2008 Woodie Awards
By Mike R. Meyer
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The Whigs have come a long way in a short period of time. After recording their 2005 debut album in an empty frat house in their hometown of Athens, Georgia, the group caught the ear of ATO Records, who signed the band in 2006.
Their sophomore effort, Mission Control, was recorded in slightly more professional conditions at Sunset Sound in LA and was released earlier this year.
College Times recently spoke with The Whigs’ drummer Julian Dorio about the album, touring and being good role models by staying in school.
College Times: You guys have spent a big part of the last three years on the road. Do you ever get tired of touring?
Dorio: We really enjoy it. For us, it’s kind of the point of being in a band. To get to play live all the time and play different towns in front of different people is sort of what we love. It can be exhausting and we try to get home every once in a while to kind of rejuvenate ourselves.
You were all students when you started. Did you finish school or just put it on the backburner to pursue music for a while?
We all went to the University of Georgia and have since graduated and hope to make (music) a thing that we can do full time. Really, we had finished that record, the first one, and still had some school left … so we kind of juggled the two. We tried to tour as much as we could but also finish up school. We were pretty close, so it seemed like it was worth our time to get the degrees out of the way. The moment we were done with school, we’ve been pretty much touring ever since.
The album has a pretty wide array of sounds. Was there a conscious decision to make a really diverse album or did it just kind of turn out that way?
I don’t think we tried. It wasn’t contrived that way. I think even from the beginning, we’ve always been a band that’s always written different types of songs. The moment that we write one type of song, it might inspire us to write something a little different than that one and then continue to push ourselves and tackle different types of songs and ideas and sounds. So it ends up that our albums have sort of this variety. I like that. I hope that would mean that you have to listen to the record more than once, take some time to sort of get all these different things.
Cities like New York, LA and Austin seem to get the lion’s share of media attention, but Athens has a strong musical history of its own. What was it like starting out there as a local band?
There are an amazing amount of bands for such a small town, a lot of great bands and a lot of bands that we’re definitely fans of. I think the competition is healthy. It’s a very supportive community. We definitely like being from here and coming home here. You can go out any night and see shows and there’s a lot of great venues. It kind of keeps you on your toes, because I think a lot of people around here (who) go out to shows, if they don’t love your band, you’re not the only band in town. They’ve got a lot of things to choose from.
The Whigs w/What Made Milwaukee Famous, The Dead Trees, Modified Arts, 407 E. Roosevelt, Phoenix, 602.462.5516, May 13, 7 p.m., $10
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