On the last Friday in April, White Denim issued 13, a wide-ranging LP that serves as the 13^th studio album in the band’s diverse catalog. 2026 also marks the group’s 20^th anniversary, yet it’s as apt to say it marks James Petralli’s twenty years as White Denim’s chief songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, singer, producer, and creative center. For the two decades of White Denim’s existence, Petralli is the sole member of the band to be with it from its inception to the present. And, with 13 as a companion album to 2024’s 12, Petralli completes, in essence, his initial double-album quest.

A week after the album’s release, Petralli is home in Southern California. He is pulling double-duty—on an interview call and cutting vines. He’s trying not to cut back too much as his emotions rise when speaking about the current ills of the music industry, the challenges of putting out an album on an indie label, as well as reuniting with his original White Denim mates—drummer Josh Block and bassist Steve Terebecki—to honor the eclectic ensemble’s twenty years in the game.

As you look back on 20 years with White Denim, is this where you thought it would be?

Twenty years ago, I had no real expectation. I thought it would be a fun year of my life. Like, “Oh, wow, I get to go play in Europe. This is amazing.” At the beginning of White Denim, I felt super lucky to be doing it.

At ten years, I was scaling my business back. I wanted to be home. I wanted to own my own masters, and I realized if I could sell 3,000 copies of a record to my hardcore fans, then I could survive. I can pay musicians in the studio. I can go play 50 shows a year. And we can make these records. That has gone down more than I could have predicted.

So while 10 years ago I could have never predicted it would be this difficult, I do feel very lucky. I’m making records that I like the sound of, in my backyard. I have a nice collection of equipment. My kids bop in. My dog hangs around. It’s a pretty dreamy life. I just have to figure out how to sustain it. I think that’s probably part of middle age, as well. It might just be part of the American middle-age experience, but it does feel particularly dark right now in our business.

How do you approach that?

There’s no way to really communicate it. The way we communicate is through social media, but it is such a minefield of misery and anguish. How can you really communicate something authentically to the audience that they will hear? There’s some catching up to do. I think people still think there’s some glamour involved. Really, you’re looking at less than the top of one-percent [of artists] for glamour.

I think what needs to happen for music, and pop culture, to survive is for people to understand that they have to do more than just stream. And they have to do more than just go to shows. They have to pay for the music they listen to if they want people to continue. As an independent artist right now, I just put out a record, with a relatively significant press campaign at least in Europe. I sold, like, 400 records. I was like, number-nine on the independent charts of physical sales right now. Which is, like, appalling to me. A top-ten physical record with less than 500 copies (sold) worldwide.

I love music, but I’m moving towards hobbyist status so quickly. It’s in a terrible place. With the current president, it started getting really crazy in his first term. I feel like he has a special way of just sucking the joy out of daily life for so many of us, creating fear and anxiety. People really forget that there is beauty. That people are making things. I’ve done that, too. All the streaming services, there is like a system there. The rented music model doesn’t work for artists, or for labels, for the most part. If streaming wasn’t the norm, it wouldn’t be so difficult.

In 2024, you released 12, but at that time you had recorded enough songs for a double album. What happened?

I had a double album of twenty tunes that I delivered to them. They were really concerned with the modern attention span and the marketability of a double record. All fair things from a business standpoint in 2023.

I had twenty songs, in a two record deal, and they chopped half of it out. I really didn’t want that to happen. I had put a lot into making that double record. It felt like it was a really cohesive statement, to me, at the time.

So I just kind of pivoted. To make twelve and thirteen songs [the number that appear on the two records] I needed to record five more. Then, I could reshuffle the sequence, and still tell the story in this way. They are still connected. Now that I have some distance from having the record dissected and shelved, I feel like the right thing happened. I see what they were thinking. I think that I made a better two-record set than just the double record.

Should we, as an audience, think of the two albums as of a piece?

They’re definitely one piece. Now that it’s out, and I’ve been thinking about it, 13 feels like an evil twin in a lot of ways. There’s a tone of optimism in 12. Obviously, there’s some dark stuff, too, but I feel like 12 is a much lighter, hopeful record. 13 has the teeth. There’s a lot more sarcasm and dark humor.

I believe the standardized studio album catalog of The Beatles has a total at thirteen albums. To be in that kind of prolific company is pretty great. Do you ever reflect on how significant a body of work it is that you’ve created?

I didn’t realize The Beatles had made thirteen. I’m definitely looking back. This is a pretty large body of work. All the people in my life over the years have reached out to me on this one. They’re like, “That’s crazy. That’s so much work, dude. Are you okay?”

Are you okay?

