In the music spotlight: Vintage Trouble

Sharp-suited Los Angeles-based band Vintage Trouble has brought its soulful rock to all sizes of Chicago venues. The quartet has headlined intimate rooms like the Beat Kitchen and theaters including Lincoln Hall. They’ve also opened at Allstate Arena for The Who and played at Wrigley Field with AC/DC.

“In a two or three-year period, we went through every level of every gig you could possibly do in Chicago,” says singer Ty Taylor, “except for maybe play at church.”

Taylor finds things to love about both ends of the spectrum. “A lot of our music is made for places like Beat Kitchen,” he says.

“There’s a tightness that feels too small for the energy of the band, like a pressure cooker. The walls are sweating. You can smell the people. There’s a rawness about it that I love. To step out for big stuff like Wrigley Field and remember when you were a kid singing into a brush or doing air guitar — it’s everything you’ve ever dreamt of. The energy and vibration coming at you is undeniable. It’s as if you were a balloon, and someone blew into your foot and inflated you into the biggest version of yourself possible.”

Taylor and bandmates Nalle Colt, Richard Danielson and Rick Barrio Dill are rooted in classic sounds, but aren’t purists. Recent single “Knock Me Out” fuses rock and soul with a heavyweight hip-hop hook. “I love people like Amy Winehouse, Duffy and Kings of Leon who add modern production to what came before,” says Taylor. “If Jimi Hendrix was around now, he’d be using loops.”

Vintage Trouble has been recording new material amid turmoil within the U.S.A. and around the world, and is determined to confront issues with the healing power of music. “The whole band felt like it wouldn’t have been right to only write songs about relationships, given the time we’re in now,” says Taylor.

Taylor describes one new song called “Everyone is Everyone.” “It’s about asking, ‘What more does any minority group have to do to show people that we are all the same?’” he says.

For “The Battle’s End,” the band has launched a video project to engage its dedicated fan base of “Troublemakers.” Fans of all backgrounds are challenged to send footage revealing experiences with discrimination. The group has received powerful messages, but Taylor wants more.

“People have grown cautious about vulnerability,” he says. “I’m about to put out another call asking people to dig deeper for something that would actually make them nervous – not just for the sake of our video, but because I know what it release it would be for that person. It’ll also give strength to someone else in the same situation.”

The confrontational approach is different for Vintage Trouble, but the group refuses to be pigeonholed by its past. “We’re a bunch of cocky motherf——, so there’s no way we would allow what came a step before to define us,” says Taylor. “What comes next will always be what defines us.”

* Vintage Trouble, with Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, 8 p.m. Oct. 21, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine. $38 (18+over); ticketfly.com.

Jeff Elbel is a local freelance writer.