Album Notes

Why would two almost entirely unknown musicians write and record two albums worth of material over the course of four years? The answer is simple: purely for the love of doing it. Starting in the confines of the Northeast (Milford, CT and Manchester, NH), Dave Novak and Ralph Thompson ended up deep in the heart of Texas (San Antonio and Dallas, respectively) by the time the albums had wrapped up.

After releasing two albums (a self-titled 2001 CD, and 2003's CD "This is Vitamin Tramp"), initial recording for the next album started in 2004. In 2006, after a marathon recording of twenty-five songs in two days, they realized that one album simply would not be enough to contain the stylistic range of the new material. As 2008 comes to a close, Vitamin Tramp unleashes the culmination of their four-year musical and geographic travels – two albums, entitled "Since Pflugerville" and "Robot Exoskeleton".

"Since Pflugerville" addresses coming-of-age subjects such as change and lives in flux, set to a backdrop of twangy, almost-country-twinged rock and pop-ish tunes. A classicist album in most senses, one could put this on their playlist while contemplating existence, taking a long walk in the rain – or sipping a cup of joe.

"Robot Exoskeleton" takes more liberties, both sonically and thematically, showing a willingness to explore the points at which guitar rock now shares commonalities with modern studio enhancements. Sometimes outright happy, and sometimes downright somber, this album is the soundtrack for a joyride in a crappy, underpowered convertible.

Ralph and Dave have been playing music together since 1995, spending almost ten of those years in southern-Connecticut "Hard Pop" band SiMent. When SiMent's members reached college age, geography often separated its members, leading to lengths of that band's inactivity. Ralph's solution to this dilemma was to do what the pros would have done: start a side project.

A name was chosen even before songs were written – "Vitamin Tramp". The "side project" commenced, and has well outlived its parent band. Since SiMent was once dubbed "Hard pop" by the New Haven Advocate, Vitamin Tramp could logically only now be billed as "Post-pop", their current self-categorized genre,

For the present time, Vitamin Tramp exists to write, arrange and record music. Perhaps sometime in the near future, a rooftop concert will be in order.