love.
“The songs that are on this, for the most part, were written in a week,” Aaron said. “We had gotten in the studio and spent all day, sometimes writing a song or two a day, and we just had fun. That’s the experience I want to have making music. We didn’t suffer over it; we just had a great time.”
“More than any specific reference, we were just like, ‘Let’s have some fun,'” Black said. “Let’s just find some grooves that we love and some melodies that we can sing and dance to. That was our guiding light more than any specific reference. We wanted to have a good time with the songs.”
“You just want to feel good while you’re playing them, even if it’s the same part over and over again,” Dominick Wagner said. “It just feels good, and the song just plays itself and those are super fun to play and experiment with and go in the weeds with. It’s so much fun to write songs like that.”
They’ve been thinking about their journeys from Colorado, moving their individual families here to Nashville to further pursue their music careers. From releasing singles for the last few years and finding their groove sonically, all the shows and songs have finally led to this moment, their first official release as VEAUX.
“It’s just a great moment for us to just stop and look back and see how far we’ve come as a group, as individuals, and as individual families,” Dominick said. “Yeah, it’s about us, we wrote the songs, that’s cool. But it really is a group effort that we’re all here. We all did this together. We were all weird and confused two or three years ago when we came here, and we’re meeting each other and we’re forgetting each other’s names. There was a lot that was there. For me, it’s a cool moment for all of us. We came through all this, and we can just have fun, have smiles on our faces, and look at what we’ve accomplished as a collective group.”
“The three of us have been making music in some capacity for a while now, and this EP feels like we finally trust ourselves,” Aaron said. “We were in a band before called Medic, if any of you want to look that up, but the record is out. The last project we’ve done together was in 2016. Everything since 2016 has been singles. That record took all three of us through a dark personal journey. Individually, not even as a band. As a band, we’ve always been solid and committed to each other. But personally, that record floored us in different ways, and I don’t think we’ve gotten our confidence back until this EP.”
Aaron continues: “Until ‘Strawberry Blues,’ that anniversary show with you guys [WNXP’s party at Brooklyn Bowl with VEAUX, Twen and Wet Leg in December 2022], that was the first time the three of us were like, ‘Oh, I think we’re back.’ I think it’s time for us to believe in who we are, what we want to do, and what we want to be again. It sounds weird, but I’m excited to get it over with and not in a way that I don’t care about these songs or this process, they mean a lot to me. But I think for us to remember that we can put projects together, that we can put songs together and we can put our heart and soul into something and put it out, I think is something that we’ve been lacking for a long time. And so that feels nice, too, it feels like we’re back.”
The three are back not only with a new project, but at the place in Nashville where it all started. This Saturday, July 20, VEAUX performs an EP release show at Row One Stage at Cannery Hall, the venue formally known as The High Watt at 1 Cannery Row.
“It’s a full-circle moment,” Black said. “We feel in sync with everything right now. That show is just going to feel like the little cherry on top of just we brought it all to unity.”
Listen to our full conversation with VEAUX in the audio above or subscribe to WNXP Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast.