The band quickly followed up with another neck-breaking track “Bozo,” barely allowing the crowd a breath before being dragged back into a dark fever dream. Opening with heavy quarter notes and a shrill snare roll, the quintet softly enters with classic post-punk lyrics adorned with velvety guitars. The frontman, Tony Esposito, begins the third song with a promise that he made to Brianna and Angel – ‘I won’t fuck this one up’. The vocals started a bit muddied, but they quickly grappled with and subdued the behemoth-like audio of, “Might Be Right“. Patrons lifted their arms and chalices into the air as they sang along. Fonda theater began to froth with jubilant patrons – some soaking up as much beer and liquor as they could and perhaps some indulging in different avenues. The bar steadily had a queue and cups were passed about as attendants nodded their heads and tapped their feet.

After a quick intermission Tony described the scent of pizza flowing through the auditorium and the disappointment that they weren’t sharing, ‘now, share with the class children’. They quickly pierced the silence with a cover – “Only a Shadow” by Cleaners from Venus. Admittedly, I wasn’t familiar, but the group seemed to nail it and the crowd approved with another turbulent mosh. With punk origins – their songs emerged from the dark with fuzzy guitar chords embellished with dainty piano and organ notes, animating a dance between heavy and eloquent.

‘This is about an old friend, Shella, this one’s for you’. For the last few tunes, the headman signals to the audio technician to increase the volume – evidently, the drums were boosted and the drummer, Nick Wilkerson, enters with a thunderous drum riff to begin the track, instantly increasing the heartbeat of all present.

With a tempestuous encore, the group closed their show with a final act, “Judy French,” a peppy and upbeat tempo beat that released a bubble of anticipation from within the crowd. White Reaper is continuing their tour and will next be seen in Canada Mexico and the west coast.

The post White Reaper performing live at The Fonda Theater appeared first on Quip Magazine.

Last Wednesday, White Reaper continued their tour behind their second studio Album, The Worlds Best American Band at Portland’s world famous Doug Fir. The unapologetic foursome played “a collection of songs including the one that they’re probably most notable for – “Half Bad.”  The show featured of keyboardist Ryan Hater doubling as a hype man and at least one of the Wilkerson brothers on top of an amp at all times. All the while backing up Tony Esposito (lead vocals and guitar). Their tour manager even came out and told a horrible joke. I was lucky enough after their set to catch a little time with the band in the green room and chat about their album and tour.

Rose Blanton: How’s the tour going?

Tony Esposito: This is the fifth day of tour and our second show, the math doesn’t really add up but it’s going well.

RB: Can you tell me a little about the production process behind this album?

TE: Kevin Ratterman did it all. We recorded it in Louisville at place called La La Land.

RB: Any new gear you guys got to incorporate during this album?

TE: All kinds of new keyboards and pedals. All kind of knick-knacks, some drums. Ryan’s new keyboard sounds like shattering glass

RB: Anything about the creative process that was different for this LP versus the last one? Any new themes you were trying to hit?

TE: It was entirely different. We worked on this record together and wrote it entirely in the studio. We had never done that before.

RB: Did you find the process to be quicker?

TE: Longer actually, we went in for a month and then went on tour to SXSW and came back a did a few weeks here and there so all together we were working on this album from February to May.

RB: I feel like mixing is such a hard part. Like how do you convey the sound in your brain?

TE: Yeah I run into that a lot. Knowing what I want but not knowing how to describe it. But that’s why Kevin (Ratterman) was so great, he was like a mind reader. He got so close to how we wanted it to end up.

RB: Anything you’re looking forward to doing on this tour?

TE: We like to eat steak and eggs and do a lot of push-ups

RB: Anything you want to say to our readers??

TE: Next time you’re eating your tempeh sandwich log into your Spotify and type in ‘White Reaper’

The post They aren’t bragging: White Reaper at Dour Fir appeared first on Quip Magazine.

Ode to the stage dive, White Reaper, and Twin Peaks break faces in Chicago

Though rock history is a foggy pursuit –hazed by a thousand bong-hits, head-banging shows, and noise-induced brain trauma– it’s been said that the greatest concentration of stage dives (the art of jumping from a raised stage to be carried aloft by the crowd below) happened back in ’92, when Pearl Jam played a fire-code-be-damned overcapacity crowd at The Snake Pit concert hall, in some lost North American city. The exact number of dives could not be recorded, but sources say it was somewhere in the 18-per-song count, which is a rate of roughly six dives per minute, for a sixty-minute set. This record, though completely unsubstantiated, may have been broken early in the evening on a Friday, May 13th; for on this day, two of the most stage-dive-worthy bands to ever rock Chicago freak out an all-ages show in Lincoln Hall, causing mass hysteria and some of the most impressive crowd surfing antics of all time.

White Reaper plays before Twin Peaks, which is good because sonically speaking, they are the more raucous of the two. Their rowdy punk-inspired songs rally the capacity-crowd into a frenzy, like protons squished into a nucleus in an atom smasher. When they play their single, Cool, the rogue core implodes under its own weight, casting off bodies left, right, up, and down in one of the most explosive mosh pits Lincoln Hall has ever seen. This hardens the concert goers in stage center, preparing them for the crash of bodies to come in the Twin Peaks set.

This is an auspicious night for Twin Peaks. Not only are they back home in Chicago after a long international tour, but this show is being filmed for broadcast on the Internet, and their family members are there. In the back, near the bar, cousins, aunts, and uncles laugh about the early years, when the boys packed garage shows and little bars full of screaming teenagers. The conversation borders on surprise; they seem to find it hard to believe that their young cousins and their friends are now filling one of Chicago’s largest venues. When guitarist/vocalist Clay Frankel jumps into the crowd, guitar in hand, and disappears for an entire song in the quagmire of young bodies in the pit, they all go silent. Moments later, with Frankel still missing from stage right, there are shouts of, “Oh my god, is he alright?” and, “Can somebody check on him?” One older guy, possibly an uncle, who looks like a biker in a wide-shouldered jean jacket, is ready to rush the stage, but just before parting the sea of youngsters like a muscle-bound Moses, Frankel re-emerges, still holding his guitar, and continues singing on stage.

There’s a lesson in that. Don’t stage dive in front of your family! They’ll be worried sick! And not without reason. The dives of this show are truly dare-devilish. Popping off at a rate of (yikes!) 23 per song (a new record!). Two teenage girls, holding each other around the shoulders, tandem-dive face-first, but their combined weight is too much for the skinny-arms of the pre-pubescent landing zone, and they come crashing on their heads to the cement floor. Young men and women are taking running dives without looking, straight into a jumping mosh pit. Some get carried for minutes, others succumb to gravity immediately. Security is powerless to stop them, the crush of bodies is too dense.

Twin peaks doesn’t do encores. When the clock strikes ten, they’re done. They say goodnight, and off the stage they go. Outside, on the curb, one of the girls who rode the most ambitious wave of human hands this night is standing under the marquee lights, held up by her friend. When she jumped she looked so heroic and carefree. Now, half collapsed on her friend, waiting for an ambulance or a cab or her mom’s minivan, her face a blurry crimson smear with the blood flowing from her nose and mouth, she stands as a crushed example. In the heaviest of shows, when the strength of the crowd wanes, girls and boys become rocks, and sometimes get rolled.

Be safe, Chicago. White Reaper and Twin Peaks play hard.

The post Seeing White Reaper and Twin Peaks live in Chicago appeared first on Quip Magazine.