On August 13 and 14 Relix will host Austin psych-rock outfit White Denim over two-nights at Brooklyn Bowl. As we lead up to the shows, we had a chance to chat with White Denim bassist Steve Terebecki about the group’s genesis, the progression from garage-punk to progressive psych-rock and their approach to improvisation.

What led to the genesis of White Denim? Describe the band’s early days.

The early days…I guess Josh, the drummer, and James, the singer, met and started jammin’ around together and then they moved to Austin around the same time. They just wanted to play basically rock ‘n roll and their friend Lucas Anderson, he was around for a while and they started a band called Parque Touch, which was Josh playing drums, James playing guitar and Lucas singing. They played for a few shows. I was playing in a band called Peach Train and we played at Beerland with Parque Touch and they didn’t have a bass player, so immediately following the show they asked me to play bass. Eventually, Lucas moved to Russia and we changed our name to White Denim. That was about in 2006, I think. A lot of the first shows were either we were playing Parque Touch songs or still really Parque Touch-inspired songs, really straight-forward rock and roll stuff. That’s pretty much how White Denim formed.

What were some of the early influences of the band?

Maybe MC5…you know, I joined the band afterwards so I sort of came in after that was maybe discussed. When I saw them play live I put together a couple of things (laughing). It was really aggressive, in-your-face, almost as over-the-top, loud, flamboyant rock ‘n roll as we could make. Lucas would steal people’s whiskeys and drink them in from of them and stuff and then not buy them another one. It was just really confrontational—everything about it, from the music to the lyrics, and that was sort of the initial idea with Parque Touch.

That, in some ways, seems to have fed into the early stages of White Denim.

It did, but the band started to shift immediately. Lucas and James shared writing lyrics for Parque Touch and then after that it was all James. Actually, Lucas still writes some lyrics for some tunes for us. But it was less confrontational, more sort of an artistic vantage point from the lyrics perspective. Just the vibe of our band started to come down a little bit.

How did you guys arrive at that decision?

It was just sort of a natural progression, I think. We still played and still do play really loud, occasionally confrontational rock ‘n roll. It was just sort of a…I don’t want to say “ideology,” but just sort of a shift in the overall consciousness of the band. None of us had that immediate mentality when we were playing.

You said at the beginning with Parque Touch, a lot of it was MC5 inspired. Were there other influences that informed the progression into a more artistic band?

Since it was the three of us (me, Josh and James), we started becoming like a weekly project. We really enjoyed playing with each other so we’d get together every weekend because we all had full-time jobs and I was in school. So we’d get together on the weekends and we’d just talk about different stuff and really we started just pouring in everything that we could, everything that we liked. And of course from playing Parque Touch and hanging out we found out that we all love Frank Zappa and old prog, ‘70s rock n roll and jazz, and a little bit of everything. So in the process of our weekly sessions we’d sort of insert a little bit here and there or at least play different tunes that had way different vibes from each other. And Josh had a studio in an Airstream so we’d just record a lot of these ideas down and not really have to worry about being on the clock in the studio. We’d just record these ideas and then sort of add to them later. Sometimes we’d combine different ideas or different melodies from previous songs onto other songs and just worked that way over a long period of time. That’s sort of how our first EP, Let’s Talk About It, was made. It was probably…not sure exactly, but I wanna say maybe at least a year of just recording and adding stuff in the studio and coming out with five songs.

From listening to your music, it sounds like you guys have a lot of technical training. What is your personal musical background?

I started playing really early on, on keyboard. My dad has a really nice record collection and got me a keyboard pretty early on. I started playing violin in the 5th grade and then in college I was a music composition major for three semesters and that’s pretty much my formal training. So throughout that whole time I played other stuff and I started playing bass when I was 13 and pretty much focused on that through my teens.

What about the other guys in the band?

Josh the drummer’s mom was a jazz singer and so he has an upbringing from a musical family and he started playing drums from a really early age, I wanna say 13 or 14 as well. And then he did jazz studies in Texas and went to UTA (University of Texas, Arlington). Another thing that I should comment on is that none of us actually finished college (laughing), we all already were from 1-3 classes away from actually getting a degree. Including Austin [Jenkins], jumping ahead, on guitar, literally we’re all from the same exact boat. And then James, he’s always been a writer, like into literature, and he picked up the guitar at 17 and started hanging out with this guy named Joel Raif, who’s a close friend of ours, and that’s where he met Josh, from rehearsal studios. So he’s played with Josh since he first picked up the instrument.

Your music has a very composed sound. Do you bring that to the table or is it more just through jamming?

I think it’s both. We each write our own parts, more or less, and sometimes that means in the studio jammin’ around but a lot of times James will send us a tune with guitar and vocals and we’ll work on it individually at home and record different parts, whether it’s bass or organ or whatever instrument. Then it becomes sort of like a back and forth type of thing. That’s sort of how D was made. Each song starts getting different as far as that goes. Especially when we have endless amounts of time in the studio, I guess we didn’t really need to email back and forth because we’d just sit there for hours and figure parts out that we thought sounded really good and find sounds that sounded really good to go with it and then sort of arrange it. And we did it all digitally so there could be some toning up involved, so it’s sort of in a way jamming in the box.

When did you guys decide to move into a four piece and what inspired that?

