Meet Andrew Comeau and Dawn Lewis of Vaud and the Villains in South LA

Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrew Comeau and Dawn Lewis.

Andrew and Dawn, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
My wife and I were engaged and looking to have more creative control in our acting careers. We were planning our wedding and looking for a good band back East and we would keep referencing the Bruce Springsteen Seeger Session band as a model. No one had heard of it.

After we got married, we came back to LA and decided on a lark to just try starting a large cabaret-style show and after pitching the idea to a local club, Fais Do Do, we have five dates on the books. So then we had to get serious about putting this thing together because the dates were three months away. My grandmother on my Dad’s side, Memere, was a dancer in Vaudeville and we knew that we wanted it to be a character-driven idea…somehow the name Vaud came to mind as a good medicine man name for the band leader and “the villains” easily followed after that.

There was an overabundance of burlesque in LA at the time and we wanted it to be more cabaret. We were inspired by modern sources like Chicago and all things Fosse but also by what we learned about Weimar Era Berlin in the 20s. We wanted the music to feel raucous, fervant and relatable. And we wanted the whole show to be sexy, diverse and over the top fun. We found a fair amount of dreamers that saw something special in this idea and we put an act together relatively quickly.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has been a smooth road…if you consider washboard gravel, potholes and falling rocks a smooth road. No. It has not. It has been an immensely fun and rewarding road but never smooth. Bands are living things and they are comprised of artists with all sorts of personalities and ambitions. In the beginning, we weren’t aware of all of that from a managerial point of view. We were unprepared for some leadership decisions when it came to thinking of the venture as a business. Personally, for me, Andy, a big struggle was that I needed to be a better musician than I was and also run and manage the band. And the latter just took all the time I had so I don’t feel like I am as good as I should or could be. We could never afford a proper road manager so I ended up with most of those tasks. The biggest struggle with this act and with any act in music is that you must tour. And for us, it is just very expensive since our idea was to have this large group. Getting even 12 people out on planes, in vans, hotels and fed makes our trips relatively short compared to most touring acts. People have missed flights, forgotten costumes, instruments, and room numbers.

Please tell us about Vaud and the Villains.
Vaud and the Villains is a live concert act comprised of musicians, singers, and dancers. It is anywhere from 12-15 people and we play a variety of music including folk/rock, New Orleans jazz, and alt/country. We’ve been compared to a cross between The Band and Pink Martini. We are most proud of the fact that based on pure desire and enthusiasm, we started something that we thought would be fun…with the idea that if WE think it’s fun, other people might enjoy it too…and we were right! We’ve been fortunate to touch many people with our live shows through the years and that has been the most rewarding thing. We’ve gotten to travel around the US and to France as a couple and experience all of that together and that has been something we’ll never forget. And we’ve made wonderful friendships and long lasting relationships as a result of Vaud and the Villains. I don’t know what sets us apart. Certainly our size. We are also pretty much DIY as a result of that too, at least so far, when it comes to recording. But I guess a lot of people do that nowadays. The dancers certainly set us apart as far as a live concert band having that as a regular element.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Andy: My favorite memory is going with my family to the place where my parents met, Beaver Lake in Clifton, NJ. It was and probably still is, an idyllic place. It was a smaller lake and only allowed small motor boats and canoes. It had a general store with ice cream and penny candy, a community center for barn dances, and red clay tennis courts. You had to take big jugs down to the community landing and fill them up for drinking water. Those summers are a huge part of my childhood. There was so much fun and each day was a new adventure. We never wanted to leave.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.vaudandthevillains.com
• Email: vaudandthevillains@gmail.com
• Instagram: http://www.instagram/vaud_and_the_villains
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.comvaudandthevillains
• Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/vaudandthev

Image Credit:
Jim Brock, Andy Comeau, Frank Rodick, Will Stockwell, Maarten De Boar

Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.