After been busy with main band White Denim – including a rather good, recent Led Zeppelin cover – frontman James Petralli is indulging his side-project urges with new group Bop English, who release album Constant Bop on 20 April. Why? It’s just one of four questions that start with a ‘W’ that we asked him.
WHO would play you in the film of your life?
Jim Carrey.
WHAT are you currently working on?
I’m producing an EP for a young band from Austin called Food Group. They’re hot shit musicians with interesting ideas about what pop music can be. Not one of them is over 22 years-old. It is both inspiring and mildly depressing to be in the studio with them. Their new music is really great. I’m also rehearsing the Bop English band. I’m really excited about those guys as well. They are all bringing something really fresh to the songs. It feels great to be making them new again. I will record the new arrangements soon and share somehow later this year.
WHY do you do that thing you do?
It depends on which part of it we are talking about. I play guitar and sing because I love the act of playing and listening. I’d really like to create something in my lifetime that could give someone some of the same feelings that I get when I listen to my favorite music. This is also the reason why I am learning to properly produce and record audio. I want to learn from musicians and understand sound more clearly in order to create artefacts. I think I tour and have a strong desire to get on stage at least partly because of some unknown trauma I suffered early in my development as a child. I still find it very strange that I or anybody would enjoy existing in a van for enormous chunks of his/her life. Somehow I still want to do it.
WHERE do you see yourself in ten years?
I’ll probably remain in Austin unless I can’t fight the urge to move to Los Angeles any longer. I’ll hopefully still be heavily involved in music making in some capacity. My daughter will be 12 so I imagine I will also be bracing myself for what will come as she approaches adulthood.
WHEN will there be a harvest for the world?
Should I have read this as a sarcastic question? I love that Isley’s tune. Sadly, It doesn’t seem to me like that is going to happen for this world. I still have hope, though perhaps foolishly, that there will be peace and life for all men and women. This quote from Albert Camus resonates with me. We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realise that we know where it lives… inside ourselves.
For more head to Whitedenimmusic.com, but in the meantime listen to both new music and a classic White Denim interview with Petralli.
