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Faux Society sat down with lead singer Mickey Church of up & coming rock group White Arrows. Before the interview started Mickey was giddy from excitement as he showed me physical copies of their debut album Dry Land Is Not A Myth which is available via their band site. We talked about a variety of things, from their upcoming international tour, to creating on the road, and what crafting their debut album entailed.
FS: San Diego is your fourth stop on the bands North American tour, how has the road been treating you?
WA: This tour has been amazing, I think this tour specifically, is the most genre matched tour we’ve been on specifically. This tour is all bands that like, fit together really well, like seamlessly. MMOTHS, Beat Connection, and then we join up with Teen Daze later on the East Coast dates. It’s like we’d all be in the section at Amoeba (music festival) we’re of the same genre.
FS: How much time goes into perfecting your live performance? And what emotions are you attempting to evoke from the audience?
WA: I don’t want to evoke any kind of specific emotion from anyone, I think it’s like any art. You take away from it, what you take away from it. It’s like someone can look at a painting and feel really sad, and someone else can look at the same exact painting and feel really happy. I pretty much aspire to have an unintellectual sensory overload experience for the audience. They can kind of turn their brains off for 45 minutes or however long we play, and just soak in the auditory and visual aspect of it. I like how it works all together, as one cohesive thing.
FS: Now that the album is finished, packaged, and in listeners hands. Does it feel like a weight has been lifted off of your shoulders? What’s that feeling like?
WA: It’s pretty crazy, it’s kind of like we’ve been tumbling rocks in a rock tumbler, for the past year. We’ve just been tumbling, and tumbling, and tumbling. It’s one of those rock tumblers where you just put any generic rock, and you just keep tumbling, and keep churning it. By the time you’re done, you have just all these smooth precious stones. I feel that way about the record, we just DID IT. We had no real goal, or intention because it’s not a follow up record, it’s our first thing. We just kinda did it, and we just kept smoothing it out, and by the time we were finished it was like a beautiful marble stone.
FS: I know some artists create NEW music while touring, and some are like “When I’m touring, I’m touring, and when I’m creating music, I’m creating music.” What’s your process? Is the group still making new music as you’re touring?:
WA: It’s hard, I mean we definitely mess around like when we’re on the road, but as far as writing goes it’s like we record and write everything, as we go. Andy [keyboardist] and I write everything together. We write everything at the house that J.P. and I live. When we’re on tour it’s kinda hard to collaborate on stuff, but we always work on stuff, and that’s the hardest part I think, it’s just juggling time, and being on the road for the right amount of time, and then getting antsy to write, and play new material. Then coming back and doing it, it’s finding that balance. That Ying and Yang of it.
FS: You guys are going to be touring overseas, what spot are you guys most excited about visiting?
WA: We just got back from a really long journey in Northern Europe and we’re very untravelled as a band. Pretty much never been outside of the country, so every place we have no real expectation, so our expectations keep getting blown way out of proportions, and our minds keep getting blown, because of how different places are, and how similar they are at the same time. Like playing a show is playing a show, and people are just really responsive, and they’re there for the love of music, but they don’t speak the same language as you. Obviously in Australia, where we’re going next they speak the same language, but because of past experiences, the only thing I can expect, is to not expect anything.
