Photo: Jordan Noel

Touring, touring and more touring: That’s what Southern-bred trio The Whigs has been up to for the past year or so, and they’ve been playing packed stadiums and crowded holes-in-the-wall alike abroad and across the country.  Though their sound on record (especially on 2008’s Mission Control) is one that feels right at home in a dimly lit, gritty, made-for-garage-rock kind of spot, The Whigs are indisputably a live band that drum up a contagious, electrified energy that inspires even the most heavy-footed of concert goers to move their feet and bob their heads.   With warm praise from former tour mates and friends  Kings of Leon and the most celebrated producers in the country scrambling to work with them, The Whigs are ending 2009 on a high note.   Parker Gispert, Julian Dorio and Tim Deaux, though thrilled to be working their distorted magic in the confines of a studio in Nashville, are ecstatic to be hitting the road again: The perks of a live show, of kicking the volume up a notch on an electric guitar and feeling the reverb of feedback, are what got The Whigs going in the first place.   Their tour kickoff in Boston on Wednesday will be a special night as they’re sharing the bill with The Features, The Dead Trees and Mean Creek, all bands who make music they love and all bands they’ve come to embrace as friends from sharing stages with them over the past couple of years.

While driving home from CMJ Sunday night, I had the chance to catch up with Tim Deaux, bass player of The Whigs, about what The Whigs are currently working on in the studio, who they’re listening to out of Boston and how, exactly, he wound up crashing in Drug Rug’s apartment.  The Whigs are headlining tomorrow night Downstairs at the Middle East, and given that the bill is stacked with local heavyweights and notable national acts alike, you’ll want to get there early.  Don’t have a ticket yet?  Get going on that and fast, as these bands will bring a huge draw and it’s set to be one of the most memorable lineups this fall.

-Hilary Hughes

THE MAIN EVENT: THE WHIGS TPB INTERVIEW

Give us a little history, Tim: How did the Whigs come to be and make music together?

Julian and Parker, my band mates, grew up and went to high school together back in Atlanta and they’ve known each other much longer than they’ve known me (laughs). They started playing music around their freshman year at the University of Georgia, and that was sort of the beginning of the band. I didn’t join in until a little later on after I finished college when I moved to Athens and started jamming with these guys.  Now, I’ve been with the band for a couple of years and the band’s been around for technically about five years from them starting to get going during college, but that’s not a very good story! (Laughs)

Take me through the creative process behind the music of The Whigs. Who writes the lyrics? Are the arrangements taken on by one member of the band, or is the creative process of The Whigs completely collaborative?

Parker is the guitar player and singer and primary lyricist in the band, and Julian is the drummer.  I play bass primarily and I play a little of guitar and keyboard.  As far as songwriting goes, we take it how it comes: Any way an idea surfaces, whether it’s us jamming together at the rehearsal space or it’s something one of us comes up with on our own and we bring it to the band, Parker will bring in tunes that have a verse and a melody and then we’ll flesh it out together.  Sometimes he has the full thing, or sometimes Julian has a drum beat he’s excited about and then he’ll bring it to me or I’ll have a bass line or a chord progression I think is cool and I’ll show the guys.  There’s no specific recipe for our songwriting.  If we get an inspired thought, we take it and roll with it and see how far it goes.  We’re on the road so often touring that we don’t have a lot of downtime, so we may be at a sound check before a show and Julian and I may be messing around in the parking lot, and he’ll be like, “That’s cool! Keeping doing that!” And then we’ll start singing and sometimes songs happen like that.  We were lucky this past summer to actually be able to go home and have a dedicated songwriting stretch where we could dedicate ourselves to coming up with new material for the record that we’ll be putting out early next year.

Are there any songs in the Whigs catalog that you feel especially connected to?

I can probably speak for the three of us when I say that the new material is probably what we’re most excited to play, but a lot of that has to do with the freshness of the songs and the brand new excitement that comes along with the new songs.  With the older material, I wouldn’t say that I get sick of old songs but some songs that didn’t used to be your favorites suddenly become your favorite.  I think it has to do with being on the road so much.  Songs evolve from playing them night after night, and over time and they become these songs that were much different than they were at the point in which they were written.  Some songs turn into something more exciting during a live show.  One of the oldest songs we play is called “Need You” and it was actually written way, way back when Parker and Julian started playing together and it actually may have been the first tune Parker wrote, so we’ve played it forever, but that song recently in our shows has been a lot more fun.  I think we’ve been improvising more and letting random things occur, and that’s been rejuvenating for our songs I think.

What are the differences between your live show and The Whigs in the studio?  Describe your live show and what we can expect Wednesday night at the Middle East.

