white rabbits say...

White Rabbits have been astounding audiences down here in Oz. Prior to their arrival in the country, through a shaky line and bad weather, Kat Hartmann caught up with the phenomenally polite White Rabbits guitarist, Alex Evans.

Covered: Drunken antics on Letterman (or not), duelling banjo-esque jams with Paul Schafer and band, doubling up on drummers and the Brooklyn scene.

Kat Hartmann: I heard you guys started out as a college band. Can you tell me about the early days?

Alex Evan: All of us, save Brian the bass player, grew up in Missouri and the music scene that existed there was very small. We all met each other at shows while everyone was at school and had played in other bands together before. We had been playing and listening to music together for a long time so we started the band there and everyone was graduating from school. We decided pretty quickly that we wanted to do the most romantic thing we could and move to NYC, which we did in 2005.

KH: I am interested in what inspired the band name. My first thought would be a nod to Alice in Wonderland – am I close?

AE: I would go ahead and say that none of us are a fan of band names. They’re a bit of a silly notion but we recognise the need for one and so we just kind of picked White Rabbits because it’s open ended and suggests a lot of things to a lot of people. It doesn’t necessarily represent any of us in the band. White Rabbits means whatever you want it to mean.

KH: The new album has been receiving wide praise. How would you describe it?

AE: To me, it sounds pretty raw and fairly immediate. It’s hard to ignore as it’s pretty brash in places. It naturally pulled into the direction of rhythmically driven music.

KH: The band situation seems to have changed somewhat since the recording of the debut – you’re not sharing a loft and bunk beds anymore. How did the change in situation affect the recording of the new album?

AE: When we moved to NY in 2005, we didn’t know anyone in the city, the only thing we had was each other and trying to make music that we thought was cool. So we spent a lot of time playing together and just learning about each other and how everybody played music. I think a lot of the songs on the first album were borne out of us playing together; we were learning how to become a band. This record we knew a lot, we all contribute, we all write, there are no boundaries to what each member can do. It was a bit more fractured because we don’t live together anymore, so it was like two or three people working together at a time and then bringing it to the rest of us. There is a lot more of that, so maybe this record doesn’t sound like six people playing but it’s definitely the product of six people creating the music.

KH: I’m yet to see you guys play live but I have read about the instrument swapping that goes on stage. For the sake of clarification, what does everyone play?

AE:  Jamie (Levinson) plays drums, Matt (Clark) also plays drums and guitar and keyboards (he’s the instrumental extraordinaire, he plays everything), I play guitar, Brian (Betancourt) plays bass, Stephen (Patterson) plays piano and sings and Greg (Roberts) plays guitar and sings. Each song is different, we change around. We kind of have ADD as a band.

KH: People tend to make a bit of fuss over a band having two drummers. What motivated the decision to upscale the percussion section of WR?

 AE: Well, we didn’t end up with two drummers because we had any notion that it was a cool idea. I think it happened because the music in our heads required two drummers to play the parts. We made our first record and we all naturally gravitate toward rhythmically driven music and we realised at the end of the recording process that there was no way we could honestly pull off the material without having a second set of hands. It wasn’t until the writing process for this record that we were like, okay now we have two drummers, perhaps this could be an avenue of exploration. Before that it was pretty natural.
 
KH: There are some incredibly interesting bands and sounds coming out of Brooklyn at the moment. We spoke to Jennifer Fraser from Zaza recently and she said that there was definitely something psychedelic happening but she couldn’t name what it was. Can you throw any light on the subject?

AE: Probably not – I am friends with a lot of bands in Brooklyn but I wouldn’t say I have my finger on the pulse of the Brooklyn scene. I generally don’t really listen to psychedelic music. For me there are a lot of people in Brooklyn playing interesting music. They are afforded that opportunity because there happen to be a lot of people there who are willing to listen to music that might be sort of left of the dial. It is a very encouraging music community simply because it is very welcoming and people are open to some unorthodox music.

KH: So, playing on Letterman must have been a bit of a thrill. Any interesting tales to recount from that evening?

AE: We’ve played it twice, the first time I was very scared and nervous and the second time I was drunk so the second time was a bit more enjoyable. It was very cool both times. I wasn’t actually drunk by the way – I was joking! When we were sound checking the second time, I offhandedly played a little guitar lick and Paul Schafer mimicked my guitar and we went back and forth, it was like a duelling banjo thing and it turned into a full band jam between us and Paul Schafer’s band. That was kind of the highlight of my life.

KH: So you’re about to venture to Australia and obviously our US readers are familiar with your live show… Can our readers in the UK expect to see you on their shores any time soon?

AE: Yeah, we will be playing there in January I believe, and our record comes out there on the 19th (I think). We will be playing most of our shows in the UK and Europe from now on.

white rabbits