Brian Vander Ark on Playing the Hits and the Vitality of The Ark

On Saturday, October 12, Michigan natives The Verve Pipe will play The Ark as part of a small and overdue Michigan tour. The band, most well known for their 1997 top-five Billboard hit “The Freshmen,” will play a career spanning set, with a few new songs sprinkled in. We were able to sit down with the singer and chief songwriter of The Verve Pipe, Brian Vander Ark, to talk about the vitality of The Ark, playing the hits, and what’s new with the band.

Jacob Paul Nielsen: You have kind of a Michigan tour happening here. Do you play Michigan often?

Brian Vander Ark: You know, we don’t play Michigan all that often anymore because we’re trying to concentrate on the rest of the world, frankly. We did two of the Creed cruises, which was a lot of fun. A bunch of 90’s bands got on a cruise and played shows to the Bahamas and back. Then we stayed down in Florida for a couple weeks. We just got back on the West Coast, so Seattle to, you know, San Diego.

Coming back to Michigan, it’s like, these hometown crowds or the home-state crowds are, you know, it’s something that we hit once a year. We try to get them all in the same time period.

Jacob Paul Nielsen: What is your draw to a venue like The Ark?

Brian Vander Ark: Honestly, it’s just a vibe. There’s no place like it in Michigan, especially. We love to play listening rooms, and I think THe Ark is probably the original listening room before we even knew what listening rooms were. People come there to watch the show and to listen, and nobody’s talking. It’s not a big party from the crowd’s perspective, right?

It’s an opportunity for us to do something a little bit different. For instance, when we played with Creed, on the West Coast, we had to reintroduce ourselves to people from the 90s, so you have to play the hits. It has to be a pretty entertaining 45-minute or an hour show and they have to be the songs that people will know. When you go to The Ark, it’s different. We can play something new. We can play rare tracks or deep cuts. We can play stuff from our early, early days before we were assigned to RCA. So it’s, it’s one of those places that you don’t go play for the paycheck. You go to play because you know you want to stretch out a little bit and you want to have some fun and go down memory lane as a band rather than being forced to just play the hit songs and get off the stage.


RELATED: Joan Osborne Set To Debut New Songs at The Ark


Jacob Paul Nielsen: Speaking of the hits, “The Freshmen” was released a lifetime ago. When you play a song like that, does it ever feel like you’re playing a cover of sorts?

Brian Vander Ark: That’s pretty good insight. I would say no, it doesn’t feel like a cover only because, you know, it’s one of those songs that it’s very nostalgic for people. Immediately people are brought back to where they first heard it, or an important, momentous thing that happened to them in their life. That’s what I think about when I play the song. I don’t think about the song itself. I mean, at this point, I’ve played it over 10,000 times. It’s not moving me. What’s moving me is knowing that people are enjoying it. [As a performer,] you know that some people are there to hear it. On the Creed tour, yeah, people were there to hear “The Freshmen,” and “Photograph,” maybe, or “Colorful.” “The Freshman,” of course, was the big one.

So to answer your question, no, it doesn’t really feel like a cover ever. It does feel like a moment that I know everybody is going to be on the same page. For some people it’s not their favorite song, but when everybody sings along, I mean, that’s one of those moments where, at the end of the day, that’s what you want as an audience member – having everybody around you sing all the words. From an artist’s perspective, too, that’s what you want. I wrote that song back in 1989 or 1990, sitting on the corner of my bed, trying to figure out the puzzle piece of this song. To have people sing it back to you years and years later – almost 40 years later now – it’s a great feeling. It’s a great feeling that I’ve been able to write something that resonates. It’s one of these songs that w e can hang our hats on because it is well crafted songwriting.

Jacob Nielsen: What’s next for The Verve Pipe after this tour?

Brian Vander Ark: Right now, we’re working on a new album. Try to put an album out every two or three years. So we’ll be playing a couple of new songs at the show at The Ark. The album is about 85% done right now. We’ve got two more songs we got to tighten up. What we like to do is we like to release a song a month, and then at the end of 12 months, you put the album out on vinyl. The first song will be released here in the next month or two. The full release won’t be until next year.

Purchase tickets to see The Verve Pipe at the Ark here and keep up to date with the band here.

+ posts

Recent Articles