A lot of songs that we had recorded had multiple guitar parts that changed. The closest we came to it was using a loop pedal so James would have a looped part and we’d all play on top of that, so James was covering a great deal of territory. And I guess when we were a trio, Josh had triggers to play other rhythms and organs, which only lasted a couple of shows but we were just like, My God, this is ridiculous. But yeah the need for that, a lot of our new material was going in that direction where there were a lot more layers of guitar. And we’d met Austin and he had played with us previously. We had New Year’s shows where we’d invite some of our friends, so it felt really fun and we really liked Austin and knew he could bring a lot to the table. We sort of gave him our studio mixes and he learned it all and started playing shows with us.

How have you reached the stage that you’re at now, especially with the new EP, Takes Place In Your Workspace, which takes on a completely different sound? A lot of the material has a bit of a prog-leaning sound, especially with the layered-up guitars, and the Zappa-esque sections that you guys put into your music. Is that the progression, towards a more prog-y sound, intentional? Where are you guys headed in the future?

I think as far as our new EP sounding a lot different from our previous stuff, I think even on Explosion there were songs that could fit with our new EP if we took them off that record and produced them similarly. Between the context of the other records and then the new production style that sort of happened on D, this new EP sounds a lot different. Then of course we put in strings and everything, we could never fit a string quartet in Josh’s Airstream for sure. But I think when Josh left the studio—we don’t have the Airstream studio at all anymore—we started exclusively recording in these studios around Austin, mainly Lakeside and 5th Street, which are really nice, professional sounding studios and because we don’t have endless amounts of time in the studio, we have to prepare before we get there. So there’s a lot more rehearsal and the record has more of a live sound because it’s more like a start to finish kind of mentality with the songs, whereas the previous records at Josh’s studio, we might record one section and just think about one section for like four weekends.

Now we’re sort of viewing the songs from start to finish so we’re writing and arranging and playing full songs and then taking them into the studio. Also, being a four-piece has that extra element. I think as far as our influences and what we like, it’s never changed, we’ve always loved prog and Zappa and stuff like that. I think that the way we record our music has informed our sound in a really big way and how we organize it. And I guess I’m pretty surprised as well about how much that really informed our new record. I think it was sort of a surprise to all of us, but we’re definitely still playing music in that way where we’re viewing a full song as opposed to pieces of songs and then we’re playing it and rehearsing it together, so when we do hit the studio for our next record it would be mainly us performing the song from start to finish and trying to get one full take.

In terms of your own personal tastes, did you ever have a period where you were into the Dead? And when I was at Bonnaroo people were comparing the guitar with a modern-day Allman Brothers, so were either of those influences?

I am a fan of both. I never got into them seriously where I just always listened to the Dead. I guess I was too ADD to focus on one band or just one style of music, I kind of always jumped all over the place. I could barely finish listening to a song. I guess I like listening to records more than I like listening to songs, in a way. I like listening to how an entire record sounds as opposed to just singles, and I think the Dead and the Allman Brothers did some great stuff with that idea. I never considered myself a Deadhead or anything like that. I always sort of tried to stay away from anything like that. I was always just a plain music nerd kind of dude.

Would you ever open up a jam onstage and just start improvising or is that not going to happen?

We have done some stuff with that and it’s definitely a possibility. It all kind of depends on stage comfort for us. If we had a stage where we could all hear ourselves exactly how we wanted to hear ourselves and have our own stage guys and stuff like that, it would be a lot easier for us. But night to night, especially in the past, we’ve just used house sound guys and because of our volume level, we would just play and get through the songs—maybe. If we were lucky. Because it was just sort of out of control in a way. But lately, or in the past couple of years, we’ve tried to help ourselves in hearing each other and playing off of one another, so it’s sort of happening more and more where we’ll get on a really good sounding stage and we’ll just feel it and actually be able to do that. And it’s not even a decision that we make prior to the show, it’s just something that we let happen or we realize is happening while we’re on stage. Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen enough. I think we all really enjoy doing that, but we want ultimate control over that as well. I think more and more we’ll probably figure out the whole stage thing and maybe with the help of a monitor, like a really bitchin’ monitor guy, we’ll really bust out.

Austin, in a lot of ways, has a great deal of psychedelic history and there continues to be a lot of great psychedelic music being made there. It seems like there are a lot of bands in that realm and you guys have been clumped into the psychedelic world, whether that’s something you agree with or not. What’s your take on the current Austin psychedelic scene…is it still there, or did it ever exist?

I’d say it’s definitely here. My perspective on Austin is sort of a different one than what I’ve heard. I guess I get really annoyed…(laughing) that’s probably a terrible word to throw out there right off the bat, but there are so many great musicians in Austin and none of them really ever stay in bands for very long. There are bands like Black Angels and stuff that have been around forever, but there’s so many more great musicians and I feel like they’ll play and make a really good project for like 3 or 6 months and then they’ll stop playing, or let something get in the way. Or they’ll let one of the other six bands that they’re in take over. It’s really great because occasionally there’ll be a band that will stick together for the long haul and make something really cool happen, but more often than not, it’s just bands starting and breaking up. Since I’m in and out of town so much, it’s hard to keep up with who’s who and so, I don’t know. We’re taking a little recording breather starting in September where we’re just sort of writing and I’m really looking forward to going out in Austin and scoping out how bands are developing and stuff. I haven’t really seen too much in the past 5 years, I’ve just seen the bands that get popular in Austin. So that’s my weird outside-looking-in-but-used-to-be-inside kind of answer for that.