Vintage Trouble's Soulful Homecoming

The Orchard

Vintage Trouble (left to right): Ty Taylor, Rick Barrio Dill, Richard Danielson, Nalle Colt

The hills of Laurel Canyon might not be the first place you'd think to look for a gritty soul band like Vintage Trouble. But one thing that gives the band's rollicking, old-school flavor some authenticity is their decision to rehearse at their drummer Richard Danielson's house there, pitted inside a tree-covered, mid-'60s time warp bereft of cell phone reception.

"The first week we came up here, we called this place 'The Time Vacuum,'" says vocalist Ty Taylor, sitting outside the band's secluded rehearsal studio. "We would come up here, there's no phone signal, you think you're only gonna be at practice from 3 to 5:30 and then all the sudden it's 11:15."

Founded in 2010, Vintage Trouble has spent the past two years bouncing back and forth between L.A. and the U.K., performing hundreds of shows in the meantime. Tonight the group hits the El Rey Theater, celebrating the U.S. release of their debut album Bomb Shelter Sessions this week and a performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Since their first late-night gig at defunct Venice venue the Stronghold two years ago, the group went from thrashing on tiny stages all over L.A. to opening for Bon Jovi and Queen guitarist Brian May and snagging a performance on the British TV show Later...with Jools Holland. They insist, however, that they've paid their dues.

"We got to do all the steps that pretty much every band has to go through," says bassist Rick Barrio Dill. "We just got to do them very close together."

Before hatching songs like "Blues Hand Me Down" and "Running Out of You," all of the members had been in other musical projects. For Taylor, that included a four-year career with soft rock/R&B act Dakota Moon in the mid-'90s and even a stint as a Mohawk-sporting contestant on the 2005 reality show RockStar: INXS. On the other hand, Danielson -- the group's hard-hitting drummer -- had taken a 15 year hiatus from music before picking up music again and auditioning for the group.

"When we first came to Richard's house to practice, all his drums were in his backyard laying out all rusty with ivy all over them," says guitarist Nalle Colt. "He hadn't played in forever."