Art history senior Alejandro Nunez and print journalism junior Zachary Burton formed Vox Vocis with two other band mates. | Courtesy of Nichole Taylor
Rock bands generally take a huge amount of effort in building up their buzz as well as their sound, but for Vox Vocis — a band originating from Alvin, Texas — their live shows and contest appearances have been the focal point of their agenda.
With Vox Vocis now consisting of guitarist and Houston Community College freshman Alex Vaquera, bass guitarist and art history senior Alejandro Nunez, drummer and print journalism junior Zachary Burton and lead vocalist, guitarist and father Tim Brown, the “voice of voices” is gearing toward conceptualizing its music by having its songs revolve around an interesting storyline.
Print journalism junior Zack Burton plays the drums in Vox Vocis. | Courtesy of Nichole Taylor
“Cadence is our protagonist — Casso, the last name of his family. We’re trying to do the story through albums, which follow his life and what happens to him,” Burton said.
“We’ve set the story far ahead in time where they have cured a lot of diseases, but not so far where it’s impossible for things to not go wrong. There’s definitely a lot of sci-fi stuff here.”
Despite the band’s growth during the past three years, they lost two of their previous band members a pianist and Brown’s wife Tina, a guitarist-turned-mother of one-year-old Jackary.
From their initial startup to one of their most embarrassing shows, the band formerly known as “Not I, Said the Cat” had concluded that there needed to be a sense of earnestness.
“It was kind of a stupid, fun, mess-around band that we made, but when one of our members left, that’s when we added Zach, who happened to be a co-worker with my wife at the time,” Brown said.
After Burton sat in one of the band’s rehearsals, things started to fall into place for the group; band members began to unceremoniously add their voices to Vox Vocis, be it through a random show of hands or a nod from Brown himself.
Nunez took some convincing and Vaquera, a San Antonian, happened to be at the right place at the right time.
Guitarist Tim Brown is also the lead vocalist for Vox Vocis. | Courtesy of Nichole Taylor
“Zach tried to convince me to join for two or three months. Then I went to one of their shows and I was like, ‘Yeah, this is awesome. Let’s do it,’” Nunez said.
“I went back to San Antonio during the summer and I told Alex about it. We started jamming out and I kept telling him about it: ‘Hey, you should come and play with us one weekend so I don’t have to take the bus.’”
In addition to “Winter Queen,” “Ad Initium Casso” and “Erroneous Anacrusis,” more songs are being composed to tie into the theme of Cadence Casso’s journey. Their sounds range from layers of soft-sounding grooves to heavy neck breakers. Thanks to Vaquera’s knack for songwriting and reworking songs using unorthodox beat measures, the band has been able to collaboratively add innovation to their set.
“We’re more progressive rock than we used to be. We try to make music that isn’t boring or too generic. We really wanted to define ourselves,” Burton said.
Vox Vocis has grown to be a well-received group of progressive rock enthusiasts by playing at venues such as Super Happy Fun Land and Fitzgerald’s — not to mention that their upcoming showing at the Coog Radio Birthday Bash on Sept. 21 is on the horizon.
Art history senior Alejandro Nunez plays the bass guitar in Vox Vocis. | Courtesy of Nichole Taylor
They continue to smack their “Who is the Vox” stickers anywhere they can find, including on campus. Simultaneously, they keep tabs on their social media outlets — Facebook and Tumblr. They were even successful in selling up to 95 tickets for some of their recent shows; the attendance turnout decently reflected some of the sales.
Grabbing second place at the Gorillas Music’ Houston’s Battle of the Band contest at Fitzgerald’s on Sunday, Brown, Burton, Nunez and Vaquera now look forward to upcoming recording sessions at the Art Institute of Houston. For the long haul, Vox Vocis will continue to tear it up at Houston venues and on social media sites.
“We’re still writing songs for the first album — the first chapter in the story. Whenever Tim and I sit down, we basically pan out how the story will mostly go. There may be some small changes, but he and I fundamentally lay that out,” Burton said.
“We’re definitely releasing one or two songs here and there until we found somewhere that we have the money to go to that has quality production, (but for right now) we’re really trying to build a better fanbase by playing at the live shows.”
Check out their live performances of Daft Punk’s “Digital Love” and their single, “Erroneous Anacrusis” on YouTube.