I’m still really inspired to work every day. I’ve been in session all week working on things. I just delivered another record to a mixing partner. I don’t have any intention to slow down. I don’t know if it it’s going to be White Denim. I love music. Even if I go get another job, I don’t have any plan to stop working. That’s the positive side of where the business is for me. It’s all love at this point. I may get lucky and license a song, but I’m really doing this because it’s a centering activity. I feel like I learn about myself and the things that I love, and I provide a good example for my kids by showing up and trying to make something cool every day. Inventing something. When it comes to creation, I feel really happy and inspired. I couldn’t be happier. It’s the marketplace that does me in.

You issued a video alongside the single, “Hired Hand #2,” in which White Denim’s original trio of Josh, Steve, and you is playing the track in your studio. Hints of a reunion?

We got together for our 20^th anniversary of forming the band. To celebrate that, I brought Steve to town. And Josh is here, who I see pretty regularly and work together often. We made the beginning of, well, I don’t know what it’s going to be, but we started making a record.

A White Denim record?

I think it would be really funny to have it not be called White Denim. I don’t know what it’s going to be called. We’ve been kicking around the name, Jean Branca, like it’s a person, but it’s also white denim in Portuguese. We were having a lost weekend in my shed to celebrate. My label was hounding me [for a video]. The single was coming out and they needed promotional assets. So I called my neighbor, who’s a director of photography, to shoot this one-shot, three takes. And, that’s what he did. From the living room to the studio. And we’ll be miming along to the track. Then, the label will get off of our case and we can get back to work.

You had to know fans would speculate once they saw it.

I was trying to create some kind of talking point, and the band was in town.

The video for the album’s first single, “Lock and Key,” I found to be…

Unsettling?

Unsettling. Fascinating. Disturbing. And very fitting for the song. And, dare I say, it was AI.

That neighbor, the director of photography, has a nice camera. I had spent all my budget making the music for the record, and it’s in my contract that I have to make three music videos.

So the day before the deadline for the video, he just came over, lit the room, and said, “I think we can do something cool. Let me shoot you, we’ll run it down, and just trust me on this.” I’m supposed to upload the video at midnight the day before the song comes out. At 11:00, I get the video. I’m like, shit, dude. Am I the guy that’s using generative AI? It’s not aligned with my values.

I’m overexposed to the internet. I’m more aligned with the people who are super skeptical. My wife is in the corporate world, and her experience with AI is soul crushing. It’s something we talk about every day. So, I’m pretty much fully against it. I never use it in my life. And now, hours before the deadline, I get this video that’s half AI, and I’m having a panic attack. I called a huddle with the band and asked, “What do I do?” Michael [Hunter, keyboards] said, “I kind of feel like the AI is embodying this darkness that you’re referencing in the lyrics. If you’re ever going to use it, this is an artistic way to use it.” And, it looks cool. I trust Michael. And Matt [Young, drummer] was the same way. So, I just put it out. But, I definitely had a dilemma of conscience.

I took it as irony. That this infectious aspect of AI is what we know is possible. What about what we don’t know? It could be really, really terrible.

I think we’re there. With my wife, it’s like she’s waiting for robots now. It’s cruel. It sucks. I feel pretty insulated from it, in a way. But I rarely leave the house, other than to coach baseball. And if I don’t do music, I’ll go drive a truck. I’ll go to trade school and become a plumber or something like that.

As the writer of nearly every White Denim song, do you write with the band’s personnel in mind?

One hundred percent. It was entirely that for the first couple of records. Then, we did Last Day of Summer, and people liked that. Those were all tunes I had written for the band in the first couple of years that just didn’t get anywhere. So, we kind of found ourselves in a pinch at one point. We thought why don’t we just record all these tunes, release them, and try to get dropped from this label? When people responded to that music it kind of gave me a little more confidence to balance the writing for personnel with writing for myself. The thrill I get from being in a band is having everyone’s immediate buy-in. I just want the band to be smiling and happy and digging what is happening.

Especially on 12 and 13, I hear White Denim as being without many borders, or never really leaning toward any specific genres, but if I had to characterize the music, I would say it is art school R&B. What do you think of that assessment?

I think that’s great. Absolutely. I think that is like Talking Heads. That’s kind of the band they were. They were the definitive art school R&B band. To be in that world, as a pop group that attracted great players that made great-sounding records with groundbreaking producers. That’s definitely on the list of models from the very beginning for our band. Talking Heads. XTC. Minutemen. Devo is a huge one. That’s perfectly accurate. I love it.

Having said that, there are pockets in there, too, of, say, ZZ Top. Not all that far from your Texas roots. Is regional influence a conscious consideration in your writing, or just in the bloodstream?

That’s cool. I’m kind of reclusive. I’m from Sacramento, so I always had a California connection. Growing up in Texas, I felt like creativity was particularly undervalued. There are good museums. And collectors that come from oil money. And good music schools. But, generally, even when I would pick up my kids at school, and the conversations with other parents about what do you do, I would say, musician. They’d say, “Yeah, but what do you do? You have a band? Is it a cover band? Do you play weddings?”

