It’s undeniable – Trailer Choir is a force. For the past decade, the rambunctious yet alluring duo, compromised of Marc “Butter” Fortney and Vincent “Big Vinny” Hickerson, has been rocking stages large and small across America while enduring the many throes of musical life – they lived the ultimate rock star dream, being discovered by a musical heavyweight in a dingy Nashville bar. They both got married. They signed a recording contract. They became household names and made appearances in films. Vinny publicly battled his morbid obesity. They started families. They ended their relationship with their label. They signed to another one.
Now setting gears and sites on the future, Trailer Choir has reemerged and released their first single with Average Joe’s, “Ice Cold Summer.”
Butter: “Ice Cold Summer.” We write all the time – we were playing a show here in town and we were kind of like in the backstage area and Vinny’s like “Man, I got this idea for this song called “Ice Cold Summer” and me and Vinny and Brandon – one of the guys who ended up writing with us….
TCN: Brandon Ray?
Butter: Brandon Ray. We just literally – that chorus that we ended up with we just sang right there. It’s like “Ice! Cold! Ahhhh!”
Vinny: Well Butter started in with the “AHHH” and he was taking it back to like old school. Like 50’s you know or something and it just kind of stuck in there. And we wrote the whole chorus pretty much sitting right there that day. I mean it was a blessing to get to go in and do that, and just created something fun. I don’t know, we just stayed Trailer Choir with it. It’s really just a Trailer Choir song.
TCN: It is. But when you listen to the first album to this – I mean it’s Trailer Choir but it’s different. You can still tell it’s you guys but when we interviewed last year you were talking about how it went during the time off. You guys evolved and you can hear that. You can definitely hear it in the vocals; you can definitely hear it in the arrangement of some of the words.
Butter: It feels good to us. Feels good. You know we play a lot so we get to see people reacting to it, so thank you!
TCN: Next question. When’s an album coming out?
Butter: Late spring, early summer.
Vinny: We pretty much recorded all the songs for it already. Just a matter of – we might have to select one or two to leave off. We recorded a lot. That’s the cool thing about Average Joe’s, we went in literally two weeks after we signed the deal and started recording.
TCN: 12th & Porter opened back up. Your career was essentially founded there due to Billy Block and Toby Keith. How do you guys feel about that?
Vinny: You know for me and Butter – Butter has even way more history there than I do because he got married in the building. Literally.
Butter: It takes a special woman to marry their husband at 12th and Porter. Happily.
Vinny: It takes another musician, like Emily (Carter’s Chord, Butter’s wife) to just come in and just say “This is cool. Let’s do this.”
Butter: Yeah we got our first – we were discovered by Toby there. Even last night we mentioned it and something probably as more important even then – not saying my marriage isn’t important, but that place is Billy Block to us. That will always be what I think of when I think of Billy Block and Trailer Choir. Back when Vinny and I first started and just seeing that momentum and what we had in the building. It’s tried to close a couple times but it just keeps coming back.
Vinny: You can’t kill 12th and Porter.
Butter: We’ve played all the places you can play in Nashville and I really think 12th and Porter has a special feature because you can rock out in there and get loud and it doesn’t blow the crowd away volume wise. You can really get loud on the stage and get rowdy and it fits us definitely.
TCN: So aside from new music – what else has been going on? (To Vinny) Obviously you’re healed from your injury last summer.
Vinny: My foot is finally healed up. You know really I mean we’ve been so focused on the music, you know. We’ve still been playing, touring, doing gigs and things like that. But really we’ve been engulfed in the world of writing the songs and creating this record.
TCN: You had a Hinder cut correct?
Vinny: I did. I had a Hinder cut and a Caanan Smith cut this past year. And then a new girl named Caroline Kole. So songwriting world we’ve actually got some cool things we can’t really talk about yet.
TCN: Butter, you recently welcomed a new addition to the family. How’s the baby?
Butter: We’ve got a new baby who’s almost a year old. I guess he’s not new, new so to speak. I got two little boys. Their real names are Tug, like Tug McGraw, and Hutch, like Starsky and Hutch. Tug & Hutch. But I like to refer to them as “All Day, Every Day.” That’s what my names for those two boys are because they don’t quit. I’m blessed. My wife’s great. She kicks ass every day. She’s a great mom. She’s a great wife. But the kids are coming along, it’s super exciting. For me it was an opportunity to rediscover life a little bit. I get lost in the party and – it made me realize the value of certain things a lot more. So it’s really affected me in a great way. I love them to death.
