Music Style Alternative

Musical Influences Mudhoney, the Melvins

Artist History The premiere signing to Jack White’s Third Man Records imprint, Whirlwind Heat are a genuinely explosive force both on stage and in the studio. Their disconcerting sound – all herky-jerk bass and drums, tense synthesizers and Dave Swanson’s frenzied vocalizing – is in full bloom on their Third Man/V2 debut, “DO RABBITS WONDER?” “We all love rabbits,” Swanson says by way of explaining the album’s title. “They’re so innocent, you just wonder what they’re thinking about – they bounce around everywhere, bouncing from one thing to the next, trying to find food, trying to survive.” Friends since the 4th grade, (they grew up 10 miles north of Grand Rapids) Swanson, Damstra, and Holland first got together in 1996, inspired by such Nineties noiseniks as Mudhoney and the Melvins. Taking their moniker from outlaw artist Raymond Pettibon’s cover illustration on Sonic Youth’s “GOO”, the three 16-year-olds began playing traditional guitar-bass-drums rock n’ roll, but all that changed on St Patrick’s Day 1997, when an instrumentally rejiggered version of Whirlwind Heat opened for Providence, Rhode Island indie combo Arab On Radar at a downtown Grand Rapids art gallery. “I had just gotten my Moog synthesizer the day of the show,” Swanson recalls. “So the whole show was pretty much me making a bunch of noises.” The next year, the band – who were still just teenagers – spent their summer vacation touring the U.S. alongside their Ocean State mates…sort of. Whirlwind Heat followed Arab On Radar across the country, asking to play behind them every night for two weeks. “We just showed up at the clubs and asked the promoters if we could play,” Swanson says. “Arab On Radar were cool, saying, ‘Yeah, this band is great. You should let ‘em play.’ We were really young and it was a lot of fun.” In 1999, Whirlwind Heat expanded on their original line-up, with the addition of guitarist Jason Eberspeaker. They released a single – “Whirlwind Heat” b/w “Mechanik” – on the Grand Rapids-based label, Offsite Records. After a 1999 gig at Detroit’s Gold Dollar, the band met Italy Records founder Dave Buick, who invited them to cut a single for his influential label. A few months later, a gig at the Magic Stick was attended by Buick’s cohort, one Jack White. “After we played, Jack came over to us and said, ‘I’d like to record you guys,’” Swanson says. “We had never heard of the White Stripes, and it seems like whenever you play different cities, people come up to you and say, ‘Oh, I like your band, I’d like to record you.’ With Jack, it was kind of the same thing. We thought, ‘Sure, we’ll try it out,’ thinking it’d just be a little cassette thing, where nobody was taking it too seriously. But it ended up being a lot more serious than we thought. On June 20, 2000 – the day “DE STIJL” was released – we got together and recorded a few tracks up at the studio in Jack White’s attic, and we’ve been good friends ever since.” The three-song “GLAXEFUSION” seven-inch was released on Italy later that year, followed by a track – “Decal On My Sticker” – to Sympathy For The Record Industry’s 2001 compilation, “SYMPATHETIC SOUNDS OF DETROIT.” It was around this time that Eberspeaker opted out of Whirlwind Heat, choosing to pursue a career in fine arts. “Jason’s a great artist,” Swanson says, noting Eberspeaker’s cover art for the “GLAXEFUSION” EP. “He decided that that was where his real interests were. So he quit and we went back to being just us three again.” A trio once more, Whirlwind Heat continued to gig around Michigan and its environs, venturing out for tours with MC Paul Barman and the Dirtbombs. In mid-2002, their old pal Jack White came a-calling, inviting them to sign aboard his brand-new Third Man label collaboration with V2. The CD will be released on XL in the UK “It’s really weird for us,” Swanson says of his band’s involvement with V2. “Jack started Third Man and said, “Hey, we should record an album!’ We thought, ‘He’s a good friend and a great producer, let’s do it.’ But we never saw ourselves making it onto a major label or anything.” “DO RABBITS WONDER?” was produced by White and recorded by singer/songwriter Brendan Benson at his Grand Studios, conveniently located in Benson’s Detroit home. The album was cut over a quick four days in August 2002 – the week of the famed White Stripes hometown double bill gigs with the Strokes “We’re all close friends,” Swanson says, “so it wasn’t like going in with a producer we’d only met once. It was really relaxed. “Jack put a lot of himself into producing it,” he adds. “He’s really strong about what he believes in. There’s tons of us and tons of him on this record. Jack’s got a really good ear for where sounds need to go. Left on our own, we would probably do an album all in one take, but Jack really pushes us to give it our best.” After wrapping up the sessions, the Heat then headed to bucolic Cassadaga, New York, where the recordings were mixed by Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev) at his Tarbox Road Studios. “Dave’s a really nice guy,” Swanson says. “We were only there a day or two, but we really liked that place a lot.” For their full-length debut, Whirlwind Heat were determined to be as innovative and distinctive as possible. As a result, the songs of “DO RABBITS WONDER” don’t have traditional titles – rather, they each have their own color coding. For example, the song formerly known as “Decal On My Sticker” now is simply called “Tan.” “We wanted a way to make it unique,” Swanson explains, “a way to strip things down. We’re sick of hearing the chorus of songs and knowing that’s the title. It just didn’t seem creative to us, so we wanted to come up with something different. The colors aren’t always connected to the emotions or the energy of the songs, but we tried to match them up as much as possible.” From the jittery “Orange,” through the fuzzed-up closer, “Grey,” the songs of “DO RABBITS WONDER?” are fraught with a inimitable energy and a spontaneous spiky potency. One thing is certain – Whirlwind Heat’s twisted raw power is striking, scary, and altogether original. “I thought people would hear our music would think it was confusing or odd, but it seems people really get it,” Swanson says. “I’m really happy that we have the opportunity to put this music out on a V2 Records. Because hopefully it will push a different kind of music out there, music that some people haven’t heard yet, or some creative ideas and sounds that might help people along from hearing generic rock on the radio all the time.”

Group Members David Swanson: Vocals & Moog Steve Damstra: Bass Brad Holland: Drums

Albums Do Rabbits Wonder

Location Grand Rapids, MI - USA

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