The Vacants - Grant Hiskes

By Grant Hiskes

From Left to Right: Quinn Kennedy (Bass), James Gashler (Guitar), John O’Brien (Guitar), Will O’Halloran (Drums), Shane Kennedy (Vocals) - Photo Courtesy of Kevin Stern (IG: @clay.stern)

“Fuck those guys, we could do that”.

Ruminations at The Bluebird have morphed into a testable hypothesis for Lower East Side indie rock band, The Vacants. A lively summer calendar has presented the band the opportunity to flex their expansive archive of original songs and turn up venues across Manhattan. Lead singer Shane Kennedy is joined by his twin brother Quinn on the bass, the two are not afraid to keep each other honest. College bandmates with Shane, James Gashler plays guitar along with John O’Brien, the band’s newest recruit. Will O’Halloran is on the drums.

Turned off by all of the cover songs the bands were playing in their college town, The Vacants have committed to playing no more than one cover per set. Admittedly, I was flummoxed by this a few weeks back when I saw them play at Berlin. Each of their songs sounded like one I felt I should know. That made all the more sense when I was made aware that some of their influences were my favorite bands (The Strokes, The White Stripes, Arctic Monkeys) and others in that genre like Bloc Party as well, (shoutout to Quinn for the Interpol rep). I was holding my phone up to my ear all of the next morning, trying to make out the lyrics to the video I had taken so I could download the original version. I was able to get the lyrics more or less but had no success whatsoever finding a lyrical match on Google. “Shade Store” was the only track The Vacants had out on streaming, and, therefore, I thought this track had to be a cover of a decently popular song.

Photo Courtesy of Kleber Ojeda (IG: @kleb_oj)

As it turns out, all of the songs The Vacants played that night at Berlin (aside from one Oasis song) were originals. Their live shows have been fueled by an astounding 30 original tracks, a truly remarkable amount for a band that has just been around for about a year. Naturally, I was curious as to their process in creating these songs. Shane described his approach as “melody first”, perhaps surprising considering the richness of the lyrics. He will play along to music he hears and feel out the melodies he likes, and he will write some verses and phrases as they come to him. Eventually, the beats and phrases are parsed together. Quinn shows me the Shared Notes note the band uses to toss in the riffs and beats they come up with outside of rehearsal. The demos and songs are all recorded on Ableton, a software Quinn tells me they were able to finesse through their mom’s email address.

“Does your mom work in music?”, I ask.

“No”, Quinn says, cracking a smile, “she’s a kindergarten teacher”.

Piecing together these Ableton-recorded demos and lyrics seems like a tall task. The full-length demos the band has shared with me all sound very cohesive, making the magic a mystery all the more. Shane points towards the couch, “That’s what we use these two guys for”.

One of those two guys is John. John O’Brien is the newest member of the band, but he is not new to music, just listen to one of his guitar solos if you do not believe me. The first two instruments John learned to play were the piano and clarinet, but John feels that guitar is what he is best at. “If I have an idea, I can get it out the quickest on the guitar”, an instrument he previously played in another band in his hometown of Chicago, Gal Gun.

While John’s solos live and breathe the rock the sound conveyed by The Vacants, he maintains a real soft spot for fellow Illinois-native Jeff Tweedy and Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album (Honorable Mention: Summerteeth). John left Chicago in the fall of 2023 with his girlfriend to escape the hometown feel. About a year later, The Vacants were looking for another guitarist. “I saw a poster these guys had posted looking for a guitarist, walked back across the street and took a picture”. He even told his brother about it while back home in the Windy City for Thanksgiving. “Then I got back to New York after Thanksgiving, saw another of the same poster and was like … you know what, I gotta do it, so that’s when I hit them up”.

“At the time we had talked to like … 10 guitarists, and they were all total nut jobs”, says Shane. There was the 38-year-old woman claiming she still looked like she was 25, the NYU security guard, and the guy who considered himself more of a “hobbyist … per se”. Meeting John at Josie’s was a big relief for the band. Shane, sitting at the drums with Will out for the evening, plays one of them for me on the aux. “And this”, he says, head slowly bopping with foot patting a bit quicker, pointer flexing down towards the ground, “this was when I was like, wait this part is sick”, the solo rips over the aux, “he can also fucking play”.

And then there’s James. James Gashler is from northern New Jersey and not too far away from where Shane and Quinn grew up across the New York border, making it very convenient to maintain the chemistry when back from breaks in college. James and Shane lived in the same dorm freshman year. Freshman year was when James got the guitar back out. James’ dad played and taught James to play as well at a young age, exerting influence from The Smashing Pumpkins. He put the guitar away for high school thinking it was kind of embarrassing. James’ freshman year “Intro to Guitar” class reignited his passion for the instrument

The passion for guitar continued and eventually, James and Shane formed a cover band, Touchy Subject. James and Shane enjoyed their times playing house parties and fraternity parties. Quinn was stunned when he came to visit his twin brother and James. Growing up, Shane had never had much interest in vocal lessons or being a singer, he had not even learned to play the guitar yet. Quinn caught the bug shortly thereafter, and that is when he decided he was going to learn to play bass and guitar. With college wrapped up, the band decided they wanted to make their own music. There was no better place to do that than the Lower East Side of Manhattan. “The only reason we live here is to be close to the Mercury Lounge”. 

The Vacants are fresh and ripe for a breakout on the live music scene, though their stage presence makes it seem that being up there is nothing new to them whatsoever. With chemistry and creativity fueling their live sets, there is no better time to come see The Vacants than now and get a taste of their original songs before they are recorded later this summer. Come out to Nightclub 101 to see The Vacants play alongside Massachusetts-based Morrissey Boulevard this Tuesday night.

Listen to The Vacants’ live recording on WNYU radio station here on Bandcamp: https://thevacants.bandcamp.com/track/the-vacants-x-wnyu