Vinnie Hornsby was born on October 22, 1967. The Sevendust bassist helped put the band together through friendships in Atlanta’s music scene, then supplied the name that finally stuck. His connection with drummer Morgan Rose began before Sevendust, when the two played together in Snake Nation.
That earlier group gave them a working musical partnership, but it also taught them what they wanted to avoid. Speaking to Ink 19 in 1998, Rose recalled tensions with Snake Nation’s singer that made rehearsals miserable. When he and Hornsby moved on, getting along with their bandmates mattered more than chasing a record deal. They wanted to enjoy making music together again.
Lajon Witherspoon was part of that change. His band Body & Soul had shared a bill with Snake Nation, giving Hornsby and Rose a chance to hear the singer who would become Sevendust’s frontman. Witherspoon remembered Hornsby, Rose and John Connolly approaching him at a bar where he worked and inviting him to their rehearsal space. In a 2019 interview with HEAVY, he described those first sessions as musicians getting together before they had properly established a band.
“Black” and a song called “Crazy” emerged from those beginnings. Witherspoon recalled taking the two songs to a local bar, where people familiar with their earlier groups came to hear them. When they were asked to play again, they repeated the same pair. There wasn’t a deep catalog to draw from yet, but there was enough chemistry to keep going.
Even the name took several attempts. Rumblefish gave way to Crawlspace, which appeared on the Mortal Kombat: More Kombat compilation with “My Ruin.” Another band’s claim to Crawlspace forced a further change when their debut album was already prepared for release. Hornsby suggested Sevendust, inspired by an insecticide. Rose credited him directly in the Ink 19 interview: “Sevendust was Vinnie’s idea, actually.”
Getting the music beyond Atlanta required persistence, too. Pollstar’s July 1998 profile described Hornsby and Rose pursuing Twisted Sister guitarist Jay Jay French for management help. French initially resisted, but eventually booked New York shows and became involved. By the time of that profile, Sevendust had spent roughly 15 months touring after setting out in April 1997, with just 19 days at home.
Hornsby later carried his musical relationship with Connolly into Projected. Their 2012 debut, Human, paired them with drummer Scott Phillips and guitarist Eric Friedman, with Connolly taking lead vocals. The group gave Hornsby a different combination of musicians to work with while preserving a partnership established in Sevendust.
Making the follow-up meant fitting recording around everyone’s other commitments. Connolly told Myglobalmind in 2017 that Hornsby tracked all his bass parts in Canada while on tour. What had been intended as a shorter album expanded when the musicians kept resisting cuts to the songs. Ignite My Insanity arrived on July 21, 2017, as a 21-track double album, with Hornsby’s contributions recorded between the demands of the road.
