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Vodkanauts Send Comrade Off In Style

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By CURTIS ROSS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 27, 2007

No fake final show for the Vodkanauts. The Tampa quintet fully intends to be back on stage as soon as it can.

However, duty has called keyboardist Ryan Arsenault away to Baghdad and guitarist Mark Warren and the fellow 'Nauts decided that replacing him felt wrong.

"I'm not a superstitious man. I'm not a religious man. But that just felt like thumbing my nose at karma," Warren says.

Warren expresses the band's concern for Arsenault, an intelligence analyst. But, Warren adds, "if anybody should know where the safe spots are, it's him."

Arsenault's four-month overseas stint will give Warren and the rest of the band - drummer Stan Arthur, bassist John DeBellis and singer Jonathan Harrison - time to work on new material.

"We've been going for five years," Warren says. "We're going to use the downtime to work on writing more original material.

"We've got a good selection of original instrumental stuff but no original material with vocals," Warren says. "And Jonathan Harrison, in my opinion, is the finest vocalist in the Tampa area."

Warren hopes to make the Vodkanauts more of a presence on the club scene than it's been recently.

When Warren was putting up fliers for the band's fifth anniversary show at the Emerald in St. Petersburg in November, one friend asked if the band had gotten back together.

"That kind of bummed me out," Warren says.

Actually, the Vodkanauts are almost constantly playing, but the band's dates are filled with weddings and private parties.

"It's great to get paid $1,000 for acting like an idiot," Warren says. But he misses playing club shows with his friends in other bands.

The Vodkanauts - Warren says he had the name long before he had a band - have gained a massive amount of popularity for a band originally thrown together for one gig.

Warren talked promoter Dave Hundley into letting him open for Dick Dale at the State Theatre in 2002, and then had to put a band together for the show.

He recruited players from around the scene, including two bands Warren was a member of - Barely Pink and the Leonard Croon Band.

The band's lineup has fluctuated over the years - Harrison, for example, was the original singer, left, and returned - but its blend of surf, lounge, pre-rock pop and anything else that might fit has only gotten richer.

"We half-jokingly call our sound 'power lounge,' but it is kind of descriptive," Warren says.

New Vodkanauts material won't be Warren's only musical outlet during Arsenault's absence. He's got an all-instrumental band, Hunch, which he describes as "groove-centric prog rock."

"I'm just trying to avoid calling it a jam band," Warren says with a laugh.

Also, Barely Pink, which called it quits in 2004, will be reuniting to record a remake of "Go All the Way" for a Raspberries tribute album.

ON TOUR

The Vodkanauts

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday

WHERE: Skipper's Smokehouse, 910 Skipper Road, Tampa; (813) 971-0666

COST: $7

Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568 or cross@tampatrib.com.

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