TCN: I know you went through some personal stuff this year which you kind of, not really talked about.
Vinny: Yeah I got divorced in May. We just kinda realized that we didn’t match. We didn’t need to be together, you know? No hard feelings. Still friends and all that kind of stuff. We just didn’t match. You make that decision when you’re a year and half, two years into a marriage as opposed to 15 years you know –
Butter: …or before you get married.
Vinny: Or before you get married. But I was glad that we were able to talk about it amicably and just decide that we needed to both be out of that and move on with our lives. And she’s remarried and doing her thing. Like I said I’m happy for her. I got a girlfriend and she’s great and we’re in love and all that good stuff too. It’s all really positive stuff.
TCN: So second son, new relationship. Has that affected the music at all in anyway?
Butter: I don’t think to the largest degree. I mean I think what’s affected the music is just you kind of grow up, you mature a little bit. Certain things mean a little different you know – so I don’t think those two particular things. But I think it’s made us more grateful for the opportunity to be doing it and I think that some of those things you realize that you know your time changes, and your focuses change and it’s made us put a little bit more value on how we do things, and where we put our time and the way we’re approaching our careers. When we first got discovered by Toby in 2008 we were on this momentum ride. We didn’t understand it. We didn’t know it. We went from playing frat parties to opening up for Toby and getting to the radio and we just kind of were on this wave and we didn’t ever really put our feet down until it kind of fell out underneath us, so to speak. I think as we’ve kind of rebuilt this time, we’ve just looked at it a little bit more differently and I think we’re aware of some more things. So it’s just cool the responsibilities of how your life changes when you have other people to be responsible for. I think it’s cool. It’s been a good thing for all of us.
TCN: So now you’re with Average Joes Entertainment – how do you feel the relationship is working?
Vinny: We’re excited. We’ve been on the label for about a year now and we’ve kind of become the center point and focus right now and it’s incredible to see how the label works. They’ve got so many different things that they do that we’ve never really experienced before so we’re learning from them every single day.
TCN: With everything you have gone through in the past ten years in music, what would be the advice you have for people coming in?
Vinny: I think I would tell people to show up every day. Show up ready to win. You know – can’t tell you how many times me and Butter were not walking in looking as good as Sam Hunt. We may not sing as good as some of these great singers out there but we just worked. We worked our butts off every single day and we showed up every single time. We played the game every single day. We were playing five shows a week in town.
Butter: And we didn’t get paid for one of them.
Vinny: But if you’re going to be in the right spot at the right time, which is what they say you kind of get lucky – enhance your chances by being there more often.
Butter: I would just say no matter what you do, no matter if you’re doing a demo, if you’re playing an acoustic show – if there’s one person or your opening for Toby Keith in front of 20,000 – just give everything you have to it and don’t count the dollars, don’t count the time. Just make sure you’re doing it to the best of your ability because inevitably you’ll meet somebody on a Monday that you write a song with; a week and a half later that guy you wrote that song with or that girl you wrote that song with happens to be at a party and is talking to someone big in the industry…. what I’m saying whatever it is that you’re doing and spending your time on – give it. Give it everything you got. There’s no regret in that.
Vinny: And be respectful to every single person you talk to and meet.
Butter: I’m blown away – I’m literally….It’s funny, when I first came to town, I mean this is kind of an example. When I first came to town I was out in Lebanon, Tennessee in this middle of nowhere studio with an old buddy of mine who was doing some acoustic demos for this guy he was working with. And I went out there and he was working with Keith Urban. So I met Keith Urban you know 15 years, 10 years before he became what we know today. I had a perfect opportunity to become friends with, and stay in contact with and learn from – and I missed it because I wasn’t taking care of the moment that I was in. That’s happened on several occasions where you just don’t know who you’re working with and what you’re doing. So it made me realize wherever you are, whatever you do – take it seriously, give it everything you have. Get somebody’s number, stay in contact with them.
TCN: You never know who’s going to be somebody.
Butter: And you don’t, because if you go back 10-15 years with us and you looked at the crowd we were running with and if you polled everyone and said “Out of this group who do you think will have a record deal, let alone two record deals, and be on TV and “Rockin’the Beer Gut” and touring and be in a movie” and some of the things we’ve been able to do – I bet you nobody would have thought Butter and Vinny.
Vinny: We’ve always worked. Work hard, respect everybody. I think that’s the biggest thing you can tell everybody.
For information on Trailer Choir, visit their official website or find them on Facebook or Twitter.