DCist Interview: The Whigs
Athens, Georgia has long been a hotbed of alternative music and boasts a musical heritage few American towns can match. Early indie rock pioneers like R.E.M., The B-52s and Pylon paved the way for the Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power and Neutral Milk Hotel, and today bands like the Drive By Truckers and Dead Confederate carry on that legacy. But "Next Big Thing" status has been reserved for The Whigs, a hard rock trio given that's been pounding the pavement since 2002 and racking up plaudits from blogs far and wide, as well as glossy magazines like Rolling Stone and Esquire. Their 2008 album, Mission Control, a straight up rock 'n' roll barn-burner, stood in stark contrast to last year's prevalent folk movement spurred on by bands like Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver. The band just finished recording their follow up, In The Dark, which will be released in March of 2010. We spoke with bassist Tim Deaux last week, just after this year's Grammy Award nominees were announced, and after getting over the shock of not being nominated, he gave us the scoop on the upcoming record and a host of other topics. He even let us a get a word in edgewise once or twice. You can see the band tonight at the Black Cat, along with openers The Features and Mean Creek.
I hate to start this interview off on the wrong foot, but I should probably go ahead and tell you that the band didn't get nominated for a Grammy this year.
[Laughs] Surprise, surprise! We were counting on that. What happened?
Well, there's always next year, right?
We'll keep our fingers crossed.
What can you tell me about the upcoming album?
We've been working on the tracklisting the past couple days and today is a deadline and we're frantically trying to agree on a tracklisting for the record, so we've been listening to it a lot today.We feel that its some of the best stuff we've ever done. We're just excited to finally have it finished. We've been working on this record for almost exactly a year now. We started writing music just after Thanksgiving last year, so its something we've been concentrating on and focusing on for quite some time and we're excited to get it out and hear what other people think about it.
How does the band approach the songwriting process? Is it a collaborative effort?
It's pretty much all three of us putting our heads together. Songs come about in different ways, whether its a tune that Parker comes to us with a guitar riff or melody or Julian will show up with a drum beat that he's been playing around with. We just build upon that initial idea. There was quite a bit of songs that came from little jams that me and Julian had started, just drum and bass only and then often times we'd try and track a little demo and try and outline a song as best as we could. And then we pass that over to Parker and Parker seemed to really enjoy that, because it seemed to free Parker up to really think and work less about guitar and more about melody. So it was a new approach for all of us, but we really enjoyed the results.
When do you find time to write songs? You tour relentlessly.
Yeah, we are on the road a lot. We do our best to kind of continue to write when we are on tour. If there happens to be a longer soundcheck one day, we encourage each other to mess around with new ideas. It's very rare that we get time when we are on the road to think about new songs and work on new songs. [After the last tour] we were lucky in having some time at home to actually get into our rehearsal space and lock ourselves in there and just jam on new material, and not worry about playing shows or anything else. It was just about coming up with new ideas. It was a lot of fun. We were pretty excited about getting home and have some time to strictly work on writing new songs. We don't get to do that very often so we tried to take advantage of it. We'd wake up first thing, maybe get a bite to eat and go straight to the practice space and start playing with ideas and just work and work and work until we couldn't stand it anymore. [Laughs] Then we'd go to bed and do it again the next day. We just busted our butt to write as many songs as we could before we went into the studio. That way we'd have a good collection to choose from when it came time to record. And I think we did a really good job. We ended up with a lot of material. We have our choice of what we think are the best ones. And that's what we are working on today. I think we have somewhere around 15 or 16 songs that were actually recorded and that is taken from the 20 or so that were demoed. And now we're trying to whittle down to a more manageable number. We like the idea of a 10 or 11 song record for our personal tastes, we enjoy a record that length.
So how do you do that? iTunes playlists?
More or less. We're basically just shuffling our songs around on our iPods and computers. Putting them in order and sitting and listening to it from start to finish. It can be kind of exhausting. [Laughs] Each one of us has four or five different track listings and you want everyone else to listen to yours and they want you to listen to theirs and you want to give them the respect that you hope to get. So you have to take your time and give it a chance. But we're almost there, I think we've almost got it. We're stoked to be at this final phase.
Was this the first time you've recorded with the band? (Deaux joined the group after the release of Mission Control.)
Yes. We've messed around in the studio quite a bit the past couple of years that I've been with the band, basically recording demos off and on when we've had a minute. But this album will be the first album that I am featured on. I'm very excited about that.
You guys spent a majority of the year touring with Kings of Leon. What was it like touring with a band while they are making the leap?
It was a huge privilege, honor and thrill to be included on tour with them. We were so stoked and we had such a good time. We sort of got to track their explosion in popularity. We went from playing theaters with them, you know, five or six thousand people a night. Those are huge rooms to us and they sold out every night. And we thought that was just unbelievable. Every night we'd show up to play the most amazing rooms and they're sold out. It was incredible. Then only a few months later they invited us to go back on the road with them, but this time it's sold-out arenas. We really couldn't believe it. It was kind of hilarious to be walking into some of these buildings. It was great, they treated us like we were one of their own. We sort of got to tag along and live like they do. It was a really awesome year thanks to them.
But what did you learn from them? I remember reading about when they were opening for bands like U2 in Europe and they were talking about what they learned from the experience, like this is how we want to travel, we need a crew this big, things like that.
Oh, absolutely. But that goes with any band you tour with. Kings of Leon were a band we spent a lot of time with this year, but even bands that are supporting us on our tour, every single band that you're around, every single night you pick up things from. You learn to admire the certain ways they do things, whether it's the way they practice their songs or how they carry themselves on stage even down to production aspects or more boring things, like how well their gear is organized.
Yeah, that seems like something I would definitely be paying attention to.
It's subtle things like that. Kings of Leon is such a massive production now. Getting to see that side of things really exposed us, we're not used to things on that level, but there are things we've learned that we can take from, that professional approach to touring. You don't start off thinking that way, but you try to learn from your people that are above you, you'd love to eventually get to where you can pull that off.
So what's it like going from a big tour like that back to a club tour doing your own show?
It's odd. After doing a month of touring arenas with those guys, you get very used to it. And then coming back to venues we're more at home at, that we're more used to. I mean, we had a blast playing those arenas, it was incredible, but there is something more natural about playing in these rock clubs that are where we started and where we come from. There is much more of an intimate kind of personal relationship that you can cultivate with the crowd in these clubs and we all sort of feed off of that.
What will your set list be like in D.C.? I assume you guys are very eager to play some of your new songs.
We are trying to play as much of the new material that we can get away with. The three of us are personally excited about playing the new songs and we want to play them all, but we understand that people that purchased a ticket to come see us most likely are interesting in hearing the material they are familiar with. So we're trying to incorporate a good mix of songs that people are looking forward to hearing as well as sneaking in four or five of the new songs.
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The Whigs play the Black Cat tonight with The Features and Mean Creek. Doors are at 8 p.m. Tickets are $13.