Donnie Vie is living proof that something good can always come from something bad. A stint in a county lock-up in Illinois a few years back allowed the singer/songwriter and long-time former vocalist for 1980s glam metallers Enuff Z’Nuff to reclaim his health, his sobriety and his sense of purpose, as well as rekindle the fiery passion that is at the core of his songwriting prowess.
The result of him enduring what can only be described as an emotional, psychological and ultimately spiritual crucible, is his latest solo album – Beautiful Things, released on June 7 through Deko Entertainment.
The details of the crime for which Vie (real name Donald Edwin Vandevelde) was jailed are more to do with family issues and him essentially taking the fall for a sibling. At the time, he was still struggling mightily with his sobriety and various health issues and hadn’t been writing much at all – highly unusual for a songwriter and recording artist who participated on 12 Enuff Z’Nuff albums, as well as a handful of solo releases and collaborations over his three-decade long career at the centre of the rock and roll circus.
“This was back in 2015, it was just the county lock up. In a way it was cool, and it was peaceful. And I got my spirit and my energy back out there and started writing songs again, which I hadn’t done for about four years. I constantly have ideas and God keeps putting these little ideas into my head and it’s my job to follow the song where it wants to go and try not to f*** it up. But leading up to that, I had battled for most of my life, because I had a lot of unresolved issues and in the band [Enuff] I was very frustrated and depressed. I found out later that I am a manic depressive bipolar and had functional autism, ADHD and shit like that. I come with a manual now. But I just found all that stuff out later, after 2015 and through some therapy to deal with my abusive childhood,” said Vie, from his home in a suburb of Chicago.
“I lost my father early. He took off for cigarettes and never came back – and he don’t even smoke. And my mother, she is in the top 10 of my least favourite people, she is way up there. So, I had a lot of unresolved issues and really all my life I was shy and insecure and scared of everything. I had to overcome that pretty quickly when I hooked up with Chip Z’Nuff and ended up centre stage, with a microphone, knowing that everyone was looking at me. That’s when substances came into play. I would drink or maybe do a line of cocaine or something to get the nerve to go on stage. But we did well as a band. We were signed pretty quickly.
“I went off the radar for a while and then all the stuff I told you about happened. But that ended up being good. At the time, I was coming back from when I was in England and Europe, I was so miserable, and had broken my ankle and I started slipping and drinking a little more. And I was just so depressed. On the day I was coming home, I was just praying to God to either take me, or change this, and I didn’t care how he did it, and I didn’t. And he sure did the very next day – with the police waiting for me at the airport back home. So, you’d better be careful what you wish for. But it all turned out to be a great thing. It made a better man out of me, it changed my whole outlook and then when I got to the end of all this, I had my family back, I had my close circle of friends and not all these buffoons coming around me, and I just decided I am going to do this and get back to writing.”
The change of perspective and sense of regained purpose permeates every track on Beautiful Things, which is infused with positivity, but not in a trite and unrealistic way. It is the positivity that comes from someone who has been through some crappy times, and lived to tell the tale, learning lessons and revelling in the second chance offered by life, or by God, depending on your spiritual bent.
“The album is positive because I am positive now. My energy and enthusiasm are back. I have been negative and so down and depressed for my whole career. And what I would do is it would reflect on my writing, because your writing comes from emotion and depression is a big emotion. Depression and a shitty girlfriend are the perfect formula for writing great songs and power ballads and this and that. I had one shitty girlfriend after another and then a wife that just outdid them all,” said Vie.
“I would write songs back then, just hoping that there was someone out there who would hear it and that it could help change something for them. I thought it was hopeless of me; I thought I was a sacrificial lamb and that my life wasn’t for me. I didn’t love myself and did a lot of harmful things and damaged my body. I would say, ‘I will worry about the consequences later.’ Well, later is now. I got a lot of things wrong, but I am like a broken down car that is still running. I am positive now, that’s the emotion I have now, so that’s why the songs on this album came out positive. And they were a brand new batch after three or four years of nothing.”
While by no means a Bible thumper, Vie does have a pretty strong sense that his creativity and his life is being guided by some sort of ‘higher power’ which he identifies as God. After enduring what he had to endure for so long, it seems like this higher power felt now was the time for Donnie Vie to re-enter the rock world but singing – and writing – a somewhat different tune.
“Here’s what happened. It had been three or four years where no song ideas came to me and that was very odd. I felt like my spirit wasn’t in my body, and I really don’t think it was. It all had turned off and it was just time to focus on different things to be able to do that again at some time in the future. And then one day, I was like, ‘I wonder if this is ever going to turn back on again. What else am I going to do if it doesn’t?’ And about a day later, the song I Could Save the World came to me, the basic idea for it. And I demoed it and thought it was pretty cool,” he said.
“And then two days later came Breaking Me Down, which is the third song on the record. And then a couple of days after that came the song Fly, which is the ballad. I realized, one is cool, two is a coincidence, but three songs in that short order, I am back in business. So, it all came back in a really good, but unexpected way.”
