![]() ![]() ![]() With The World’s Best American Band, White Reaper started off the album and title track with fake crowd noise, and then proceeded to make 32 minutes of the sort of giant riffs, lighters-up choruses, and scream-along slogans (“If you make the girls dance/ the boys will dance with them”) that once propelled guitar bands into sporting venues for the evening. Which I like - because that’s how we all became friends, and we still do that to this day - but it’s just funny that people compare our music to cars.” “It’s blue.”Īdds Hater: “I think it’s really just people trying to articulate the ‘windows down, with your friends, listening to the same songs over and over again’ feeling. “I drive a 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee,” says Nick. Tony drives a tour van, I drive a ’94 Mercury Grand Marquis.” “And then we went and named our record The World’s Best American Band and now everyone’s like ‘Fireworks! America! Muscle Cars!’ We did it to ourselves.” We named our band White Reaper and by the time we were a band for a little while, we were kind of sick of skulls and all that type of stuff,” says Sam. ![]() “It’s so funny, because we already learned our lesson. Backstage at Baby, a few hours before their show, the members of White Reaper admit they’ve gotten practiced at living this stuff down. The album turned quite a few heads and earned some critical raves, nearly all of which mentioned either Dazed And Confused, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Van Halen, or KISS. They added guitarist Hunter Thompson and doubled down on cheeky titles and reckless riffing, embracing arena grandeur on a DIY budget with 2017’s The World’s Best American Band. The band released its self-titled EP in 2014 and followed it up in 2015 with a full-length: the cheekily titled White Reaper Does It Again, a double-blast of shot-and-a-beer garage rock. White Reaper started off as a quartet comprising the perpetually head-shaved singer-guitarist Tony Esposito, the brothers Sam and Nick Wilkerson - on bass and drums, respectively - and the wildly maned and talkative keyboardist Ryan Hater. But they just want it all so bad, and do such a good job of bringing burnout abandon and arena strobe lights into the modern era that eventually you just give in and want to swaddle them all in a jean jacket blanket and read them excerpts from David Lee Roth’s memoir Crazy From The Heat until they fall asleep. They’re all 25 or 26, born too late for all of it. These Kentucky boys are too young to have any real nostalgia for the bands and aesthetics they draw upon. White Reaper are kinda like that as well. And yet, the yearning of the song disarms you nonetheless, even if you think you’re too cool for it. Adams was 10 years old in 1969, too young for any of the end-of-the-’60s, end-of-the-innocence stuff he goes on about. Then, right before closing their set with a rousing “Judy French,” they threw in a verse of Bryan Adams’ “Summer Of 69.” It’s not as cool as a selection as anything Chrissie Hynde has graced the world with, yet it made its own kind of sense.Īs a million #Actually guys have pointed out before, “Summer Of 69″ is kinda bullshit. ![]() Toward the end of their set, White Reaper nailed a cover of the Pretenders’ “Brass In Pocket,” and after talking with them a few hours earlier, it seemed like a skeleton key to their whole deal: charming in its cockiness, but ultimately kinda bashful about its power. That’s a fear that makes my heart ache - a wistful, sweetly reckless joy that you can touch no other way. When the Kentucky band dropped its purring new single “ Might Be Right” or fan-favorite cuts like “The Stack,” I worried some kid who was probably too young to be in the room might kick me in the head. It helps that the band’s managers made an effort to get real fans in the building, and they chose Coney Island Baby, an East Village bar in the former location of revered New York rock dives Brownies and Hi-Fi. So it was a very encouraging sign that there was no shortage of crowd surfing when White Reaper did their recent secret showcase, on a June day right when summer was just starting to get sticky. If I named names, you would get downright upset. I once had a job where it was all but mandated I attend these things, and I’ve seen some talented folks give their all to rooms full of people who just wanted to network and treat the open bar as a challenge. Some record company gathers together label people, media types and maybe some radio people together in a venue, and gets their artist to play their latest stuff live. ![]()
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