White Denim may be the most happening honchos in hipsterville just now, but in their hometown - the musical mecca that is Austin, Texas - they're just one more brilliant band. They talk to Jim Carroll as they tune up for next month's Oxegen festival
DESPITE all the fuss, nothing's really changed. White Denim may be the hottest new band in hipsterville (and the blogosphere), but don't take this to mean they're walking around with swelled heads. They may be the most awesome new live band you'll sweat over and scream at this year, but no one takes a blind bit of difference at home in Texas.
Case in point: The other night, James Petralli walked into his favourite karaoke bar in Austin. The White Denim singer has been away this past while, you see, touring with his band and making friends all over the US and Europe.
Tonight, though, he just wanted to forget about how the Texas heat was playing havoc with his allergies and simply blow off some steam. Petralli had a hankering to sing someone else's songs for a change. Maybe a ballad such as Larry Graham's One in a Million Youor his usual showstopper, This Is It, by Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald. No one in the karaoke bar blinked an eyelid.
Petralli had a beer and waited for his turn.
"We're so removed from what's happening with any kind of buzz," he says. "I mean, I see the press clippings and it looks like we're gaining some fans over where you are, but it hasn't had much of an impact in Texas, not that I can notice. People are still treating me the same way they always do, man."
That's Austin for you. Like so many others in the self-proclaimed music capital of the world, the amiable Petralli and the other White Denim wearers (drummer Josh Block and bassist Steve Terebecki) were blow-ins attracted to the city's easy-like-Sunday-morning welcome for musos.
"There are a lot of other musicians in town, and I think we're all treated the same. It's so laid back that people don't tend to make a fuss over you. I might go to a barbecue and I'd see Bill Callahan and Jonathan from Shearwater there, for instance, and people just don't tend to make a fuss and that's really cool."
Petralli high-tailed it to Texas from Sacramento because of music. Studying English literature, he failed his very last course and, burned out after five years, decided to give music a shot instead. He hooked up with Block in a band called Parque Touch before Terebecki came along and the three began White Denim.
It was a winning move. Their debut album, Workout Holiday, recorded in a trailer which the band had turned into a studio, has plenty of White Denim's alluring styles and lines, but see them live and you'll become a fan for life.
They were a standout at Austin's recent South By Southwest showdown, making the kind of freaky garage rock racket you'd get if James Brown was still hollering at the Apollo and playing from the Nuggetsbox set. White Denim sock it to you with their punchy riffs, funky licks, soulful screaming, punky attitude and sheer raw power.
"What you see live is what we set out to be," says Petralli. "Each of us plays a different role in what we do, onstage and in the studio, but it's the ability to improvise which is the big thing for us. That has kept us going because the songs are just vehicles for us to see how far we can push ourselves as players. I think we're getting better, and we have come a long way in terms of chemistry over the last few years. I was watching some videos earlier from a couple of years ago and you can see that we're getting there."
Petralli says he's still learning when it comes to songwriting. "A lot of the songs on the record are really our first songs. As they're my first attempt at writing song lyrics, a lot of them are informed by the language of the writers I studied and liked, such as Ernest Hemingway and especially Gertrude Stein. I like how Stein used repetition and the subtle changes in how she wrote things. She had a real musical style, and I think that lends itself to songwriting in an interesting way."
As for Petralli's much-discussed prowess as a baseball player, he insists it's been over-played - a bit. "It's in my family. My grandfather was a player, my dad was a player and my little brother is a really great player who might make the US team for the Olympics, which would be really something.
"I was a bat-boy for a long time, shagging bats for the Texas Rangers. I was good, but I didn't have the professional dedication that you must have to compete at that level. That dedication was beyond me, and also I couldn't hit curveballs very well. Around the time I was 17, I began to realise that I wasn't getting many calls from scouts and probably needed to get into something else."
Yet he has no problems finding the dedication to stay in the rock'n'roll game. "Well, I suppose it's a similar kind of dedication when it comes to making music. I took a lot of the same habits with me and applied them to music. I practise every day and I'm always thinking about the next show or the next song.
"I suppose music has become the outlet for all that energy that used to go into baseball."
Workout Holiday is released on June 27th. White Denim play the Oxegen festival at Punchestown Racecourse, Co Kildare,
on July 11th. Download free MP3s at www.daytrotter.com/article/1252/white-denim or at http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/ White_Denim/music
See/Hear
