The album took two years to complete and features hard rock veteran guest vocalists Paul Shortino (Rough Cutt, Quiet Riot), Terry Ilous (XYZ, Great White), Lorraine Lewis (Femme Fatale) and Jeff Paris (Cinderella, Vixen). Taking time out from a law meeting in London one afternoon, Savage talked about how the project formed, the meaning behind the songs and how they were able to land such prominent vocalists for the album.
Kelley Simms: How did the idea come about for BlancaWhite?
Ken Savage: I came up with the idea for the album and the subject matter for each of the songs. I wrote the lyrics for all nine of the songs on the album. My partner in crime, Austin Schell, who’s based in Austin, Texas, wrote the music for each of the songs. He did a terrific job. He’s got this uncanny ability to write music to match lyrics. We did this the hard way — with me writing all the lyrics out first and then he came in and wrote the music for each of the songs.
What was the bulk of the two years it took to write and record the album?
The writing of the songs took us about nine or ten months. It was a pretty slow and careful process. Austin is based in Austin and I’m based in Paris, so we would get together every three or four months and work together for a week or two. We would work a lot also over the phone too and by e-mail and computer as well — we’d send files back and forth.
What really took the longest period of time was locating the singers for each of the songs. We have four really professional and classy singers. We sort of followed the model of the Alan Parsons Project where Austin and I did all the work writing of the music and then we had to go out and find, particularly the vocalists, that we really liked for each of the songs.
We were really careful to match the singers with the songs for which they would be best. We demoed hundreds of singers in Europe and in the U.S., but we really wanted to get the ones we thought would work best for the songs.
It’s a great record because of the singers you picked. Unless you’re a die-hard rock and metal fan, these guys aren’t really household names but hold a special something and magic in music. The first time I heard Rough Cutt’s first album I was blown away by Paul Shortino. And the first time I heard/saw “Waiting For The Big One” by Femme Fatale featuring Lorraine Lewis, I was hooked. Or hearing “Inside Out” by XYZ with Terry Ilous was great. Did all of these singers bring a resurgence back to your memory, feeling or rock ‘n’ roll spirit?
We definitely wanted to get singers who we were aware of from the 1980s who have had some success. But more than that, we wanted to get singers with the voices that we thought would work best for each of our songs. For instance, Paul Shortino has an extraordinary voice. What he had in addition to that was a gravely, rougher voice that we were looking for in several of our songs.
Same with Terry Ilous. I wrote this song called “Your Boyfriend Is Lame,” which is the third song on the album. The key line in the song is where the guy is telling the girl your boyfriend’s lame. The first verse is set in the U.S., so he says that line in English. The second verse is set in Mexico, so he says that line in Spanish in the song. The third verse is set in Paris, France, so he says that line in French. I don’t know if you know, but Terry Ilous’s father was French and his mother was Spanish and of course he’s been in California for 25 years. He’s probably the only hard rock act on Earth who’s absolutely trilingual in those three languages and can sing the whole song with no accent in any language.
We also knew from the beginning that we also wanted a really kick ass female voice and that led us to Lorraine Lewis. We went after people that we thought would be good for the particular songs on the album and I think that’s a lot of the magic on the album that the singers really matched the songs really well and made them come alive.
How was it that you came to pick these certain singers? Did you already have contacts or did you write the song knowing/hoping you would get that particular person for the song?
I did not write the songs knowing I would get this particular person, but I did write the songs knowing the kind of person we wanted. We had no contacts at all. We literally started from ground zero. We’re really just humble rock fans and that’s what took so much time. We found Terry Ilous and Loraine Lewis after about four or five months of looking and got them to put down vocals for the songs that they do. Then we went through another five or six months of hell before we eventually found Paul Shortino and Jeff Paris.
We were actually just lucky to find him. After five or six months after recording “Your Boyfriend is Lame,” Terry Ilous was on some French TV reality show, again, he’s fluent in French. He had a major problem in relation to that and gave me a call and I mentioned to him that we were having a problem finding the two additional singers we wanted. I told him the kind of voices we were looking for and he put us in contact with Jeff Paris and Paul Shortino.