I can see that motivating you to move back to California.

I’m a working artist and I developed an adversarial relationship with any audience as a result of that prevalent attitude. For me, personally, moving to Southern California, which is full of weird people, it’s more so my children can grow as artists in the environment where they don’t have to meet so much resistance every day. I love music from everywhere and I try to put that in my work. It has more to do with the Beastie Boys, and Beck, and the Dust Brothers, and that era of ‘90s music than ZZ Top. It’s in there, but from a record collector perspective. More like the Beasties than Tres Hombres. Having said that, Corsicana Lemonade was a huge ZZ Top-influenced record. We were constantly referencing Top.

On 13, you have a few guests, including the siblings from Dawes, Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith, on “Time Time.” It reminded me of the devastating wildfires just over a year ago in the metro Los Angeles area, including in your neighborhood. I know the Goldsmith brothers suffered some tragic property losses. How did you do in the fires?

We were two blocks below the fire line in Altadena. We’re okay. I lost some gear in some friend’s fires. Altadena was a really amazing creative community. It’s extremely sad. Josh’s place burned down. While the fire was burning, I was making trips down to Pasadena, with the things that matter most. We got a hotel, and I kept watching the Ring cam. As long as it was still there, I kept going back, emptying stuff out. I’m still reeling from it.

One of the unique things about White Denim is your ability, and its ability, to shift shape to accommodate styles, and guests, and changing members, yet still be itself. So, what, or who, is White Denim?

This record that I just sent to be mixed, I don’t know that I could call this White Denim. It’s, like, really heavy electronics. To me, White Denim, at this point, means great drummer, great bass player. That has to be there eighty-percent of the time. The first time I’ve ever taken this question seriously is right now. When people ask if I’m going to do Bop English again, I’m like, that’s White Denim. We made a record, World As A Waiting Room, really quick, that was kind of out of alignment with White Denim. We had a bunch of people, guest writers, and it was a really wide scope. If we’re going to call that White Denim, then it could kind of be anything. I do feel four-on-the-floor rave music is not in the wheelhouse, though.

Not to be pedantic, but are you essentially White Denim?

I am White Denim because I bought the name from the guys who created it. I do the same thing in the band that I have always done. Now, I’m much better at it. I think that’s why the old guys are like, yeah, we want to hang out again. You’re healthy and you’re better at producing and writing? Yeah, let’s go. I’ve invested twenty years of my life into building it. It’s really hard to start a band. With the Bop English record, that was all those (White Denim) guys, and the same producer we worked with on D and Corsicana Lemonade. I did one little tour on that record, and nobody came. It was crazy. I was like, damn, I can’t do that again.

As you look back on what you’re experienced over the last 20 years how does that impact your thought process when you release a new album?

On release day, I’m thinking, man, they spent so much money on Corsicana Lemonade. We were everywhere. We were reviewed everywhere. We paid for the front page of Apple music. We had a commercial moment and all I could think about was having more control. Never having a record shelved, I was really impatient and unwilling to see what the corporate push could do for us. I took a lot of those resources for granted.

If I had that to do again, I would’ve been more patient with Stiff. I would’ve waited for, at least, Josh to come back, then make something that sounds like AC/DC or something like that.

These days with independent labels my budgets include multiple music videos. So, now, I’m a video director and producer. I’m setting up a screen-printing shop. I have to learn all these different skills to keep my costs down so I can survive as an artist. When I’m scrambling for budgets, and adding all these new skills, there’s some joy in that. But, I’m also like, “I used to not have to do this.”

Whenever I’m releasing a record, though, that sort of regret goes away as soon as I start playing in the band. Because that’s super, super fun. I think that the band is excellent and that makes everything cool.

I never saw the band as one that chased hits, though. I always felt we found you more than you found us.

I’m not interested in building or maintaining mystique at this point. I feel like social media has completely taken that away for most of us. I’m okay talking about it. We started doing support tours for bigger bands, playing triplets really fast, like at the Fillmore in Denver when we opened for Wilco. We’d just played for 45 minutes straight. It was wild. You could hear a pin drop in that joint when we were done. And it wasn’t like [the audience] was captivated. It was like we assaulted them. They were not happy about it. They were like, “Bring out Jeff and the boys.”

We were definitely thinking about taking the steps that bands take along the way to being in larger font on a festival bill. Corsicana Lemonade was a step in that direction. I think that I was the main one who was really resistant to it. That was more because of my skill-set, feeling insecure, than it was anything else. Just, like, imposter syndrome.

With the new album just released, touring ahead and more albums to follow, what is priority one for you each day?

Definitely to connect meaningfully with my family and what’s going on in their lives. If I make something happen creatively, that’s really good. After that, it’s to come up with some kind of plan to make a little bit of money. I feel super fortunate to have that priority hierarchy right now.