When The Love Is There, The Music Follows: An Interview with The Record Company
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| Photo courtesy of Libby Grey |
Chris Vos spent his childhood on a dairy farm just outside of Burlington, Wis., where riding a bike to a friend’s house was impossible and a grade school classroom could be filled with four children total. That feeling of solitude led him to his first guitar, and his first real promise to himself: go nowhere unless his guitar took him.
He ventured into live concerts as a teenager, his parents driving him upstate to Milwaukee before he got his driver’s license and purchased his grandfather’s 1977 Pontiac Bonneville. That vehicle took him to his first music festival which ultimately played an important role in his musical career.
Summerfest is recognized as “The World’s Largest Music Festival” by the Guinness World Records. For more than 50 years, local and nationally known musicians of various genres have graced their 12 stages every summer. The day that Vos and a friend attended, he remembers watching local Milwaukee acts that were rock stars to him. They stood at the Uline Warehouse stage as Citizen King performed, and Vos thought to himself, “I want to do what they’re doing.”
Soon enough, his guitar would take him to all 50 states as a member of The Record Company alongside bandmates Alex Stiff and Marc Cazorla.
“It’s one of those crazy things you think at 14 and for whatever reason I held to it,” Vos said. “There was a long time where that crazy little dream seemed like, ‘you should abandon this idea, this is terrible,’ but the guitar did eventually take me there. That’s why I’m proud of that.”
Summerfest is a festival The Record Company is familiar with, having played it multiple times. For Vos, it feels like a mix between a family reunion and a wedding reception; family, friends and fans all under the same roof to celebrate the same night. This year, their performance was extra special for Vos as they played the same stage - at roughly the same time slot - as Citizen King all those years ago.
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| The Record Company at Summerfest, 2025. View the full gallery here. |
“It is a full circle moment that you have to stand in with a lot of gratitude,” he said. “Those dreams when you’re a kid come from a very pure place when you’re that age. I think it’s really rewarding to live an adult life where you learn all the lessons and face all the challenges, experience the losses and learn what it’s like to try and make a living in this world, and then when you have those moments that can connect to that pure spot where that dream began - it is very special. It’s a refresher to remind your soul and your mind, at least for me, this is why I did this in the first place. And yes, it does feel good, and yes, it is worth it and it remotivates you. It adds momentum, sometimes in a critical way, when you really need to feel that.”
For a festival set, Vos compares it to touching all the corners of a ballpark. He wants to present every aspect of what they do in an engaging way, from the outfield to the top of the stands. It is crucial to capture and keep the attention of a festival audience, so they make sure to curate a set list that elevates that. They attribute that lesson to artists they’ve had the privilege of opening for, such as John Mayer and Bob Seger.
“When you watch someone like that [each night], who has so much knowledge, you know what the pacing of a set can mean,” Vos said. “You know what your songs could mean within a set. You want to have some dynamics. You have to go low so how high you can go has a contrast.”
In 2026, they will be celebrating the 10-year anniversary of their debut album, Give It Back To You. With plans of an anniversary tour and new music to commemorate, the band have so much to be proud of. It takes a lot of love and understanding to accomplish all that they have, and they recognize that while it may take them a minute to put out new music, they have always found a way to release a song with purpose.
Sure, their priorities have changed. That is why the band has always made it a point to respect each other as musicians and as people. Their love for one another is how they continue to make it work. Vos recently said to Stiff and Cazorla, “When the love is there, the music follows and the people come. When the love is lacking, the music doesn’t come.”
Vos credits his communication skills to the strong women in his family: his paternal grandmother, the wife of a farmer who kept the books immaculately; his maternal grandmother, who worked at Budweiser while raising two children; and his mother, who started at a medical center with a three-year nursing degree and worked her way up to Vice President. Without knowing the balance between talking and listening, life can become complicated.
“I’m a very good talker,” he said. “But if you’re a good talker, you have to ask yourself, ‘am I a good listener?’ Once I started listening as intensely to people as I do my music, the whole world started to open up. Maturity came through the door. That’s where you preserve relationships.”
After The Record Company’s Summerfest performance, Vos had a chance to connect with several staff members that were integral to his career. They believed in his music from the beginning, and gave him a chance to play this festival countless times. He got to end that night in his childhood bedroom, standing in the exact spot where he would see hayfields and cows out the window, making promises only 14-year-olds could believe would come true.
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