Story by Natalie Horner

Photo by Jenna Westover
Vinnie and the Rips was formed about a year ago, when Vincent Kieffer left his solo act in the dust and moved to Eugene from southern Oregon. On a mission to find like-minded musicians, he succeeded in drummer Jeshuel Hubbard, and bassist Ben Francis. On stage Kieffer transforms into Vinnie Rip, Hubbard goes by Thump Master J (aka J-Thump), and as homage to his “massively UK” roots, Francis turns into Scotty Shamrock.
Natalie Horner: How would you describe your sound?
Jeshuel Hubbard: The actual genre we came up with was Spookadelic Industrial Grunge.
Vincent Kieffer: Yeah, as a songwriter my mission is to make rock that’s very edgy, but yet danceable and fun, but with a message that holds some significance to things other than my own personal experiences.
NH: So, what does the name of your genre, Spookadelic Industrial Grunge, mean?
VK: Well, it’s like psychedelic, which originally the definition means “mind manifesting,” so if you put a spin on that, Spookadelic, it’s “mind manifesting into the more sinister side of human consciousness.” I don’t like to condone sinister messages, sometimes I just personify them in order to paint a picture for people, to raise awareness.
NH: Who are your biggest musical influences?
Ben Francis: I have too many…
VK: I really like the Velvet Underground, and Iggy and the Stooges.
JH: The Beatles and probably…Frank Zappa.
BF: Well, the foundation, that made me want to play music – Nirvana. Lately, listening to bass, I’ve been listening to The Clash a lot.
NH: What are you working on right now?
VK: We’re preparing to record our first official album as a group. We have about 14 songs at this point. So we’re just practicing and playing shows as much as possible.
BF: Our next show, after Bandest of the Bands, is scheduled for February 25 at Black Forest.
NH: How did you come up with your name?
VK: Well, before I joined up with these guys, I was using this other musical persona, where I called myself Vinnie Rip, where Rip stands for Rare Independent Producer, because I made a four song EP by myself, and laid down eight songs on an album called The Music Box on my own. Then I met these guys and I was like, ‘Hey, how about “Vinnie and the Rips”?’ kind of like a retro 1960s spin off.
NH: How do you collaborate between three different people?
VK: Basically, any one of us who has an idea just throws it out…
JH: Yeah, and we’ll start jamming on it, and maybe after a couple of measures someone will do something spontaneous, and we’ll be like, “Hey, that was cool, let’s keep that.”And just keep working on it like that. It’s really spontaneous.
VK: That also kind of goes along with our name as well. Vinnie and The Rips, you know, we’re all independent producers in that we all produce our own ideas. We’re all the kind of guys who, if we wanted to, could start other bands, or even cut whole albums.
NH: So, why don’t you guys have anything up online?
VK: We haven’t recorded anything yet.
JH: I’ve actually been building this studio in the last couple of months.
VK: We’ve only been together a year, so at least half that we’ve spent just getting tight and just sounding good together, getting to know each other as musicians and getting comfortable enough to where we started composing more as a group.
NH: What’s your plan for Bandest of the Bands?
JH: We’re just going to rock as hard as we can.
VK: Well, we did have a little pow-wow, and came up with our best five songs.
JH: Yeah, we kind of decided we want to be really heavy, and just play all of our really rocky, fast, heavy songs.
VK: As a three piece, we’re a simpler machine, there are less parts to go wrong. We’re going to use that sort of attitude toward it, just simplicity and delivery.

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Vinnie and the Rips