The other day I had the
pleasure of chatting mid route between shows to Tim Deaux, bass player of The
Whigs. A southern band who are constantly touring around America and hailing
from Athens, Georgia. Touching upon topics such as their album ‘In The Dark’ due
for release on the 25th of June and the music that gets them through
their long interstate drives.

Hey Tim! Where
abouts am I speaking to you?

We actually just pulled off the highway we are
on our way to New York I think we are in South Carolina right now. We’re having
some trouble with our van and try and fix the lights that have gone out on our
trailer.

Is
this the first show of the tour coming up or mid-tour?

It’s actually the first show of this leg of the
tour, we had a brief little break we had four days off. SO we were home for a moment
and now we are getting back to work and our first show is Friday in New York,
that’s a festival we are playing at.

The
Whigs haven’t been to Australia have they? I don’t think you have?

We have not! We are dying to come to your
country we are hoping and praying and crossing our fingers.

Hopefully
the interviews are a sign you’ll be here soon?

I guess we are being hopeful, we are hopeful we
will get to come over. You know the album has not yet come out in Australia and
hopefully once it does come out we will have a chance to do some touring over
there. It would be a dream come true, we’ve never been and each would love to
come to Australia.

Is
this the first album or second album you’ve been on with the band?

This is the first record that I’ve been apart
of, the band had just finished recording Mission Control which was the second
album. Just after they finished recording they asked me to join the band and
since then we’ve been touring pretty much non-stop until we took a break to
record this album. So yes this was the first album I’ve been apart of
.

Is it true you were a fan of the band before you joined?

Yeah, yeah. Ive been
friends with these guys for a long time, I’d seen them play a dozen times.
Always been a fan and a friend and in a way its pretty cool to get invited to
join a band that I always enjoyed the music they were making. It’s been pretty
cool and it’s been a great adventure ever since ive joined.

What its like being on one side of the fence and now your on the stage
looking at the people you could have been standing with a year or so ago?

[Laughs] It’s been a
real treat. Its been almost three years now and in a way its very natural and I
feel like part of the band. But initially it was a big thrill to set foot on
stage with this band I’d admired for awhile. In a way it was that sort of dream
come true moment, not to say that [laughs] it’s completely faded. By this point
we’ve been touring so much and we’ve played so many shows, that it feels as natural
for me being in the band as Parker and Julian are. It did feel really nice to
be welcomed into the band and stuff...

[Van door slams shut in
background]

Is that the van door slamming there?

Yeah were actually
climbing back into the van now, weve fixed the problem and we are getting back
on the road [laughs].

How far is it to New York from Carolina?

Where are we... South
Carolina? We’ve got a pretty good amount of driving to do, roughly another 10
hours from here. So we are going to drive probably for a few more hours and
stop for the night and get up early and finish the drive tomorrow. We’ve got a
little bit of driving to do but we’re use to it, this has kind of been our way
of life for a few years.

Onto the album, Ben Allen
produced Merriwether Post Pavilion (Animal Collective) Which did pretty well
here, how did you manage to tee up having a more electronic producer to a more
rock based thing?

Well Ben had a lot of
success with the Animal Collective record and also the Gnarls Barkley record
that he produced, but Ben has been a long time friend of ours. In fact Julian
who is drummer has an older brother named Michael. Michael and Ben played in a
band together several years ago, so Ben’s always been a guy in close proximity
to the band. When we were writing songs for the album, we started popping
around ideas for producer. We actually got an email from our record label here
in the States, which had a few suggestions, and a couple of names and the first
name was Ben Allen.

We all got that email and thought well that makes perfect
sense. The record label actually had no idea we were already friends with Ben
and the connection was already there. In a way Ben was already so close to us
that we overlooked him and never really thought of him, but when we got that email
it sort of all came together and made perfect sense. The great thing about
working with Ben was that he was already so familiar with the band. He’d seen
the bands first few shows, He’d worked on some early demos and there really
wasn’t a whole lot of getting to know each other and not a lot of time was
wasted. We were able to get in the studio and start working and it was a lot of
fun it was great.

in a few of the interviews I've read people have been making a connection between the sound of  your latest album In The Dark and touring with Kings of Leon... Do these sort of questions anger you at all?

