Q&A: White Williams

BY AARON FRANK

LEO: Welcome to Louisville. There are some new members in the band now. Do you all want to introduce yourselves and tell everyone what you play?
Cale: My name is Cale Parks and I play drums and samplers.
Matt: My Name is Matt Papich.
Joe: And I play keyboards and samplers. Matt plays guitar.

LEO: On the first album, I know Joe wrote most of the material. Is the songwriting process with the band different now?
Joe: On the new songs, everyone else helps more. But when I made the first record, that was all by myself.

LEO: So you all just opened for Nine Inch Nails in Lexington recently. I hear Trent Reznor is handpicking the bands for each stop on this tour, so how did that all come about?

Matt: Trent’s an old friend of Joe’s. (laughing)
Joe: That’s not true. I don’t know how we were asked, and we played and the crowd was nice. They were friendly. With that type of audience and with that size of an audience, they were pretty friendly and welcoming for us. I’m sure most of them have never heard of us.

LEO: So this is the first of a string of dates that you all have lined up with Vampire Weekend. How important is touring to a smaller independent band like White Williams?
Matt: I’m starting to think it’s more important than I used to think.
Joe: But for money, that’s not why we go on tour.
Cale: There people that buy our records and go to the shows are two different audiences, I think in some specific cities.
Joe: I think a lot of people who download the record will go to the show, but some people who buy the record may be less likely to go to the show.

LEO: That’s an interesting theory that holds true in a lot of cases I would imagine. You all toured with Dan Deacon and Girl Talk last year. That was your first big national tour, so what was that experience like for you?
Joe: It was fun. It was kind of an abrupt change from what I was doing, because I had never really played out for people before and all of a sudden, we were playing for a whole lot of people at once. So it was a little bit of a learning process.

LEO: They like to incorporate a lot of visual effects into their shows. Because Joe went to art school, did you all follow along with that trend on the tour, and do you have plans to further incorporate that aspect in to your show?
Joe: On that tour, we had someone doing visuals, but that was only because it was convenient because he was also doing visuals for Girl Talk. I mean, it’s something that we’d love to do. It’s just an issue of logistics, if we can bring someone like that around, because that’s another person we have to find a place to stay for, and get them food, and of course, pay them, and even have space for them. So we’re trying to keep things small right now.

LEO: You all incorporate so many different genres of music in to your sound, and I’ve found it pretty difficult to describe to people, as I’m sure many other people have. How would you describe your sound to someone who’d never heard White Williams before?
Matt: Tell him what you told security today.
Joe: We should just say like three words. (Joe points to Matt)
Matt: Hyper
Cale: Pop
Joe: Music (laughter erupts)

LEO: Alright, well we’ve nailed down the White Williams sound.
Joe: Hyphy

Matt: It’s definitely a little hyphy.

LEO: Particularly with the “New Violence” video and some of the songs on Smoke, it seems like you all are influenced by pop culture quite a bit, like TV and movies. Is that an accurate assumption?
Joe: Yeah, I think just by being people from anywhere, we’re influenced by TV. I think a lot of kids grow up with a television set in front of their face these days, so yeah.
Well, even on the opening track “Headlines,” there seemed to be a certain take on the media with the title and lyrics.

LEO: What’s relevance of the title of the album, Smoke?
Joe: Well there’s a song called “Smoke” on the record, and it was named after that song. And I think it’s a word that can just mean a lot of different things to music, where it’s like a material or something. I just thought it worked well as a theme, because of the way that someone might interpret the word. I like there to be a certain vagueness with all of our things, so I think the word worked for the theme of the record.

LEO: Since you’re already very knowledgeable of art and design, I wanted to ask what type of input you had, if any, on the cover art and liner notes for Smoke.
Joe: Yeah, I helped with conceptualizing the album art, but my friend, the artist Andrew Strasser did the album art.

LEO: Are you releasing any more singles from that album?
Joe: Yeah there’s a 7-inch for “New Violence.”

LEO: And you all recently put out a video for “Violator” as well.
Joe: Yeah, there’s a 7-inch for “Violator” as well, and all that stuff is out and available now.

LEO: You recorded that first album in four different places, San Francisco, Brooklyn, Cincinnati and Cleveland. How did all that relocating affect the writing and recording process?
Joe: I think it definitely forced me to use what I had in front of me to work on the record. So it was nice because I had to be complacent with what I had in front of me at the time, so I didn’t really get to have much of a selection process. I couldn’t add all of the things that I thought would sound good. A lot of times, I didn’t have very much to work with, so it was definitely fun to try and get a lot out of what I had in front of me.

LEO: Are you all working on new material right now too?
Joe: We’re going to try and work on the next record in the winter.

LEO: Are you going to take a similar approach to Smoke with the new record?
Joe: We’ll definitely have more help. We’re probably going to get the opportunity to work in a studio on this record. Whereas, with the last record, it was just mixed and recorded by myself. So I think we’ll have the opportunity to work with more people too, if we need to, if there’s someone that’s more talented than we are something with recording or producing.

LEO: Because Cale and Matt are going to have more input, how different is the sound going to be?
Matt: It’s definitely different.
Joe: It’s just been so long since I’ve worked on music, because so much time has passed that I think any time away from working on songs is going to make the sound a lot different. And we’re working together more collaboratively, Matt and I are working together, so there’s definitely more room for change.