Being able to play with White Rose Confession for their 10 year anniversary was patently unreal. First off: the company was exquisite. White Rose Confession continues to be one of the tightest, most musically interesting bands I know – and beautifully, melodically heavy. Second off : the venue? The Cannery Music Hall was practically BUILT for White Rose Confession – with no expense spared to make an exquisite sounding room that LOOKS good to boot. The new board, the new lights – Hell – the OLD board and the OLD lights were amazing, and with Chris and John operating – no – PLAYING the room it truly is a venue worthy of greatness.
Fuck you geography.
Any band that plays there is multiplied by the sheer EPIC look, feel and sound of the place. Gutted and rebuilt to be exactly what it is : one of the best sounding and best LOOKING rooms we’ve ever had the honour of playing.
But let me go back to White Rose Confession again. Let me give you history before I wax poetic again. Ato (their guitarist) first saw us at Victoria Station Café and was really blown away. He snapped up one of our postcards and mentioned it to his friends. The next time we came through he dragged his friend Mike out to see us and they both became big fans. I remember going to play an open mic together, all acoustic, having a good time – nothing crazy – nothing that even HINTED at what they were capable of. And over the next couple of years we’d come and crash with Mike and he and Heather would sing songs together and we were AWARE that there was a band forming, but we hadn’t seen it and frankly probably thought it was kind of an amateurish acoustic rock band of some sort…
We finally had occasion to play together back in January of 2007 at Riverside in Danielson, CT – and there was that nervousness… when you really like someone and they’ve been wanting you to see their band and you’re finally lined up to do it Well… you’re really hoping that it’s good because you don’t have to grin and bear it, smiling and saying “no really, it was great”…
Here are my thoughts from that night : “In high school, before I’d started even playing bass, long before I defined myself as a musician, as I was discovering the visceral speed and thrust of painting big, Alice in Chains released “Man in the Box” and changed my Life… I remember painting in my basement bedroom as “Man in the Box” came on 98 Rock and filled my room with Lane Staley’s growl and Jerry Cantrell’s whining guitar – the subwoofer on my gesso-covered boom box pushed that hungry bass sound out and it changed my Life. Everything was more urgent, vibrant – here was something as angry and trapped and confused and hurt as I was, and my teen angst found the perfect outlet. Playing bass, writing music – it was probably set in motion at that moment with Alice in Chains… I’ve always been hungry for something that hit me in the same way.
Heather soundchecking with one of the best bands we’ve ever gotten to play with! ilyAIMY taking the stage at the Cannery Music Hall in Southbridge, MA on April 10th, 2015 for the White Rose Confession 10th year anniversary show.
Enter White Rose Confession. I stood dumbfounded as they fired into their set. Mike’s guitarist, [Ato], is one of the most perfect players I’ve ever met. Their drummer, Jay, holds everything together. Three-part male harmony – Mike is in amazing vocalist and a great front-man. I felt like I was in my basement again, discovering grunge for the first time… the rhythms are fierce, hard, incredible jarring stops, driving bass-lines… Oh GOD yes.”
Fast-forward to last night at the Cannery Music Hall and my appreciation for them only grows. Stage banter that’s acerbic and hilarious, and MOVEMENT on stage that’s powerful and predatory. They’re sort of an unholy combination of watching a good bluegrass banjo player run through a Tai Chi exercise. There’s a LOT of sound coming out, and yet they don’t seem like they’re doing THAT much – and then a slow, powerful balletic shift from pose to pose to pose to pose – they’re a photographer’s dream, swinging through rockstar poses sans any of the frenetic sudden stutter stop of ilyAIMY (that got a camera-man smacked Thursday night), but simply with smooth, panther-like grace that I don’t think I’d appreciated fully till last night. Ato continues to be a sheer MASTER of tone, playing his guitar in an innovative and effortless way, pulling sounds out of his custom-built, home-rebuilt rig that I’ve never really heard out of anyone else before – and Mike’s bass playing is all the more powerful because of how sparse it is, just filling the low end with thick, sonic sludge that underlines everything the band does – his vocals continue to be more and more powerful with the single held note of their cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot of Love” epitomizing everything he’s capable of in a never-ending WAIL…
And Jay : he’s become one of the best drummers I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen Primus and I’ve seen Metallica and I’ve seen Dave Matthews – nary a slouch among them – but Jay is blazingly fast, melodic, shifting from disco to metal to funk to straight up rock all within a single song and all while singing his heart out AND all the while looking cool in the process. Holy shit Jay. Holy shit.
We’ve known one another the full ten years. They play one of our songs. Last night we played one of theirs. Yeah, it’s a Love affair. And it was a really, really, really good night.
Band selfie check… Photographer Eric was busy capturing the night when the SMOKE PILLARS erupted blowing the minds of all parties. Yeah – once they went off once Mike had to have them again, and again, and again…
Two band selfie on stage at the Cannery Music Hall for White Rose Confession’s 10 year anniversary show on April 10th, 2015.