I Could Save the World is indeed the first song that Donnie Vie had written in four years and looks at ways he would love to change things, if he had the power. It does outline the varied social and political ills gripping the world in 2019, but also features a wistful, even hopeful positivity that is centred on bringing back values and behaviour … and music, from better times.
“Being the age that I am [mid-50s] I have seen the decline of the world, the decline of music, the decline of art. We were probably the last generation to play outside most of the time. Now everything is so f***ed up, honestly, it’s down the toilet. The polar ice caps are melting and stuff like that, everything is so f***ed up. But I am saying let’s bring some old shit back, at least for the people our age. The kids aren’t going to listen to my stuff; I am grandpa music to the kids. But for people my age, they can relate, ‘remember when we had this, remember when we had that.’ We partied at the drive in, rocked out to AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, wore our concert shirts all the time in high school. It was magical then,” Vie explained.
“So, the song is like, if it was up to me, if I was in charge of the world, I would change all that shit. If you pulled the kind of shit that the billionaires and shitty politicians that have destroyed so much, and have so much when others have little, they would all go to jail. It’s me saying, ‘if I was there, I could change the world, I could save the world.’ And hopefully people will start to wake up and want to change the world too, because I think we can, but we have to want to.”
Beautiful Things is the perfect title track for the album, because it is melodic injection of positivity wrapped up in a highly memorable, energetic song.
“The main ideas for Beautiful Things and another song, I’ll Surrender came on the same day, which is rare. When I was coming up with the melody for Beautiful Things it sounded so powerful and beautiful and so I rolled with that. And the lyrics are saying there’s a good thing in every bad thing. You can find a silver lining if you look for it. Like, landslides can take you to a river, fireflies are better in the dark. Like what you were saying about a crucible, when you burn away those layers of shit, there is something nice on the inside. It’s very positive so I decided it would be a good title for the record,” said Vie.
“And then I thought about it more, ‘well, what would be beautiful to put on the record cover?’ I thought I was doing this for the ones that love and appreciate my music and give me a purpose, so let’s let them decide what are beautiful things. And I had as many who wanted to send in an image or a picture of what they think is beautiful, like their children, their partner, or a motorcycle, this and that. And my cover artist made this collage of them on the front cover and did it in such an appealing way. It’s really good on the eyes. I love the cover. I never liked any of the Enuff Z’Nuff covers. I think they all suck. I had nothing to do with them. They were all done after the fact and by the time I knew what was going on, the CD was in my had and I am stuck with it. Now, I don’t have to deal with any of that.
“Now I am in shape and in the right mental capacity to be able to make sure every aspect of what I am presenting is right and the way I want it. I don’t have to make excuses or anything. I just say, ‘here it is, it’s the best thing I’ve done.’”
Vie recorded and shot a moving and compelling video of a cover of the John Lennon classic Instant Karma, which will appear only on the Japanese version of the Beautiful Things album, but the video is getting lots of views on YouTube. All proceeds raised from the sale of the album in Japan, and any donations generated from the video go to help various anti-bullying charities, something near and dear to Vie’s heart.
“John Lennon was into peace and love and saving the world and helping. I went searching and came across something that people are now just becoming aware of, and that’s bullying. So many kids who are being bullied are killing themselves. One third of all the youth deaths in the world are due to suicide and one third of those are from kids being bullied. My cousin hung himself from being bullied. I was bullied, so I was familiar with that. It’s just one way of making people aware and doing something positive to help these kids,” he said.
As for touring, Vie said he wants to play as much as he can, but it has to be the right situation for him, not just business wise, but health and wellness wise.
“I am not touring in the sense of going on a bus and playing good shows and then filling in the rest of the calendar with shitty little low-paying shows in crappy clubs, that barely pay enough for the gas for the bus. That’s too disheartening for me, it’s too unhealthy for me and it’s too unhealthy for my sobriety. You can get disappointed and sometimes humiliated and there’s alcohol around and you’re like ‘oh I will have just one to relax’ and then you’re right back to where you were before,” he said.
“I love my life now, and I hated my life before. Even at the best and the most successful I was, I was still very lonely. I want to do good shows. I want to have the good players, the cats that are on my record [including Mr. Big’s Paul Gilbert, Roger Manning Jr. of Jellyfish, and Matt Walker of Garbage] and those guys cost money. I don’t care if I make a penny, I just want to be able to afford those guys and put on great shows. I want those shows to be amazing. I don’t want to play just anywhere for the sake of playing.
“It’s important to me to spread this music and get it to as many people as possible. All my old fans, they were obviously the broken people that this music appealed to because I was broken when I wrote it. I get so many people telling me that they got through shit through my music, and that means something to me. If you can save or change just one human life, that makes your whole career as a musician and songwriter worth it. And my feeling is, if I can get better, anyone can get better.”
For more information on upcoming tour dates, the Beautiful Things album and more, visit http://www.donnievie.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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