“While I’m a ‘girly girl’ in the sense that I like to do my hair and wear makeup and look pretty, I never degrade myself. My sex appeal is a result of the raw confidence I have inside—and I’ve earned that.”  Debbie Gabrione says with a self-assuredness that you have to admire.  She’s the bold lead singer of Ten Year Vamp, a power pop band with energy to spare. Imagine Foo Fighters meets Green Day with Gwen Stefani on vocals and you have an idea of their sound.

Ten Year Vamp have beaten the odds and found an incredibly loyal following and tremendous success all without a record company backing them.  In fact, when they wanted to put out their latest release, they went to their fans to get funding.

Guitarist Mark Rose explains, “We had a crazy idea. We thought why not have our fans become the record company? We had 60 people give us anywhere from $25. to $2,000. We then put 80 songs up on a website and let our fans choose the 12 songs that would go on the album.” Their crazy idea worked and their fans are now more motivated than ever to help Ten Year Vamp become the Next Big Thing. "Each owner will receive their fair percentage of album sales based on how much they invested," says Rose. Owners also voted on which photos should be used for the album, including the cover. The group has been credited by Forbes, CNBC, Yahoo!, AOL Money and Finance, Columbia's School of Journalism and countless other news sites as completely reinventing the way records are recorded, marketed and sold.

Ten Year Vamp is based in Albany, NY, where they’ve been voted best Rock Band in the Metroland Reader’s Poll for the 5th year in a row. Metroland is the New York Capital District’s weekly entertainment magazine and it reaches over 100,000 readers. Ten Year Vamp is: Debbie Gabrione, Vocals and Guitars, Mark Rose, Rhythm Guitars, Tim Keenan, Bass, Andrew Foster, Lead Guitars, Gregory Nash, Drums and Bill Ketzer on Vocals,  Percussion, Keyboards. 

Lead singer Debbie Gabrione may be the only rocker in history to admit to having a happy childhood. She recalls, “My family was close. We had dinner together every night. We washed the dishes together. We laughed all the time and just did things as a family.”

It wasn’t until college that both Debbie and guitarist Mark Rose stated getting interested in being in a band. Debbie says, “Believe it or not, I really never had any exposure to rock music before college. I grew up on 50’s music, Broadway show tunes, and Italian music like Jerry Vale and Connie Francis. The heaviest music I heard before college was Neil Diamond and Rod Stewart” she laughs, almost embarrassed to admit this.  

Ten Year Vamp is known for delivering a top-tier, high octane performance at their live shows and their reputation has fueled interest in their latest release. They’ve been featured on CNBC, Forbes.com and in a long list of music publications from around the world. They’ve played for thousands of fans at festivals and at prestigious venues from CBGB’s to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

Their new album, “Don’t Act Like You Know Me” is Ten Year Vamp’s most polished work to date. The single “Never Know” has the intensity of Foo Fighter’s “Everlong” combined with the female angst of No Doubt’s “Just A Girl.” Ten Year Vamp wants to create music for a large, diverse audience. “Never Know” also features an MTV quality video that showcases Debbie’s “girl next door” sexiness.  When asked if Debbie feels she’s a role model for young women, she says, “I definitely think I’m a positive role model for young women. I was raised to value myself and to set goals and work hard to achieve them.” 

The song “I Don’t Need” examines the sometimes passive/aggressive roles that women can find themselves playing in relationships. The lyrics, “I don’t want you to scold me, I don’t need you to hold me” are an attempt for the song’s protagonist to find her own voice in a demanding relationship. In other words, this modern woman can do things herself in her own way. She doesn’t need a man to tell her what to do.

The song “Pleasures (that I call mine)” might just be the most exciting pro-female sexuality song since the Divinyls “I Touch Myself” from 1991. Debbie declares, “It’s a song about knowing what I like and owning it. It’s not about making myself into someone else’s fantasies.  I think it’s a new version of feminism; being sexy because you want to be rather than because someone else wants you to be.” 

Ten Year Vamp has opened for bands like, Lifehouse, Nickelback, 3 Doors Down, and  Spin Doctors, just to name a few. With the sure-fire power pop songs on “Don’t Act Like You Know Me” and die hard fans willing to shell out their hard earned cash to help their favorite local band get a shot at the big time,  Ten Year Vamp will soon be headlining on the main festival stages. As guitarist Mark Rose says, “We wanted to make a record that would hold up to everything you hear on the radio.” With “Don’t Act Like You Know Me” Ten Year Vamp surpasses many of the songs that are played on the radio these days.  Here’s hoping that modern day radio, and maybe even some of the record companies, catch up to Ten Year Vamp.

- Laura Allen

From the linear notes inside the Don't Act Like You Know Me CD:

In your grubby mitts right now you’re holding one incredible slab of high-protein American Pop. And indeed, whatever PR firm we hire (in fact, I think we’ve already done that) will market the band using American Popular Music guidelines and categorize we ass-kicking charlatans as “modern pop rock” or some such overgeneralization aimed right at the appropriate teen demographics. And hey, that’s OK – nobody wants to do this for free forever, ya know?

But when I say American, I’m not talking fraternities, feedlots or fast food. I’m not talking NASCAR, feldspar or booby bars. Hell no. I’m talking Rockets-Red-Glare. About Leary’s Politics of Ecstasy, about Mailer’s Ancient Evenings. I’m talking Gwen Stefani pummeling Kelly Clarkson in the octagon of my most truculent and succulent fantasies. I’m talking about We the People, in order to form a more perfect and grotesquely amplified way to blow your asses back to the Tertiary period, when good old Homo erectus actually had to do something to stay alive where the wild things were. Yeah. That’s it. And I know you’re gonna love tasting it as much as we loved making it.

Playing music for a living is like succumbing to some exotic mental illness. It bites you early and often. It might have been The Beach Boys. Or U2. Or Led Zeppelin. Or Green Day, Black Flag, The White Stripes or Yellow Submarine. Whoever it was, you heard it and your eyes watered. Your heart shattered into greasy feathers. Your entire cellular infrastructure contracted and expanded in some indescribable, inexorable bliss and hot light shot from every pore and you said, “I am going to do this too… at loud volumes… in public… until I die…. no matter what.”

This remains the case despite having to spend extraordinary amounts of time with folks that have multiple personalities, psoriasis and a fear of sunlight. The afflicted individual happily suffers scores of aliens who can’t play a lick but fancy themselves the next Puccini, and of course there are many who can play but have the personality of a crack torch salesman. There are even some who think a rock band should be managed like a city council. You also meet people who want to take, break, shake and rake you until it looks like this is the end, Underdog. And those are the suckers on your side.

But once or twice in life, by fate or by chance, you find more than a band, you find an impervious force. That star-crossed, dream-soaked permutation of talent, influence and abandon necessary to throw it out there every night like tomorrow falls the shadow. A band that has the songs, the work ethic, the sheer audacity of wit and will to make a change of panties necessary on a global scale, dig? Music built with sweat equity, false starts, intense disappointments, and the bloody, chocolaty lip of dogged persistence. And perhaps most of all, the blessing of an intense and dedicated fanbase. Since Ten Year Vamp has known all of that, I guess it’s more than a CD you’re holding. It’s a guarantee.

Have fun with this. I know I will.
Bill Ketzer
July 2009

Pearl Street Live 2009 by Julia Zave

Summerjam at the Saratoga Performing arts Center by Julia Zave

Summerjam at the Saratoga Performing arts Center by Julia Zave

Vapor, Saratoga NY by Michelle Swain