White Oak and Stuyvesant
White Oak and Stuyvesant are talented band and I love the name, Crombie (bass) from the band answers my questions.
1. For someone unfamiliar with your music, how would you describe White Oak and Stuyvesant?
We are 5 guys all with different tastes and influences in music, but we find common ground with rock, so thats what we do.
2. Tell us a little bit about your writing process. A peek inside the inner workings of the band if you will?
:We jam about 4 times a week and someone is always bringing an idea to the table. Its pretty rare that anyone ever has a full song written, so we take the idea and individually put our touch on it either finding something we agree or deciding its shit. We’ve written whole songs in a night and all been siked on it but have also spent months on end fucking around with songs and structures we can’t seem to get right. Once we are happy with a song we show our vocalist (Jamie) and get his opinion, make the changes and then start jamming, demoing and generally tightening everything up.
3. As far as breakout success is concerned, is it all about the strength of a song or does being in the right musical climate at the right time make all the difference?
Both. Decent songs from a majority of genres are still getting recognition but more so if what you are playing is “cool” at the time. Originality is a big thing but if your sound slots into a scene or genre that is popular at the time, its definitely a step forward.
4. How important is social media to you in regards to engaging with an audience?
To me its a major part of being in a band these days whether I like it or not. When we begin promoting shows,songs etc it all begins with social media. Before engaging with an audience you need them to hear your music or be at your shows. This is fed from social media, especially for bands like us who don’t have managers or want to pay for promo in places other than social media all the time.
5. What inspired you to take music more seriously?
For about six years after finishing school, everybody I knew was in a band or jamming with someone. Seeing how easily some of these bands fell apart or didn’t work out to begin with definitely gave me an outlook on what I wanted to do when I started playing bass. Im more than happy to fuck around at jam etc, but in general if we weren’t taking the whole project seriously I wouldn’t be involved. When everyones happy, jams are running smoothly and we are being productive it hard to not take it seriously giving the amount of time we all dedicate to the band.
6. What’s spinning on your playlist atm? Any guilty pleasures?
I’m still smashing the DMA’s EP. I do a lot of driving around and it always ends up back in the car. As for a guilty pleasure I bought the BEARDS album the other day but at 26 still can’t grow a beard.
7. Are you a fan of keeping the album format alive or do you think there’s more benefit to release singles or EPs with the influence of streaming platforms arguably shortening attention spans?
Im definitely a fan of albums. As for shortening attention spans, if your album can’t keep people interested for its entirety I wouldn’t begin working on it by blaming streaming platforms. As for what’s more beneficial it depends where your band sits, if you are just starting out singles and EP’s are a good way to be heard and make fans. If you’re already in a successful band I think people will listen to what you put out regardless.
8. When not consumed with all things musical, what do you do tune out or reset?
Time outside of the band and work is pretty scarce these days as we are midway through writing an album, but outside of that I am in the process of building a studio this takes up the rest of my time and money.
9. Your new single ‘Let You Down’ is out Aug 29, what does the immediate future hold?
We have the release show for the single which should be a lot of fun and not long after we will release the music video for it. Im pretty keen to see what everyone thinks of the clip, we definitely stretched our imagination on this one haha. Late September we are tracking another song for a release later in the year and we are in the works of booking the recording of our debut full length which is looking to be around February.
10. Lastly, Prince or Michael Jackson?
Freddie Mercury
‘Let You Down’ single out August 29 via iTunes
