Pre-Whigs Headspaces

“It became obvious that if I wanted to keep recording and touring, then I was going to need to do it solo,” Parker Gispert says as he thinks back to his decision to step out under his own name with Sunlight Tonight, over a decade and a half after co- founding jam-friendly Southern garage-rock favorites The Whigs. “Once I realized all that, I took a minute to think about what I wanted to do as far as being a solo artist. I knew that I wanted it to be different from the band.”

Formed by singer/guitarist Gispert, drummer Julian Dorio and bassist Hank Sullivant as underclassmen at the University of Georgia in 2002, The Whigs came blaring out of the gate a few years later with their loose, adventurous, exuberant debut Give ‘Em All a Big Fat Lip, which offered a snapshot of what The Replacements might have sounded like if they came of age on the modern festival circuit. Sullivant left shortly after graduation to join MGMT and record as Kuroma and was quickly replaced by Timothy Deaux.

The Whigs’ next few releases showcased a slightly harder sound, helping the band nab key opening spots for spiritual brethren like The Black Keys, Kings of Leon and The Hold Steady. They collectively relocated to Nashville in search of a larger community in 2012 and started picking up outside work. Deaux toured with Grace Potter and eventually joined Kings of Leon’s live lineup while Dorio played with Eagles of Death Metal and currently drums for Band of Skulls and The Lone Bellow. (He was onstage with EODM when terrorists tragically opened fire during a November 2015 show in France.)

The trio released a live album in 2016 and backed up that LP on the road, but things have been relatively quiet since then. During that downtime, Gispert relocated 80 minutes east of Nashville to Tannehill Lake, an area he describes as the “middle of nowhere,” and started work on what would become Sunlight Tonight.

“Julian and Tim have both gotten married and had children, and I’d just never lived in a rural place—half an hour from a gas station or a grocery store,” he admits. “Julian and I went to the same high school, so I reverted back to who I was before we met. At that point, I was playing acoustic guitar by myself. That pre-Whigs headspace brought everything down to a more basic, primal level and gave me a fresh perspective, and that inspired the record.”

Recruiting Antony and the Johnsons/Patti Smith producer Emery Dobyns, who he describes as a “New York guy who had moved to the South,” as his co- pilot, Gispert laid down a set of eight rustic solo cuts, using drums and other outside instruments sparingly. A few friends helped  flesh out those songs, including Adele collaborator Samuel Dixon, Sparklehorse contributor Sol Seppy and Keys drummer Patrick Carney, but Gispert relished having the freedom to explore some new terrain.

“With the band, I would bring in ideas, we would get together at the practice space, I would see what ideas the group latched onto and then, more or less, finish those ideas. For the first time since junior high or high school, I had to face myself and answer these questions I hadn’t asked since I started to write,” he says. “‘Which ideas do I like the best? What do I need to finish in this song?’ And instead of having to go through the guise of a rock band, I was at liberty to bring in strings or horns or a harp or female vocalists without the burden of thinking, ‘How can we bring this to the stage every night?’”

Looking ahead, Gispert foresees his solo project being his primary focus, though he plans to regroup with The Whigs now and then as well. “I see them as two separate entities because the band is one continuous thread, and then there’s me and a guitar, for the most part, touring folk- songwriter style,” he says, before pausing to laugh. “I doubt my audience expects me to bring
a string or horn section on the road.”

This article originally appears in the January/February 2019 issue of Relix. For more features, interviews, album reviews and more, subscribe here.