INTERVIEW: Sponge’s Vinnie Dombroski still finds inspiration in Detroit
Photo: Sponge have a busy summer with tour stops on the East Coast and West Coast. Lead vocalist Vinnie Dombroski, second from left, is proud of his Detroit roots. Photo courtesy of Tracy Ketcher / Provided by Aural Pleasure Music with permission.
Vinnie Dombroski, the vocalist and creative force behind the band Sponge, is a rock ‘n’ roller to his core. Fully admitting he had no plan B in life, the musician continues to hit the road and bring his unique brand of rocking all across the nation. He’ll stop by the Stanhope House in Stanhope, New Jersey, tonight, July 20, and he has dates set throughout the summer, including a string of West Coast concerts in August.
No matter where Dombroski might tour — whether with Sponge as headliners or sometimes sharing the bill on the annual Summerland tour — there’s no doubt where home is: Detroit. The band has been associated with the Motor City since its inception, and Dombroski personally feels inspired by the metropolis.
“Detroit has been one of these places that it’s always just been a given that you go out and play your own music,” the singer said in a recent phone interview. “It’s never been one of those towns where it demands that you play cover tunes. In matter of fact, some of these club owners that I know, if you play more than one cover tune, they want to throw you out of the bar. This is a fact. We’ve had the great advantage of many, many clubs in the area that allow you to play your own music. … It’s just something about Detroit with the amount of bars and music venues that you’re able to go in there, and hopefully if you’re able to draw a crowd, the club owners will allow you to play original music. It kind of fosters an environment for a musician to create, to write music, to try those songs out in front of crowds, and it really is a big advantage to us. It’s rare. I don’t see it everywhere. I see it in lots of places we go to, but not everywhere we go. So we felt really blessed that we came up in the city, and, of course, I’ve always been at home in the city of Detroit.”
Sponge, which has a different lineup than its initial days, are probably best remembered for their string of hit songs in the 1990s, many of them coming from the band’s debut album, Rotting Piñata. Tunes like “Pennywheels,” “Plowed” and “Molly (16 Candles)” are standards of alt-rock history, and Dombroski still sings them with gusto on tour stops. He also weaves in tracks from Sponge’s latest effort, The Beer Sessions (2016).
This reporter saw Dombroski and company energize a crowd a couple summers ago at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey. They were in an opening slot on the Summerland tour, and the band had hundreds of audience members on their feet, stomping along and waving their hands. The vocalist even headed out into the theater’s orchestra section and sang while mounted on the top of the armrests. It was a rocking display of frontman-ship in a music culture with few frontmen left.
“We’re just kind of up to the same damn thing we were up to 25 years ago — playing gigs and making records,” he said proudly. “These days if we’re lucky we get to jump on a plane, and we’re not in a van for a long time. We’ll be out on the West Coast at the top of August. Of course, we’re going to fly, and we’re going to be doing a lot of driving. It’s a combination of both, but we’re doing the same damn thing we’ve been doing for the last 25 years or so.”
He added: “It’s my life. I have no choice. It’s what I got, man. I didn’t have a plan B. I didn’t go to college. I got into some bad shit when I got out of high school, and that lasted for a number of years. This is my life.”
Even though looking back at the acts of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s is apparently a cool trip down memory lane for the music industry (and a profitable one), Dombroski likes to keep his thoughts on the present and future. They were good days a couple of decades ago, but he’s still got a lot more music to play and create.
“I don’t look back much,” he said. “I always look forward to the next gig. Hopefully we’re getting a little bit better at what we do. I’m always excited about the idea of writing songs and making records. I guess fundamentally I’m still a songwriter at the core of it. Sometimes I get away from that. … It seems like a lot of my time is taken up with the mechanics of getting out there on the road, but songwriting is what I do. And I never had a different plan, so I’d just like to focus on that a little bit more I think in the future.”
Dombroski also surrounds himself with class-A talent, including Andy Patalan on guitar, Kyle Neely on guitar, Tim Patalan on bass and Billy Adams on drums.
“Billy, our drummer, has been with us now about 18 years, and everybody up on that deck has been involved in the group for many, many, many years,” the vocalist said. “So we don’t tend to rehearse much. We don’t really feel we need to because the band is so tight. The band has got this shit locked down, so we love to play the gigs. Fortunately we’re out there playing enough to where we don’t have to sit in a rehearsal studio, and you know what happens anyway. We get together to rehearse, and it turns into a big gab session.”
That’s Sponge in 2018: a band focused on rocking in front of the crowds — with nothing getting in the way.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Sponge are currently on tour, with upcoming dates in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Michigan, Arizona and California, among other states. Click here for more information and tickets.
