WHITE RABBITS
The SIS Interview by Eavvon O'Neal

Brooklyn-via-Columbia, MO group White Rabbits began as a blogger phenomenon last year, but 2007 has been their year, where they've risen to the brink of the mainstream, including an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman. Stranded In Stereo had the chance to chat with Steve, the band's vocalist, from the road. Fort Nightly is out now on Say Hey Records.

The musical fray, the industry that eats up and spits out anyone at the fickle whim of popular tastes, is a bitch. It’s hard to fight it, and those at its core must instead rely on two parts talent, one part ambition, and 458.63 parts of luck to make rock stars rise to the top. So it goes without saying that starting at the bottom can be discouraging in itself. With competing tastes and different categorical discrepancies having the strongest influence when a band sets out to define itself, whichever genre they fall into will have great ramifications. Indie bands have one set of rules, while a regular old rock n’ roll band lives by an entirely different credo. While White Rabbits filled up at some non-descript gas station, after leaving Vassar College and moving toward Pittsburgh, these are the questions that ruled the discussion.

Lots of bands get thrown into what some consider the blanketing spawn of alternative music that is indie rock. “People do have an understanding of what “indie” is, but it’s still unclear to both those inside and outside the genre. For example, if you were to ask me, LCD Soundsystem is not indie rock.” So says Steve, the vocal lead for the Rabbits. His point is valid, yet many bands, the White Rabbits included, continue to state indie rock as a distinct sound that they represent. It seems to stem more from a DIY acceptance than a definition. Arguably, by that ideal, most of the artists in our beloved industry are indie. When you ask how they would define themselves, outside the vague capsule of indie rock, you get more to a core sound. “Rock ‘n’ Roll. Just because we don’t like being committed to any one sound. It’s about the natural progression and that sort of free idea, and not trying to be over simplified. Indie branched out from what was “alternative” to classic rock, and now it’s just that everything is fair game, all depending on your influences and personal tastes.”

These personal tastes are key in what the end result, and quite possibly, what the popularity of that end result will be. While moving through the good old contiguous US, the touring van has been jam filled with the new jams from Spoon and Nick Lowe. These sounds may not create a new phase in the band’s discography, but it could cause different forms of the same idea much like “listening to ‘Blackbird and ‘Helter Skelter’. They are two different ideas that come from one focused thought.”

While I finish writing this, White Rabbits are playing a hopefully sold out show at the House of Blues in Dallas. Each show and venue change represents their ascendance in exposure, and hopefully their rise in popularity is correlated to this. It may be difficult to pinpoint where they stand amidst the rest of the other converging sounds and bands that are competing for the same attention and aspiring to the same goal, but that just makes each show and each crowd all the more important.