Transmission Entertainment » Feature

White Denim

This feature is dedicated to the Austin Music Awards 'Best New Band' and Legendary Rock Mix Martial Artists, White Denim.  Below, you will  find a little history, photos, links to records, videos, downloads, tour dates, and press. 

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We freaked when we first heard (and saw) this band play over a year ago at The Mohawk.  They only had about 6 solid songs at the time, and the imperfection within them became the perfection that was this band.  It was unlike anything that was going on in Austin at the time, or anywhere for that matter.  Such glory is really pretty effortless for them, as they are all incrediby talented.  The experience is unique for the fan because their insane skill doesn't come with any attitude...they're humble, happy, and stoked to be playing music.  And they have been sent here to rodger the earhole of a generation.  Please stand by.

                        *Shot by Gorilla vs Bear @ Fun Fun Fun Fest (left), Artrocker Magazine Shoot (right)

The scene.  Imagine a loud room with confused people that don’t want to leave the show because they don’t understand what they are hearing, and why their brain can't convince their body to leave or stop moving.  Imagine a sweaty, classically-trained centerstage jazzrock drummer with a peacock grin barking lyrics at his counterpart, and never missing a beat that may have never actually been rehearsed before.  On his right, the bass captain, laying down sweet and greasy subterranean Fat Albert Gang of Four licks, playing to his own crowd in his head and conjuring up Jabba the Hut thumps that make you wanna...do stuff.  And across the stage, dripping on the foot pedals, playing with the wah-wah, and looking at the crowd like the happy clown from Poltergeist, is the most soulful and thoughtful indie rock postpunk soul singer in the land.  The songwriting is provacative and brilliant.  You can't help but get on the White Denim train.  They invent and reinvent songs on the fly, crack jokes, play with broken gear, and turn lemons into lemonade without anyone  noticing.  It's the good stuff...and it gets better every time you hear it.  It's easy to think up comparisons to try and explain this band to people, but it's hard to make those comparisons actually work and make sense while trying to describe the sound.  That is usually the moment when you realize that this is something new and something different.  If we must do the obligatory comparisons to give you somewhat of a compass here, in some White Denim tunes, you can find relationships to rowdier tunes of: The Stooges, The Black Lips, The Who, Soledad Bros, The Minutemen, MC5, Von Bondies, Hendrix, King Khan, Zeppelin, New York Dolls, Jefferson Airplane.

These are just a few of the reasons that we support this band.  You should too.

From Sean of Daytrotter:

“Pray forth to the visionaries who first developed peyote because here comes a new descendant, someone with the spitting image of the same peoples, the same straight nose, hairline, wiry lines and eyesight. Its bugle call, announcing advancement or arrival, is the sound of hellhounds and the howls of junkyard dogs hungry and willing to chew off their feet to satiate the hollow gonging of the stomach, its bargained pleading. It’s the sound of coyotes far off in the desert distance, sending smoke signals to the rest of the pack out roaming around the hunting fields, mangy but adamant about finding some meaty legs and ribs for dinner, for the fire that they’ll learn to make when the sun sets. It’s the sound of spontaneous combustion, setting off a chain of unlikely blazes. It makes you break out into seizures and loops, traveling on the bullet train to tarnation – but with benefits, with perks that are better than parole. White Denim, the Austin, Texas, three-piece is this coming, this marauding, three-headed horseman of explosive guitars and scorpion testosterone, blowing everything in its way back two counties, ripping clothing and skepticism into confetti and raffling off the pedestrian way of doing rock and roll to anyone who will take it in this seller’s market. Go over to your DVD closet or the quicker alternative, YouTube, and watch the way that Jimi Hendrix makes pants-on love to his death row-ed guitar just before lighting it on fire at the Monterey Pop Festival decades ago. All of the things that the eyes capture in those few minutes are hazy reflections of the very manners by which Steve Terebecki, James Petralli and Joshua Block adhere to, without fail. Any moron could pick up on the Hendrix influence in the band’s own purple-veined, pulsating and soulful bleedings, but it’s more the sensation that led the guy to his overdose and his own drive that they deem the animal which they’d prefer to track down and tame – or shake up and fuck with to make wilder and more feral. They’d ramble behind it and pin a tail onto that animal.”

About

Formed in February 2006 when friends James Petralli and Joshua Block (of the band Parque Touch) teamed up with Steve Terebecki (of the band Peach Train) and started recording punk-infused, psychedelic blues-rock in Block's 1940s Spartan trailer.

In 2007, the band self-released its first EP entitled "Let's Talk About It" on 7" only, but later these tracks became available on iTunes. While on tour in 2007, the band recorded its second album and sold copies as a nine-song "tour EP" entitled "Workout Holiday," which was only sold at shows. Workout Holiday caught the ear of new record label RCRD LBL (an online record label releasing exclusive and completely free music from emerging and established artists), and the band signed on to re-record three of the songs from Workout Holiday. These songs were exclusively released as the RCRD LBL EP, one Mp3 track at a time over the course of the first few months of 2008.

Since these releases, the band has toured extensively playing shows including SXSW, the CMJ Music Marathon, just completed a US tour with Tapes n’ Tapes, and are headed to Europe this summer for a club and festival circuit that supports their new release overseas.  They can also be found in the U.S. this fall at both the ACL Fest and Monolith Music Festival.  White Denim was also named "Best New Band" at the 2008 Austin Music Awards. The band has reported that their debut full-length LP will be entitled "Exposion" and is planned for release by the end of July '08. The new album will be self-released much like Let's Talk About It (on vinyl and digital format only), reporting that "CDs seem pretty worthless to us"; however, the band has struck a record deal with European label Full Time Hobby (home to The Hold Steady and Viva Voce) for an overseas release. The band has also reported that they are finished with a second LP.

                                                   *Shot by Nash Cook, live at The Mohawk (Austin).

The Band

• James Petralli: Vocals, Guitar
• Joshua Block: Drums
• Steve Terebecki: Vocals, Bass

Releases

• Let's Talk About It EP (7", 2007) Self-released
• Workout Holiday (full length, 2008) Full Time Hobby
• RCRD LBL EP (digital, 2008) RCRD LBL online release
• Exposion LP (2008) Expected September 1, 2008

 Upcoming Shows

• Jun 25 2008      8:00P
•     Hove Festival     Arendal, Norway

• Jun 27 2008     8:00P
•     Koko (Club NME night)     London, UK
• Jun 28 2008     8:00P
•     Glastonbury Festival (Queens Head stage)     Pilton, UK
• Jun 30 2008     8:00P
•     Audio     Brighton, UK
• Jul 1 2008     8:00P
•     Bar Academy     Birmingham, UK
• Jul 2 2008     8:00P
•     Plug     Sheffield, UK
• Jul 3 2008     8:00P
•     Cargo     London
• Jul 5 2008     8:00P
•     The Mighty Boosh Festival     Kent, UK
• Jul 6 2008     8:00P
•     Louisiana     Bristol, UK
• Jul 7 2008     8:00P
•     Bodega Social Club     Nottingham, UK
• Jul 9 2008     8:00P
•     The Roadhouse     Manchester, UK
• Jul 10 2008     8:00P
•     Captains Rest     Glasgow, Scotland
• Jul 11 2008     12:00P
•     Oxegen Festival     Kildare, Ireland
• Sep 13 2008     8:00P
•     Monolith Festival at Red Rocks Amphitheatre     Morrison, Colorado
• Sep 28 2008     5:00P
•     ACL Festival     Austin, Texas

 Press

If you have a MySpace account, dig into more press here.