The band really exists as a performing band.  We’ve been lucky and had the privilege to make records and get in the studio and mess around and document the songs on a record. When you start a band when you’re a kid, you don’t think about an amazing record: You think about turning your guitar up and bangin’ away and playing tunes in front of people.  That’s what’s exciting about being in a band, and that’s what we’ve always enjoyed is getting onstage and playing music and playing it loud and having fun.  I think even what we’ve done on record maintains that same spirit, and the live performance has always been a part of The Whigs.  I would say Mission Control showcases that and showcases the band performance, as far as being a real meat-and-potatoes rock record.  It’s real loud and very in your face.  The first record, Give ‘Em All A Big Fat Lip, is a little more complex and there’s a lot more color and some added textures and layers.  The new album I feel like is a combination of the two:  It feels like our approach to this new record was to have this live vibe and the main parts of the tunes were all tracked live and we’re playing together, and then we went in there later and added a few tonal elements here and there.  In a way, I would say that the new record is a mix of what we did with Mission Control as well as what happened with Give ‘Em All A Big Fat Lip. As far as our live show goes, it’s going to be interesting because we haven’t actually rehearsed or played because we’ve been in the studio so much lately!  We haven’t actually gone onstage and played these songs outside the studio in awhile, so Wednesday might be a little bit of a sloppy rock show (laughs).  We’re trying to play as much of the new stuff as we can get away with, and we’ll definitely play a bunch of the old stuff, too.

When it comes to your touring adventures, do you have any crazy stories from The Whigs’ tour bus for us?

This last year for us has been probably one of the most exciting years of our lives: The summer before this last summer, we got to go to Europe and Japan.  It was a really huge thing for us to be able to play overseas. This whole past year, we’ve been able to do some touring with some bigger bands that have allowed us to play some huge, amazing arenas.  We got to play Red Rocks and go all over the country and play for thousands and thousands of people, and along the way on that tour, somehow or another we ended up rubbing elbows with a few movie stars and models and that was kind of a trip.  All that’s fun and gravy! As far as specifics go, I’ll leave that up to y’all’s imagination as things may seem more interesting than what actually occurred (laughs).  The last year’s been a lot of fun.

I understand that you’ve played Boston many times before.  What venues do you enjoy playing in the city?

We’ve been in Boston a handful of times and if my memory’s served me correctly, we’ve played TT the Bear’s awhile back and we’ve played the Paradise Rock Club quite a few times and we really enjoyed ourselves.  We played there with the Drive-by Truckers a few years ago.  We came back through and played our own show there just a few months ago, and we got to do two nights with Kings of Leon at the Orpheum about six months ago, and that was great.  It’s going to be an extra special exciting night on Wednesday because it’s not only the first night of our tour; it’ll be sort of a reunion.  We’ll get to see our friends, The Dead Trees, who actually grew up in Boston and we’re excited to see them.  We’re excited to see the guys in Mean Creek, and we’re good buddies with them, too.  The Features are friends of ours from Nashville.  We’re also bringing up a few friends from Georgia, and our tour manager and sound engineer, Matt, lives in North Hampton, and we haven’t seen him in quite a few months so we’re really excited to see him and it’s going to be his birthday, so I think we’re gonna have a good ol’ fashioned party Wednesday night!  It’s going to be a really good time.

You mentioned Mean Creek and the Dead Trees.  Are there any other Boston bands that you’re currently following?

Drug Rug is a personal favorite of mine!  I just got a copy of their new record.  They’re friends of friends, and the last time I was up in the area, I was at a wedding in the cape about a month ago and I found myself in Boston with nowhere to stay.  I called my friend Carter who actually has a band called Tulsa, and he was like, “Hey man, come stay with me!” And his apartment was actually Drug Rug’s apartment.  Drug Rug was still on tour at this point, so basically I crashed on Sarah’s bed (laughs).  It was a nice warm place to stay.  I’ve only seen them perform once, but I really, really love their records.  Doomstar is another Boston band that are friends of friends, too, and I got a copy of their EP and it’s amazing.  Tulsa for sure, too, I like them a lot and it’s the project of a friend of mine.  Carter’s an amazing writer.

What about your Boston fans?  How does Boston measure up to other cities you’ve played on tour with The Whigs?

Boston’s always fun!  There’s something about Boston – it’s a big city, and when you go to big cities you deal with big city things which cam be good or bad. A few of the more “cool” cities – You go to New York, and you can play a sold out show, and you’re up onstage and you’re looking out at the crowd and everybody looks like they’d rather be at the dentist than where they are.  When we play Boston or Chicago, the crowd is much more with ya and ready to get down and ready to have a good time and not worried about looking cool of what Pitchfork is gonna say about who’s there and wearing what and all that bullshit, basically.  Boston, we can count on the city as being one where people are ready to party, and that’s what we want: Party party party party!

What’s next for The Whigs?  Take me through what you guys have planned for the next couple of months.

This tour starts Wednesday and we’ll go basically up until Thanksgiving, and then we’ll take a short break to eat some turkey and do some laundry. After turkey, we’ll get back on the road again I think November 28^th up until about Christmas time, or Kwanzaa/Hanukkah time.  Then, we’ll go home, reground, and our album that we’re wrapping up now ought to be prepped for at least the beginning of the year, so hopefully come January or February of 2010 we’ll be touring again in support of the release of the new record.  I don’t think we have any real plans set in stone at all at this point, but basically we’ll be home for the holidays and then we’ll be back on the road again at the beginning of the year and probably tour until we just can’t do it anymore.  It’s what we do.  When this record comes out, we’ll be on the road forever. (Laughs)

Do you have any closing thoughts for your Boston fans before we sign off?

Is it gonna be really cold when we get there?  We’ve been very spoiled.  We’ve been home in Georgia soaking up the sunshine and sweating and wearing less clothes than normal.  I’m really not looking forward to the cold winter, but I’m looking forward to playing Boston!  Go Red Sox? I think it’s too late for that…