Sophomore Sweetness

A Long Time Coming, The Whigs' Second Album Mission Control Looks To Push The Band Even Further Into The National Consciousness

originally published January 23, 2008

It's December 2006, and you're The Whigs. You regularly sell out venues in your hometown. You toured the country in support of your first record. Ahead of you lies another trek across America, along with dates at massive festivals like Bonnaroo. You're armpit-deep in the process of writing your second record. And you can't compose songs quickly enough for your new record label, which is eager to fly you to a fancy studio in L.A. so that you can perfect your album with a big-name producer. It's December 2006, you're The Whigs, and you're busting your tail.

You're busting your tail, and your bassist - one-third of your band - quits. How in the hell are you going to finish your demos and get back on the road without the only bassist you've ever had?

If you're Parker Gispert, The Whigs' vocalist and guitarist, you simply push on. "The night Hank [Sullivant] quit, [drummer] Julian [Doro] and I were coming home from a practice," recalls Gispert. "We were under a pretty good time crunch as far as recording the new record, so we didn't have time to stop and find a permanent replacement or anything. We just tried to keep going in terms of solving only one thing at a time. Sam Gunn [Iron Hero] came in and did the touring, and then Craig McQuiston [The Glands, The Tom Collins] came in and helped us with writing some of the bass lines. There would be one half of the day when we would be practicing with Sam, getting ready for the tour, then the other half of the day, rehearsing with ourselves and sometimes with Craig, and sometimes with Adam [Saunders, of The Pendletons], trying to write songs for the album."

And if you're Gispert, you're keeping your composure. "I didn't feel in over my head," he says, "but I definitely wasn't relaxed. I was working pretty hard every day. I haven't really felt in over my head or uncomfortable in any scenario, because we've taken this all upon ourselves – it was us wanting to tour, us wanting to put out a new record."

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Indeed, for The Whigs, Athens' tightest and most melodic power trio, hardship has been a given since Gispert and Dorio's false start at making music together in 2001. The two had been jamming together since high school, but their plans to form a band while studying at the University of Georgia were quickly disrupted. "I got really sick after I graduated high school," says Gispert. "I had to miss my first semester of college. At that point I was in Atlanta, and Julian was in Athens, so we would just talk on the phone and talk about the things we wanted to do."

After Gispert recovered, he and Dorio hooked up with Sullivant and jumped headlong into writing songs and playing shows. Like most upstart bands, The Whigs met with a little approval and a fair helping of disinterest.

"Our first show went really well," remembers Gispert. "We played at DT's, and we played a lot of the songs that ended up on the first record, and it went well, and people were drinking at the bar and dancing, and it was a fun night. The second show we played was also at DT's, and there wasn't really anybody there… When we started the band, we wanted to do the things that bands do, and one of the things that bands do is play shows when there's nobody there. We weren't really discouraged when we played the second show and there weren't as many people there."

Before long, The Whigs became a big draw for Athenians who appreciated punchy, accessible rock. Once college graduation - the point at which touring nationally would be a viable option - was only a year away, the gentlemen recorded their self-financed first album with vintage gear in an abandoned frat house. Give 'Em All a Big Fat Lip was released independently in 2005, by which point The Whigs had built a strong regional following and had begun attracting national attention.

Comparing the band to The Replacements and The Beatles, Rolling Stone named The Whigs one of its Ten Artists to Watch for 2006. In the summer of that year, the band signed with ATO, a major label subsidiary with a small roster of artists who are more interested in credible careers than chart success. ATO re-released Big Fat Lip in late 2006 and will release Mission Control, The Whigs' second album, this month.

The backing of a well-endowed label and a growing fanbase haven't caused Gispert to feel as if The Whigs have fully arrived, though.

"The only way that you can make it is to satisfy yourself," he says. "If you play to 500 people but you're not satisfied with your show, it doesn't matter how many people were there. You just got to keep it on the level of satisfying yourself, and then everything that happens after that is just a fun thing to watch."

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Compared to the rest of The Whigs' fast-paced, surprise-filled career, the weeks spent polishing Mission Control in July 2007 were restful. The band tapped a friend, Adam Saunders, to play bass, thereby keeping an unknown session player out of that role.

They also worked with renowned producer Rob Schanpf, who proved personable and stimulating.

"He worked with a lot of artists - Beck, Guided By Voices, Elliott Smith - that we respect," explains Gispert. "He was our choice. ATO talked with us and did a good job of just finding out who was interested in making the record. Rob was interested in working with us, and we had met him up in New York and Los Angeles, and after hanging out with him a little bit, he just seemed like the kind of guy we could work with, someone we could talk to… He makes you feel comfortable. For someone like us who recorded their first record in a house, he does a good job of just creating an environment in which you feel comfortable just trying out whatever ideas you have, where no idea's a bad idea."

Which parts of the album are most pleasing to Gispert? "Julian did a really good job with his drum tones. He definitely had lots of options and was able to get his drums to sound the way he wanted them to sound… I think I sang more on pitch on this record than I did on the first record."

Both observations are spot-on. Mission Control follows a similar blueprint to that of Fat Lip, but Dorio's crisp percussion sounds (and dramatic fills) and Gispert's sharpened rasp make The Whigs' new batch of rough-and-tumble pop songs a touch more nuanced and focused than its predecessor.

"I really like the first record," says Gispert, "because I feel like it was an adequate depiction of where the band was. We didn't have anybody who could pay for us to make the record, and we couldn't afford a producer or to work in a studio, so the way we recorded it was very primitive, and the performances that we kept were just primal, and not slick and perfect... We'd like to record a lot of records, and I feel like if you listen to them chronologically, you'd probably listen to Fat Lip and say, 'That was the first record' - which it is. So to me, that means we accomplished our goal."

