Let's Get To Know Local Band Vagabonds

The local music scene in North Carolina is packed with incredible talent. Among that list of bands is the local Fayetteville Nu-Deathcore band Vagabonds. The guys were kind enough to sit down and let me get to know them more in-depth.

Bethany: I’m Bethany, the editor-in-chief of Downbeat Chronicles. Thank you guys for sitting down with me to do this interview. To get things kicked off let’s start with introductions. Introduce your band and yourselves to everyone! 

Brandon: We are the lovely mixed bag of nuts that is, Vagabonds. We hail right here out of Fayetteville, North Carolina. I am Brandon, the drummer. 

Connor: I am Connor, rhythm guitar player

Tim: I’m Tim, lead guitar player since Connor wants to label us. 

Cody: I’m Cody. I’m the vocalist. 

Harry: I’m Harry, the lead bassist.

Tim: The lead and rhythm bassist. 

Bethany: Awesome, great to meet you all. Let’s dive into how you guys all got together. How did you all come together to form a band? 

Connor: Brandon and an app called Band Mix, which is basically Tinder for musicians. Through that Brandon reached out to basically everyone, minus Cody.

Brandon: And Harry. Me and Harry met through a separate musical venture that didn’t get a chance to really start. The first couple of attempts to get the ball rolling with Harry kind of fumbled and I was pretty sure after the second attempt this guy hated me or thought I was some weirdo. I was definitely a little desperate because I knew he was such a badass bass player. It took almost a month of me begging Harry.

Harry: I was all but retired from music, but decided to come on board. 

Tim: I kind of reverse psychology Brandon into hitting me up. I was like oh this guy has a cool drum set and he has his number there but I didn’t want to text him. You can see who looks at your profile and I saw he was looking at my profile so I added my number to my profile and sure enough he texted me. 

Connor: He did the same with me. I created a profile, added my number, and then got a message from Brandon. I got a text from him and thought it was some bozo who just wanted to play rockstar but we met up and I had nothing prepared so he was like let's just jam and he just went to town and I knew he was actually serious. And then I found Cody on Facebook. He also had his Snapchat listed and I messaged him and was like I have this band, do you wanna come try out for it, and I just messaged him relentlessly. 

Cody: I woke up at like 8 am one day to just messages from Connor, looked at everything, said sure, and then went back to sleep. 

Brandon: We were all able to come together a few weeks later and that’s when Vagabonds formed! 

Bethany: From the information I was able to read about y’all you really launched yourselves this last year in 2024.

Harry: Kind of the fall before that but Brandon had to go out on deployment so we weren’t able to get fully going until this past summer. 

Bethany: With being a fairly newer band how has this last year looked for you guys?

Brandon: It’s been really good. We have definitely had more highs than lows. Oxymorons helped us out a lot on a show when we opened up for them. They taught us how to spruce up our merch to attract people. They had a lot of promotional and best tips to get yourself out there. 

Bethany: To piggyback off of that, what is a piece of advice that someone had given you to help you in your musical career?

Connor: Patience is a huge piece of advice we’ve been given. Patience is the best advice I was given from Oxymorons. It’s gonna take time and you’re gonna evolve and grow. Where you are now is not where you’re gonna be in six months' time and to just keep grinding. 

Brandon: Advice I got from Ken Susi from his Twitch streams was to always have fun with it because if it’s not fun then it’s not worth doing. Never take yourself too seriously and make sure you put in the time, put in the work, and put in the heart, and those things really resonated with me. 

Bethany: Switching over to your music now, what does the process for writing a song together look like for y’all?

Tim: It basically starts with guitar parts and then we try to build off of that. 

Brandon: We all sit around with guitars and Harry with his bass and just bounce riffs off each other and see which ideas we like and which ones we don’t really like, and then we take those ideas and hand them off to Tim or Connor to make them more structured. 

Connor: That’s how it starts and then after that, it can go from like an idea to a whole concept of what the song could be. Then we sometimes just sit around and continue to come up with the parts one after the other while we are together. And then Cody is the last to go into the process so we can give him a platform of what this song is and he can get a feel for it and then add himself in. Because the lyrics are a conjunction of me, Cody, and Brandon we take everyone’s ideas and structure them in a way we think will work best. So the songs are a melting part of us all and it’s not just one person doing everything.  

Bethany: Was there a certain moment in time that launched you into wanting to do music and wanting to be in a band?

