Asher White headlines the Columbus Theater in Providence on Saturday, June 24. It’s the album release show for their latest record, “New Excellent Woman.”
Luis Hernandez: Can you tell us about your latest album, New Excellent Woman. What was the inspiration?
White: I try to do about an album a year and then that album tends to be kind of the summation of, of what the past year of my life has been psychically or emotionally, or, you know, artistically or musically. So whatever I’m listening to, and happen to be doing or thinking tends to be the starting point. This time around, it was a lot about– I just graduated college last year. And I’ve lived in Rhode Island now for five years. So a lot of it is about actually just walking around Providence.
Hernandez: In that walking around, though, what stood out to you?
White: So a lot of it is just like watching infrastructure change, and crumble and be rebuilt. And feeling kind of small and helpless in comparison. Or empowered. But yeah, kind of situating my little self around this city and its kind of eccentricities. And just kind of the churn and the tides, the tides of time.
James Baumgartner: You wrote, recorded and mixed all the songs on the album, you also perform most of the instruments. So things like guitar, bass drums, there’s also broken amp, glockenspiel, and a few other things. Can you tell me about the process of recording this album?
White: Yeah, there’s a lot of broken things, because most of everything I’m using is very much salvaged. Which is partially also the kind of the nature of collage based music is that it’s like, you know, scrambled together through a bunch of different or from a bunch of different disparate sources. I try to work as quickly and as precisely as possible, which is just easier to do with myself, rather than coordinating a lot of different people who could perhaps do a better job than I but you know, it’s like, just kind of a headache. So, yeah, the process of recording is, I try to just play whatever the song seems to be calling for. I’m trying to identify what colors or textures are needed, and then adding that in myself. And then when I find that I’ve reached the threshold of my ability to do that, which is quite often, then I’ll need to outsource to someone else. So I wrote some string arrangements and flute arrangements, but can’t play strings or the flute. So I got some some friends to execute them.
Hernandez: But I wonder about that, you know, the speed of your production, obviously, you’re 23.
White: Yeah.
Hernandez: And this is you’ve had more than a dozen albums now. I mean, so I’m just wondering about that pace that you got going, and working alone a lot of the time I’m just wondering, like, what that’s like for you and how do you keep that production up like that?
White: Yeah, well, I got a slow start, because the first, like 15 years of my life, I didn’t put out any albums and I felt I was kind of humiliated. So, I’ve been, you know, I’m trying to be 23 for 23 and I’m not doing a great job, I’m falling short. So, yeah, I mean, I just actually like doing it a lot. There’s just very little stopping me from from doing that. I think not using a studio or not using engineers or you know, no professional people, it means that there’s no hurdles. All I need essentially, is free time and an Apple computer.
Baumgartner: I think you described the music as being assembled on the recording. That’s the musical product, but you’re going to be on stage. What can people see on stage?
White: On stage I just have to pivot because there’s no – I feel that there’s no use in recreating what is on the record because the record is like a lot of sound effects and manipulated sped up, slowed down just kind of random debris of sound. So the live project is just me and my bassist Betsy Lee and my drummer Martin Baggarly. And it’s a three piece kind of garage rock sloppy garage rock trio.
Hernandez: So you’re going to play something for us now, what are you going to play?
White: I’m going to play “Mare” on the acoustic guitar. It is the I would say the thesis statement of the elements kind of about the modern city and trying to understand that the historical material of the city and walking around the streets and thinking about the other people who have walked around the streets and the people who laid the pavement and and yeah and feeling very humbled by it.