As for Mission Control, "We're kind of honing in on who we are and what we do as a band." In other words, The Whigs are becoming who they already are.

Don't think for a moment, though, that The Whigs' second record is a gussied up, Brian Wilson-esque slab of pristine pop. "I'm sure [making something like Pet Sounds] would be fun," muses Gispert, "but I don't see it happening anytime soon. It doesn't really seem appropriate." Right now, The Whigs only record songs that will translate well into their meat-and-potatoes, three-man concerts.

"Even the songs that have horns are songs that we play live without horns. We know they can hold up when we play them as a three-piece, so when you get into the studio, you don't think twice about adding horns or pedal steel or something, because you know that once those things are not there, the song stands on its own. That's a reflection of how we write songs. If we're playing in a practice space and we're saying, 'This song would be great if we had two other guys playing piano,' then it isn't going to get very far because there aren't two other guys. The songs that end up on the records are songs that I've generally shown Julian with just an acoustic guitar. Hopefully the melodies and the layout of the song are enough to carry it."

Since The Whigs are at this point more invested in playing live than cutting expansive albums, Mission Control isn't a coherent "statement" with a prevailing theme or consistent tone. "The general mood might be a little all over the place," says Gispert, "but records like that are the ones I'm a fan of anyway, records that tend to have a lot of different moods and stuff… Just any record that I enjoy, like Beatles records, Stones records. On Stones records, there will be a country song, then a couple of rock songs, then a real slow piano song. Or someone like Elliott Smith, he'll have a couple of waltzes, then he'll have a rocker, then he'll have a slow acoustic guitar song. Realistically, we definitely listen to all different types of stuff. It's not like we listen to AC/DC 24-hours a day. We might listen to an AC/DC record, then a Leonard Cohen record."

For Gispert, this approach to album-making is consistent with his commitment not to over-think the music he makes. "There isn't something that we're definitely trying to do and can fall short of. You write the songs that you write, and then you go in there and try to record them in a way that makes you happy. We're happy with the way the record sounds. We're happy enough to leave L.A. and satisfy ourselves, which is all you can hope to ask of yourself."

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With a promising sophomore album under their belts, a slew of Southeastern shows in their immediate future, and more extensive touring on the horizon, The Whigs have plenty to look forward to. But there are still plenty of potential listeners to convert, and The Whigs have had a difficult time building an unstoppable buzz in either the underground or the mainstream. For all the ecstatic reviews in their press kit, The Whigs haven't yet blown up, largely because they're difficult to pigeonhole, and therefore difficult to market.

"People will just try to put you into a category," Gispert says. "We made the first record ourselves, and we released it ourselves, and we were in college. So I guess some people would say that we were college rock, or that we were indie rock because we were working independently. And we're not really competing with Nickelback or interested in radio… We don't worry about [not finding an audience], but it's definitely a reality. I don't think we're commercial enough to be on mainstream radio, and I don't feel like we're quite eccentric enough to be on college radio. I don't really know where the band falls in terms of that stuff, but that's kind of always been something we've had to deal with."

"It's a good thing, though," he adds quickly and confidently.

Fortunately, The Whigs are working with a label that's content to watch them develop organically.

"I felt like the songs on the first record were strong. We realized we wouldn't be recording them in a great studio or anything, so we tried to focus on getting strong songs and strong performances, and I think that's probably what the label – you know they're going to be working with us for a few records, so our relationship with them is based more upon the songs that we write and not really on the recording style or any of that stuff… We looked for a label that we could develop with. If you look at bands throughout the history of time, The Rolling Stones put out a few records before they made their best music. Same with the Beatles. Most bands that I'm a fan of are bands that have developed and had a career… It's always interesting to see how a band develops over time, over five or six records, and that's kind of the band that we want to be, and that's what we communicated to the label, and that's kind of the way that we're approaching it, and the way that they're approaching it."

When Gispert talks about the long view, he's at his most enthusiastic. Although he approaches music more like a skilled craftsman than a tortured artist, he forges a strong persona.

"I don't know if we have a gift to give to the world, or if the world were to even be conscious of the gift we were to give them. You put yourself into the music, and you're satisfying yourself. People just got to get presented with us, for better or for worse. That's what we're trying to do – be honest with ourselves and present ourselves.

"I think about going to a concert with someone like my dad, who might not be in touch with music in 2008. If he sees four guys from Georgia playing some British Invasion rock and feigning British accents, he senses its phoniness, and he doesn't need to know anything about music to be pushed away by something like that… Bob Dylan's voice isn't great because he's an opera singer or something. It's great because it's his voice, and he sings with his own voice, and that's what to me is attractive about people and musicians alike.

"With making music, we're trying to be more and more ourselves, and try to figure it out. It's like a self-exploration kind of thing. Usually the best albums are when a band fully realizes that moment. That's what makes it fun to listen to that band's three albums before they hit that album."

Mission Control is good, but The Whigs' defining moment is probably at least a couple of records away. For now, though, they've got a steady bassist - Ken Deaux, who joined them on their last tour. The band plays the 40 Watt Club for the first time since the middle of '07 and then heads up to New York for an appearance on "The Late Show With David Letterman" on Monday, Jan. 28.

Phillip Buchan

WHO: The Whigs, The Ginger Envelope, Dream Girls
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Saturday, January 26
HOW MUCH: $10