Youngtown's The Vindys playing Stocker Arts Center, touring with Pat Benatar
May 15—They didn't want to answer the phone.
Jackie Popovec, the big-voiced frontwoman of The Vindys, was on vacation in Italy with boyfriend Rick Deak — a guitarist in the Youngstown-based alt-rock act — when his phone lit up during dinner at a nice restaurant. The phone said the call was coming from Beverly Hills, so they were too intrigued to not answer.
It was the famed Los Angeles-based entity Creative Artists Agency, wanting to discuss the possibility of the band opening on a summer tour by longtime rocker Pat Benatar and her musician husband, Neil Giraldo, a Northeast Ohio native and Parma Senior High School alum.
"We would never usually, like, pick up the phone for anybody, especially during dinner at a nice place, but, you know, when CAA calls, you're like, 'Maybe we should pick up," Popovec says during a recent phone interview. "It was a happy surprise."
It's pretty exciting stuff for the band, which, prior to hitting the road with '80s icon Benatar, will perform May 18 in the Hoke Theatre at Lorain County Community College's Stocker Arts Center in Elyria.
The story of The Vindys stretches back about a decade, to when Canfield High School graduate Popovec returned to the Youngstown area after graduating from the Music Production Technology program at Daytona State College in Florida. She saw a performance of a band with members who studied at Youngstown State University's Dana School of Music and thought they were great but also that what they needed to take the next step was, well, herself. (Ironically, Popovec — who wasn't interested in studying to become a singer — had a cup of coffee at Dana before deciding it wasn't "my vibe at all," years later concluding that the classical and jazz training her future band mates received prepared them for professional rock 'n' rolling.)
The new Popovec-fronted act took its moniker from the nickname Youngstown newspaper The Vindicator — earning them an almost immediate feature in the daily publication — and gradually started replacing cover songs with originals.
"People were actually asking for more of that," Popovec says. "And we were like, 'Let's just throw a CD out there."
That 2014 EP, "Red Wine," earned some love by Akron station Summit 91.3 FM, and the band kept going, with full-length albums "Keep Going" and "Bugs," in 2017 and 2021, respectively.
Sure, Popovec has wondered if the smart career move would be to relocate to, say, New York or Nashville, but, on top of the appealing cost of living Youngstown offers, the blue-color city is within a half-day's drive of those two cities and many others, she says.
"That has worked in our favor," she says. "We get calls at the last minute to do stuff. 'Can you open up for Marcus King at The Capitol Theatre (in Port Chester, New York)?' And we're like, 'Yes, we can! We'll be there!'
"It really is a great spot for the same reason Youngstown's ... a good spot for the steel industry because, you know, you're halfway between Chicago and New York," adds Popovec, who comes from a family in which multiple generations worked in Youngstown's steel mills.
The band's resume includes opening for other notable acts and playing various festivals, including last year's WonderStruck at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland.
A fun introduction to The Vindys — which also consists of a third core member, guitarist John Anthony, and other musicians — is the playful video from the title track from "Bugs," It was shot, Popovec says, in the "insane" family home of one of her friends that's complete with a bowling alley, movie theater, soda shop and more.
"There's a saloon in there!" Popovec says. "She's like, 'If you guys ever want to do a music video (here) ... and I was like, 'Um, yeah.'
The singer says there was little planning for what proved to be about an 18-hour day at the house aside from renting some costumes from Kent State University's theater department to match some different decade themes she had in mind for the various rooms.
"It just kind of flowed together as we did it. We didn't really know where we were going with it. And once we put it all together, I mean, it was way more professional-looking than I ever would have imagined."
Plus, the film's director, Peter-John Campbell, submitted it to film festivals, the "Bugs" video being accepted into a music video category at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, where it competed against those of some heavy hitters in 2023.
"It was such a fun (collection) of videos, and we were able to go to New York City and do the red-carpet thing," Popovec says. "It was a blast."
