Two English Professors Rock Out

They hammer down on guitar strings, write songs, and perform in front of audiences appreciative of music. Professors have lives outside of teaching and two faculty members in the English department, Vincent Bruckert and Michael Petersen, spend that time performing live music for bands. Vincent Bruckert is a singer, guitarist and songwriter for the band Vinto Van Go, who describe themselves on their Spotify profile as “psychedelic in their mod garage” and as a band that “takes flights of fancy in their sounds.”

Bruckert said the drummer came up with the name of the band Vinto Van Go. ”I kept wanting a name that didn’t involve my name but they all kept insisting that,” Bruckert said. “The band emerged after the pandemic, after I had spent so many times in a recording studio during the pandemic with my last band,” Bruckert said. “Given that brief pause in life that organized myself I realized I really did want to commit to making music more intensely and find my ways to tell my stories through my music.”

Bruckert said he eventually switched mainly to theater writing to tell stories. “I  started writing for music when I was young for punk rock bands, but I felt at a certain age I grew out of writing music and I wrote for the stage.”

Bruckert said a lot of his songs are about his daughters and how much they mean to him. “Instead of having songs like ‘oh I met a girl today’ you could tell deeper stories I felt,” Bruckert said.

Bruckert said that having an audience of any size, being able to play under one streetlight, the name of one of their songs, is the goal. Bruckert shared what it feels like to have others appreciate the band’s songs. “We had a lot of fun this summer with a song called ‘Hot Pants Boots’ that got lots of radio play all over this country,” Bruckert said.  “When other people latch onto the song it becomes theirs and that’s the real thrill, you can’t plan that.”

In addition to Bruckert’s rockstar origin story, Michael Petersen had an origin story of his own when he formed his band. Petersen performed in a band in the 90s called We The Cats and when they broke up the bass player Gibson Arlasky and Petersen formed the band 45 souls, where Petersen plays guitar and piano, writes songs and sings. Petersen talked about what makes 45 Souls stand out. 

“I think we’re willing to kind of take our music in the direction that we are interested in, like we’re not confined necessarily by a specific genre, I write all the music and I have a lot of different musical interests, a lot of things that I listen to so elements of many different kinds of music come through.”

Petersen said he had a love for music early in his life. “I took piano lessons for ten years when I was a kid and then I was a music major in college and I studied piano in college before I changed majors to English and then when I was 25 or so my friend taught me how to play guitar and I’ve been playing ever since,” Petersen said.

Petersen encourages songwriters to have patience with the process. “It's kind of this woodshedding where you keep trying until you get better at it like anything else. My friend and I once decided you got to write nine songs to get one that is good. In the moment you don’t know you’re writing a great song or a terrible one necessarily you just have to kind of run with your gut and take it where it’s gonna go.”

Petersen added about songwriting, "It's kind of a mysterious process you’re able to sort of grab things out of the air and put them together into something coherent, it’s kind of a miracle.” 

Petersen said, “Creative outlets I think are important for all of us, whatever our talents are I think people should not be afraid to pursue those, even if you’re doing it in the privacy of your own home that joy it brings you can’t replicate that any other way.”

If you want to listen to Vinto Van Go and 45 Souls both can be found on Spotify.

Alexis Sandoval contributed to this article.

Michael Petersen's band 45 Souls Perform at Montrose Saloon. Photo Credit: Elizabeth Bobo.