The Bones Las Vegas @Count’s Vamp’d 5-10-18
The Bones: Patrick Vitagliano
by: Leah Burlington
I am talking with Patrick Vitagliano from an amazing Las Vegas based band called “The Bones” that does twisted covers of old cheesy 80’s tunes and original music. They are a very different kind of band and when you see them live, you will understand why. They have four great albums out, “What Would Ginger Do?”, “Dirty Pretty Things”, “”Ruin Your Rock Show, Live” their live album with all their tongue in cheek covers of 80’s songs and their new album “Caramel” which just recently came out.
- Speaking of Caramel, I heard that the cover art for the new album is a painting done by the porn actress, Ginger Lynn. What is the story behind that?
Patrick: Yeah, Ginger did paint the cover photo for the Caramel record. She’s a pretty talented artist, and that’s actually what she spends most of her time doing these days. I had initially reached out to her in 2013 when I was roughing out the plan for the “What Would Ginger Do?” record, and asked her for permission to use one of her more iconic photos for the album cover. She asked for the MP3 and lyrics to the title track, which impressed me. In the conversations that followed, it became obvious that she cared a lot about properly vetting a project before getting involved, and making sure she wasn’t being represented in a negative way, etc…We hit it off, and have kept in touch since then. She reached out shortly after that, and asked if she could use the title track “What Would Ginger Do?” as the theme song to a show she had on Sirius Radio, which was really great for us in terms of getting the music out to a much wider audience.
Anyway, cut to 2017, we had just recorded the Caramel record, and I was coming up blank on a cover-art concept. The song Caramel is a dark and tragic story about a girl trapped in her life as stripper. Her name was Caramel. As it was coming time to make a decision, I had nothing. I opened Twitter (which I almost never do), and saw this painting that Ginger had just posted, and it spoke to me. Her tweet was “I just painted her, and she doesn’t have a name, can you help me name her?”. I called Ginger, and and told her that the painting reminded me of a character in our brand new song, Caramel, and asked if she’d be interested in doing another album cover. She once again asked for the MP3 and lyrics. She called me back and said that the song really struck a chord with her, having lived a similar life. She said that she was no stranger to stripping her way across the country in Gold Lame’, and that these lyrics really hit home. She said that in the opening scene of Eddie Murphy’s “The Golden Child”, he’s standing in front of a newsstand, and in the newsstand, you can see her on the cover of Hustler, wearing a Gold Lame’ bikini, and that we had to get together and chat.
Coincidentally, she had just moved to Vegas, so we got together for breakfast and worked out the details for the album cover.
She even named the painting “Caramel”.
Ginger is a very cool chick, and you can see her paintings on her website, www.gingerlynnart.com. She also does a top notch crawfish boil!
More of this interview with Patrick in the June issue of “Sin City” Presents