While Popovec, the Vindys' primary songwriter, works on the band full-time, Deak, Anthony and others have day jobs — more than one of them teaching music at learning institutions — so she refers to the band as "weekend warriors" until the summer comes. That's when they can play out frequently and venture further from home.
This year was supposed to be different, however.
"I ... was trying not to book any shows for the summertime," she says, "which seems stupid because the band is free for the summertime, but I really wanted to get a new album out there."
That aforementioned call changed everything, with Popovec saying the plan now is to release singles — and maybe another music video — up until what now looks like a 2025 release for the album on which the band has been working and she's been tweaking in visits to a studio.
The invitation to tour with Benatar Giraldo isn't completely out of the musical blue, The Vindys having opened for them at a show in recent years at MGM Northfield Park, which earned them the chance to do the same at a show in Detroit.
"That was a brand-new market for us, and we left that stage with almost half of the people giving us a standing ovation," she says. "That was very surprising to me as an opener. I'm like, 'Wow, that's great — her fans like The Vindys.' And I think maybe they looked at that (for the upcoming tour) and said, 'This could work.'"
She calls the opportunity to play all the places they'll be hitting "a dream come true," even if The Vindys have played as far from Northeast Ohio as the West Coast on a 2022 tour they set up independently.
"We had our own show in San Francisco, and there were three people there," Popovec says. "So we're gonna go from playing to nobody in San Francisco to playing one of the bigger amphitheaters in, I think, San Jose with many more people."
On July 10, the tour will bring the groups back to MGM Northfield. The tour is off the following night, and Benatar Giraldo will headline the first night of a music festival in Minnesota on July 12. However, that will be no downtime for Popovec, who will stay in the area for rehearsals for the sold-out 50th Anniversary Celebration of The Michael Stanley Band on July 12, during which she'll provide backing vocals.
As for the Stocker show, Popovec says she tries to map out a unique night for any Northeast Ohio gig. For instance, when The Vindys played Cleveland's Music Box Supper Club in April, she says she took inspiration from Taylor Swift's massively popular "Eras Tour" and crafted a career-spanning setlist.
"This is going to be a lot more of the new stuff," she says of the Elyria gig, which will bring to a close Stocker's 2023-24 season. "It's going to be some of the fan favorites, as well, but a lot of the newer stuff."
It's just the latest example of a hard-working band trying to get its music into people's heads.
"I just keep saying yes to things, and that's how it goes," Popovec says. "A lot of the stuff that's come our way is just by word-of-mouth and people checking us out, so I always say that we win when we're in front of people."
With all the potentially receptive audience members in the band's near future, she's also busying herself with concerns such as how much band merch to bring on the road and, perhaps more importantly, making sure a hitch for the van she recently bought for the band can handle the trailer they need to haul.
"I don't even know anything about hitches for trailers — I'm researching several," she says. "Maybe we need a different hitch? I mean, this is where I'm at right now. I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm thinking. All I know is that we're on this tour, and we'll figure it out as we go."
Part of that for her is not acting star-struck around Benatar, whose "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" Popovec says she sang in her first band at age 13 and whom she counts as one of several big-voiced performers she's worked to emulate such as Ann Wilson of Heart and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.
"I was just like, 'How are they producing that sound from their tiny bodies," she says. "Especially Pat Benatar in her 5-foot frame. You know, seeing her even the last couple of times, she's still got it.
"And it's so weird being like a fangirl of the person you're opening up for," Popovec adds with a laugh. "Backstage, (I have to be) so cool: 'Oh, yeah, there's Pat over there. It's cool.' But, like, inside I'm dying — I'm literally dying.
"I want to tell her how much I love her, and I will, but I don't want to scare her at first."
The Vindys
When: 7 p.m. May 18.
Where: Stocker Art Center, 1005 N. Abbe Road, Elyria,
Tickets: $20.
Info: stockerartscenter.com or 440-366-4040.