The race to success in the music business isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon.
Last year, the Whigs, an Athens, Ga.-based trio, signed with ATO Records, and since that time, the guys have spent much of their time on the road. They’re building an audience the old-fashioned way, one gig at a time.
The Whigs don’t seem to be sweating this marathon, though. Earlier this month, the day before they were set to hit the road again, guitarist and vocalist Parker Gispert and drummer Julian Dorio were laid-back, but their excitement grew when they began talking about the album they just recorded in L.A.
“Mission Control,” due early next year, was recorded at Sunset Sound and the Sound Factory, places where classic tracks from the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and the Doors were first captured on tape.
“We were able to make a record that’s more like what we sound like live,” Gispert says. “… It’s real rock and real straight ahead.”
ATO’s Jonathan Eshak, the label’s A&R man, who was instrumental in bringing the band to the label, says, “We couldn’t be more excited about it. It’s a rock record, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s very loud.”
After the Whigs hooked up with ATO, the band’s self-released 2005 debut, “Give ‘Em All a Big Fat Lip,” was re-released nationally in September 2006. Before year’s end, the band lost original bassist Hank Sullivant, who left to record on his own under the name Kuroma and with the band MGMT.
“They’ve had a rotating cast of bass players, which has been slightly difficult for them, but it hasn’t slowed them down,” ATO’s Eshak says.
With fill-in bassist Sam Gunn on board, the band continued with a barrage of touring that only let up in May, with a couple more dates in June, including the Bonnaroo Music Festival.
Come July, the band was in L.A. recording “Mission Control,” with Adam Saunders of Athens band the Pendletons playing bass. Since finishing the album, they’ve recruited a new bass player, Tim Deaux.
Dorio and Gispert say that they enjoyed L.A. a lot more than they expected to, but they didn’t really have a lot of free time.
“We didn’t have tons of time to do anything,” Gispert says. “But then, when you start thinking about what you would do, anywhere that I could think to go, I’d probably just rather go to the really awesome recording studio that we’re allowed to be in right now.”
Like all good music geeks, they did find time for one thing: the massive record store Amoeba Music.
“We had literally 100 CDs each, just buying and buying and buying,” Dorio says. “Their used-CD section is 10 times the size of most other stores’.”
On Jan. 22, the Whigs’ “Mission Control” will enter the fray at Amoeba and everywhere, and the musical marathon begins again.
“We’re not looking to come out of the gate and chart on the Top 200,” Eshak says. “We work with career artists who are touring artists. We’re very much invested in that.”