Cody: Ever since I was in elementary school I have always been into music. But when I heard Suicide Silence and I heard that scream come out of that tiny little man, I knew I had to do that. Then hearing Motionless In White and the message they had with their music, resonated with things I had going on in my personal life and they got me through a lot of bullshit and I wanted to be able to do the same for others with my music. I want people to know they aren’t alone when they hear the songs. 

Harry: When Rise Against was touring, that was the first actual punk show I went to and I was like I need to do this. I just like entertaining people and being goofy.

Tim: I guess I just wanted people to think I was cool. I just love the music of it. I like the energy and the technicality of the meddling. 

Brandon: It’s fun for me. Music kind of runs in the family for me. My dad played drums and was able to play multiple instruments. And then what really sparked the interest for me was watching my sibling’s band play a show and they brought me up on stage and let me play drums on one of their songs and then shortly after that I was in my first band. 

Connor: My dad was a guitar player and the one time he actually showed interest in anything I was doing was when I picked up a guitar. Then when I discovered heavier music and saw Korn, I was like yeah I want to do that! 

Bethany: With your backgrounds, you all mentioned a range of musicians, so with having such diverse backgrounds how did y’all settle on your sound for Vagabonds?

Brandon: We knew that we all had these different styles and we decided that we would just mix things up and just make what we’re happy with and what makes us happy. If you’re constantly a mixed bag then the fans will always be entertained. 

Connor: Yeah, if we don’t define ourselves to one genre then we won’t be stuck in any genre. Our first few releases were nu-metal but some of the stuff we’ve recorded is more straight deathcore. So by changing it up, it allows us to branch off and we can make the things that make us happy and never be stuck in just one place.

Cody: The sound that we have is unique because it comes from the different genres that we listen to. 

Tim: For me, it’s fun to branch out and learn new styles to play and expand my horizons. 

Connor: And I think we can as a whole agree that watching people beat the shit out of each other to what you’re playing is an awesome feeling. (Definitely, one way to explain your love of watching mosh pits) 

Bethany: What’s your favorite thing about playing live?

Brandon: The best and biggest thing about playing live is the disconnection, in a sense, that you get from reality. You get to immerse yourself in something that you’re passionate about, and that you deeply enjoy doing. There’s no better feeling than that. 

Connor: For me, I like knowing the audience is having a great time. I think about the shows I’ve been to and how some of my best memories come from those shows and I wanna give that to others. Like what if they are finding the love of their life at our show or if they are having a rough time but our show is the highlight of their week or day and it uplifts them? I think the coolest part is providing a platform for memories and experiences. 

Harry: It’s all about entertaining for me. I enjoy entertaining and being on stage is the way for me to do that. 

Tim: I like to inspire and playing live gives that opportunity.

Cody: The connection to people and it’s a way to get your word out because music is a connection and can connect people. Either to each other or to the bands. I enjoy coming down off the stage and being in that pit with them and making that connection with them. Like he’s not just writing songs and screaming at people, he’s actually down there with them and actually means what he’s saying.

Bethany: What is something that would be surprising for fans to learn about you?

Connor: I sleep with socks on, The sensation of my feet touching makes me want to cheese grate my face. But as a group as a whole people are surprised by how much we like people because the music can be very hateful and misanthropic.

Cody: But in all reality we actually really love people. 

Brandon: I’m rather a reclusive person, but I can be bright and bubbly when we’re at shows. 

Bethany: To kind of round everything out, y’all hit the ground running in 2024 and you’re still riding that high of that and so with that momentum going into 2025 what would you guys like to see for yourselves this year?

Brandon: We have kind of transferred into a production mode and finished up our next single and are writing new material. So the first few months of the new year will be focused on production and getting the new stuff ready. And our goal for 2025 is to get our EP released to the masses. We also have a goal to by the end of the year to play in towns we’ve never played before and to play out of state as well. 

Connor: I would like for us to do one or two shows a month throughout the year along with getting the EP put out.

Cody: I would love to get more music released out there so people can know the songs before they come to the shows. But I definitely wanna play live as much as we can. 

Bethany: Thank you guys for sitting down with me and chatting away and giving Downbeat Chronicles a little insight into Vagabonds. Is there anything y’all would like to say before we go?

Cody: To anyone out there trying to start a band, never give up. This is the first band I’ve ever been in and I’ve wanted to be in a band since I was in elementary school. So just never give up and always believe in yourself, even when times seem tough, always keep on trying.   

Tim: Practice, and use five-millimeter picks, that’s the secret. Try to have fun before you make it serious. 

Brandon: My biggest words would be to remember a band is more than just an entity. It’s a brotherhood, and it should never stop. 

Connor: Life’s hard, I say be harder. Vagabonds 2025, taking over. Join the cult today!