We got lucky in some critical junctures in the project. They all love this music. They are not only great singers but great human beings, all four of them. It was a joy working with them. We gave them a lot of leeway to make the songs their own. We weren’t sophisticated producers. We gave them the basic melodies we wanted but we told each of them to go to the max and they each enjoyed doing that.
Blanca White is a name of a bar in Mexico? What is the significance of naming your project this? Did you spend time there or grew up around there?
I did. I grew up in south Texas along the border, as did my partners in this project Austin Schell and his brother Rick. I grew up going to that bar on the weekends as a teenager. It’s just literally across the Rio Grande River from Texas where I grew up. It was a hell of a lot of fun. It was a big watering hole where the local kids would all go down there on a Friday and Saturday night. It was also a big spring break location. It’s actually the basis for the song on the album called “Living It Up At A Mexican Bar.” So we decided to take the name of the bar and use it for our group so to speak. Unfortunately with all the violence in Mexico it closed about three years ago. But it was alive and kicking back in the ’80s.
Who played the musical parts?
Austin wrote all the riffs and he played nearly all of the guitars on the album in terms of lead and rhythm. We brought in a very accomplished drummer named Phil Hook, he’s played with a number of bands in the Austin area. There were certain guitar parts where we also wanted to bring in some specialized, heavier and quicker guitars.
We brought in a couple of guys from an Austin-based band called Blackholicus named Domenic Schiera and Mike Nelsen. They did the takeaway part of the chorus on “Resurgence Of Rock” and they also laid down most of the guitars on a musical piece we have at the end of the album called “Famous Last Chords.”
We also have some pretty talented backup singers including on the one ballad we have by Lorraine Lewis called “Hundred Years War,” we have Kenny Cetera, who’s Peter’s (Chicago) brother singing backup vocal on the soaring chorus part of that in a duet with Lorraine Lewis. As well as another singer in Austin named Cari Hutson. It’s a pretty talented group.
The title of the album is perfect for what you were going for and the music is simple with great messages and lyrics. Did you know right from the beginning that this is what you were going for?
We knew from the beginning that we wanted to make this more than just an album. We wanted to try and make it kind of a movement, or kind of a statement. Again, we’re just die-hard rock fans and just wanted to promote a resurgence of the classic good old hard rock sounds of the late ’70s and ’80s. “Resurgence Of Rock” was the first song that I wrote. I just sat down and thought I’d try to write my own album because I just couldn’t find enough of this music that I loved anymore.
This is basically a studio endeavor right? You can’t expect or hope to get all these guys together for a tour or club shows?
We’ve been asked that question a lot. There’s a lot of interest I think in having some live shows. I think you’re right that we probably cannot put together logistically a professional tour. But we are definitely hoping to do some live shows. There’s some discussion about doing a mini tour over a couple of long weekends or something like that. It will probably be later in the spring or the summer if we do that.
Have you started writing already for the next album and will you keep the same singers or do you have a “wish list” of new singers?
We started working on the new album about three or four months ago. I’m really excited about it and I already have some cool ideas rockin’ around with Austin. We’re definitely going to follow the same format of trying to find the voices, presence and feel that we want for each of the songs. It’s too early to tell exactly who we’ll use on the next one. I suspect, a few of our singers will likely show up again on the next album and there may be a few new ones as well.
What does the BlancaWhite project hope to achieve with the release of Resurgence Of Rock?
I’d really like to see this turn into something of a movement that just promotes amongst fans who grew up in the era, a call to arms. Demand a rallying cry to bring back some of this kind of music in a bigger way than it exists right now. Some of those bands are still around and are still doing quite well and are still putting out material.
Generally speaking, music has moved away to some extent away from these classic bands of the late ’70s and ’80s and I’d like to help push it back in that direction. We just want to keep making the best music that we can. Ultimately, we’re just fans of this music. We’ve got an incredible reception so far. We hope we can just keep doing this over time. I think our next album we’ll be able to produce more quickly and efficiently. I’d like to get the next one out later this year or early next year. We’re having the time of our lives and we just want to get back to the late ’70s and the ’80s era classic rock.
