Gabe Vitek and the Ivory write relatable, changing music

Gabe Vitek found himself in Nashville on doctor’s orders after a physical in his hometown of Bryan, Ohio, when his doctor told the then-high schoolmusician he should look into Belmont University.

“In Nashville, we’re all music snobs,” says the now 22-year-old Vitek. “We’ve all heard it all.”

And like budding, young music snobs in Nashville are wont to do, Vitek attends Belmont where he currently studies music business. 

While educating himself on the technical side, Vitek is doing what he has been doing his entire life as the leading man of Gabe Vitek and the Ivory.

“This will sound cliché and ridiculous, but I’ve been playing piano before I could walk,” he says.  “And I used to sit down with my dad, and he’d play ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ on guitar and I’d sing along.” 

Vitek says his father, a musician who played throughout the 1970s and 1980s, has had the most impact on his playing.

Unable to read music, Vitek has always simply played by ear.  He used to fly solo on the piano before starting the band in 2007.  That was the year he put the music on tape with the release of a self-titled EP recorded in a house.

The six tracks shape a quintessentially guy-with-a-piano album reminiscent of The Fray.  If nothing else, it explains the band name, “ivory,” referring to piano keys.  The following year produced a more mature endeavor with the 11-track full-length “Voices.”

The album earned its name from an extensive struggle on Vitek’s part with the album’s arrangement. Recording took about a week, and was done on Music Row, in a house and at Castle Studios in Hillsboro. 

The recording days, however, were scattered randomly through the course of a year due to struggles for studio time and just “being 22-years-old,” as Vitek says.

At certain points, discontinuing the project seemed possible, and Vitek worried about the cohesiveness of the album as a whole.

“There were all these different sounds, different voices during that doubtful time, and I thought the songs just sounded like a bunch of

B-sides,” Vitek says.  “But by the time we were starting to mix it, that was not the case at all, and when it came time to write the track list for it, it took like 30 seconds.”

Vitek name-drops artists like Marvin Gaye, Paul Simon and Dave Matthews who have had a heavy influence on him as well, and he paid tribute to The Beatles’ influence at his Exit/In show Sept. 23 with an amplified take on “Dear Prudence.”

“Voices” is still of the same strain as the EP, but a lot of changes injust the past few weeks are evolving Gabe Vitek and the Ivory’s sound drastically.

“Within the last couple of weeks, I’ve done a huge musician switch out, and there are all new guys on stage with me now,” Vitek says.  “Before, what we were doing kind of plateaued and it was like a poison almost, so I just needed to do something new.”

On top of that, guitar has been replaced with horns layered underneath relentless piano.  The brass instrumentation creates a worldly kind of vibe and permits the Motown and oldies on which Vitek was raised to bubble to the surface.

“It’s the most comfortable thing I’ve ever done,” Vitek says of the changing sound.  “It makes me confident.” 

A change in the band name may even be in the future, which Vitek remains uncertain about since the band has been Gabe Vitek and the Ivory for three years.

Vitek may be treading in the vast sea of generic music, but he is staying afloat on energy and enthusiasm in live performances.  Vitek says a live EP is the next tentative project, possibly out in late spring or early summer.  There is also a video on his Web site featuring the song “Fly High” from “Voices,” recorded in a living room with friends on harp and guitar.

Probably most striking about Gabe Vitek and the Ivory is not so much the sound, but the approach to making it.  Vitek is more easy-going about his band, treating it as a wait-and-see sort of thing with no rigid politics.  He offered his recordings for free at the Exit/In show, and the EP is downloadable off his Web site free of charge as well.

Moreover, Vitek tries to steer away from trite subjects in his lyrics.  Every song is not about a girl.  Instead, he opts to write about, for instance, what he hears on the news, and translates it into something relatable. 

“I just try to write very hopeful, positive music for the people,” Vitek says.  “I hope different people will interpret it in different ways, and it will be medicine for whatever they’re going through.” 

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