Wow! No, I don’t any of
us would be angry. We have spent a lot of time on the road with those guys and
we are actually very thankful for all the opportunities they have given us. In
the end we’ve been fans of theirs for a long time and to be invited to go on
tours with them has been such a great experience for us. But I think it was a
little bit of a shock to hear some of that only because to us the material we were
writing for In The Dark was a bit more of a D.I.Y. move for us. We decided to
record at home in Athens in small local recording studio in Athens, Georgia,
which is our home.

The budget was actually a fraction of what was spent on the
previous album and we kind of striving for a little more of a grittier kind of
sound. To us that’s what we hear when we listen to our album and I think a lot
of people either they don’t hear that or they look at our heavy tour schedule
and kind of make these other types of connections. But I don’t think it would
make us at all upset, we’re very thankful for what King of Leon has done for
us. I don’t think us three see too many parallels to them musically, you know
we are an American band from the south and there are those sorts of parallels.
But musically we’re pretty different but you sometimes that’s just how it goes
sometimes.

Speaking of Kings of Leon you’ve got that massive show at Hyde Park (UK) coming up,
are you looking forward to that one?

Actually, when we got the memo
about that, we were all very excited... we haven’t toured outside of the United
States all that much. We’ve been on a couple of really short tours in Europe
and we were able to go to Japan for one festival. But any opportunity for us to
leave the country is always really exciting for us and to have that show in
particular is pretty amazing and we can’t wait. We are excited we are fans of
all the bands on the bill: The Features, The Drums and The Black Keys are all
bands we are very fond of and we are looking forward to it.

Back to Athens for a moment, I’m into music scenes and it is a place I
would like to visit. How would you describe it to people that haven’t been
there?

Well Athens Georgia is a
very small town there is a University there, the University of Georgia. A good
part of the small population of the town is comprised of students that are
coming in and out. But apart from that Athens reputation has grown since
sometime in the 80’s with bands like B52’s and R.E.M. coming out of that city
that started to attract creative people from all over. Leading into the 90’s
and even into today people coming from all over to Athens to be creative.

There
is just a great community of creative people, it’s an inexpensive town to live
in, the climate is nice. There is just a good scene there and it’s still kind
of growing and it’s just a great place to live. Some people have realised that
and have chosen to make Athens their home. There’s a great crowd there, it’s
great place for a young band to get going, there’s plenty of venues and bars
and plenty of people that really enjoy music. It gives you these opportunities
to play shows.

And last question before I run out of time, what sort of bands are you
guys influenced by and how do these translate to your albums. Is it obvious or
more subtle?

Ok, that’s a good
question. As much time as we spend on the road touring we listen to hour and
hours and hours and music and all different types of music you might expect a
three piece rock and roll band to listen. Like say Nirvana or only listen to
these heavy rock bands and we do, we listen to that kind of music quite often
but we listen to all sort of things. Anything from country music to jazz or
folk all kinds of things.

I think going in to record In The Dark, the tours we
had been on we were listening to a lot of Harry Nilsson and a lot of country
music and a lot of The Rolling Stones, this band The Flamin’ Groovies we kind
of got into. Along with Devendra Banhart and all kinds of music and we still
do, we’re constantly being turned onto new music or old music we never got onto
or revisiting bands. We are always influenced by all kinds of things around us
wether it be from the bands we tour with or at record stores or whatever. We
got to pull from all sorts of places I guess from where we are influenced by.

Thanks for you time Tim!

Oh! Your welcome.

Enjoy your ten hour drive up to New York

Thank you, we hope to
get down to your country soon.

In The Dark

, the new album by The Whigs, is released in Australia on June 25th.