Inside Whitehall's World: Gear, Goals, and the Unexpected Adventures Behind the Music
In this interview, Whitehall discusses their gear preferences, dream setups, thoughts on the evolving music industry landscape, dream collabs, and more!
Photo credit: David Patiño
We had the pleasure to talk to Brooklyn’s indie rockers Whitehall - Paddy McKiernan, Avery Greeson, Brennan Clark, and Davis Rowe - about their dynamic sound, gear setups, the challenges of sustaining a music career, their goals for their next chapter, and dream collabs.
We also veer into the unexpected: time-traveling vans, AI-powered instrument revolts, formation of a chaotic historical supergroup, time travel mishaps, and more!
Get ready for a fun and insightful ride through the world of Whitehall.
Chris Roditis, Musicngear: Welcome to Musicngear, guys! Let’s talk gear. What did you use to capture the energy of Malibu #2 in the studio? Any specific pedals, amps, or recording techniques that played a big role?
Thank you! For this one, we recorded all the guitars pretty clean and fuzzed it out with an Electro Harmonix Memory Man.
Musicngear: If each of you could design your ultimate dream setup - any instrument, amp, pedals, drum kit, or even something completely custom - what would it be?
Paddy: I would build my own custom Fender Jaguar with P-90 pickups. Humbucker on the neck pickup. Pedal board built by Caroline Guitar Company, fully stocked.
Avery: Slightly modify my dinky little Fender Strat to a higher-end Strat. Would love a Supro amp, and a pedalboard with only arpeggiators.
Brennan: I already have my dream bass, an 03 Fender P bass. I definitely want a Vintage SVT bass amp, Avery and I have always had a dream of having matching SVTs on opposite sides of the stage so he can run his guitar through it for more low end.
Davis: My drum set is pretty ideal as is, I have a Ludwig classic maple kit with a 20” kick (ideal) and various Zildjian K’s for cymbals. I’ve got a Ludwig hand-hammered brass snare that I absolutely love.
I do really want to get some vintage new beat hi hats and add another snare to the mix, maybe a 13” or a Ludwig acrolite for a little more ring. Also, would really love a custom/boutique acrylic kit someday, but I’ll never give up the Ludwig I have.
Musicngear: You’ve spent years navigating the DIY scene, extensive touring, and evolving your sound. What’s the biggest hurdle you’ve overcome as a band, and what advice would you give to artists facing similar struggles?
Honestly, being a band our size, the hurdles don’t really stop; I don’t know that there is one that outweighs the rest. There are a lot of little hurdles that you just have to tackle one at a time as they come to you. Whether you’re in the early stages, trying to book your first tour and find your identity, or more seasoned and trying to grow a fan base in a new city and take the next step.
The best advice is to just keep going. It can be tough to find the motivation a times, but the more you work and the better you get, people will eventually take notice.
Musicngear: With your new single and upcoming album, do you have specific goals? Like hitting a streaming milestone, booking certain shows, or landing major press coverage? How are you working toward them?
Ideally, we’d get a million streams per song, but mainly we want these songs to hopefully find their audience and spread organically as far and wide as they can. Our team is doing everything they can to pitch them to playlists.
We’re also working on some possible sync/publishing deals, which is new territory for us but could help. Hoping we can also get a good mix of headline, support, diy shows together throughout the rest of the year to keep the songs out there and grow as much as possible.
Musicngear: With streaming payouts being so low, how do you navigate the challenges of making a living as a musician today? Is music your main source of income, or do you have other ways to sustain yourself financially?
Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to sustain ourselves solely from music, but that’s the dream! We have jobs in NYC that are flexible with our hectic band schedule.
Touring/playing live is the best way to make money, along with merch sales, so the more we do that and can keep our budget in line, the better off we’ll be.
Musicngear: If you could collaborate with any artist, past or present, who would it be? And what’s a dream venue or festival where you’d love to play?
There are so many. Evan Stephens Hall from Pinegrove, Will Toledo from Car Seat Headrest, Frank Black, Stephen Malkmus, Steve Albini on the producing side. Just a few. The list could go on.
Have always dreamt of doing a massive festival like Bonnaroo or Glasto. Treefort in Boise has also looked really amazing the last few years
Musicngear: Time to get weird: your tour van accidentally drives through a time portal and drops you into a completely different era. What year are you in, and how does Whitehall survive (or thrive) in this new timeline?
A bright flash. Our eyes adjust to the new surroundings. The year is 50,000 A.D. The van is now made of jelly. In fact, jelly is the only thing we see through the windows, also made of jelly. The future is jelly. We do the only thing we know how to do. Open up the time travel proof peanut butter and GET. TO. WORK.
Musicngear: Your instruments mysteriously gain AI consciousness overnight. Are they helpful bandmates, total divas, or plotting a full band takeover?
Definitely plotting a full band takeover. Especially the drumset. After years of brutal beatings and abuse, it’s out for revenge and is the fearless villain leader of all the other instruments. Together, they will beat us senseless and probably do our jobs much better.
Musicngear: As the way people consume music and visual content is changing, if from now on you had to choose only one format to release visuals for your music, what would it be - official music videos or TikToks/Shorts/Reels? And why?
We’d probably go with the shorter format of reels/toks/shorts. They get more views these days and are more digestible, plus we can post them more often and hopefully get more traction.
Musicngear: Given that Spotify pays musicians mere pennies while raking in billions, do you think the music industry would be better or worse off if the platform disappeared overnight?
It’s tough to say. I think we’re too deep into streaming culture for it to be a good thing for it to completely disappear. The devaluing has already been done, so there would likely be something similar developed to take its place, and it would just end up the same as it is now. That’s something I think should have been fixed before Spotify got to be the main streaming giant, but now it seems too late.
With that said, it is amazing that anyone can make a song, and it can be consumed by people who may not hear without Spotify. I think we just have to keep advocating and lobbying for more fair compensation while still pushing our music on these platforms in hopes that it finds the right audience and propels our touring careers.
Musicngear: If you could form a supergroup with any historical figures, who would be in the band, and what role would each of them play?
Hardcore punk band: Abe Lincoln on vox and screams, Julius Caesar on bass (no one likes him, gets fired, then executed on stage), Joan of Arc on drums and triangle, Jesus Christ lead guitar and backup screams, Pinocchio on percussion (uses nose as drumstick), Martin Luther King on keys, synths, and spoken word vox and Dracula (vibes only, just stands on stage).
Musicngear: After the upcoming album, what’s on the horizon for Whitehall?
We got some music videos and visualizers dropping with the singles from the album, and then we plan to hit the road for some summer/fall/winter shows!
Stay tuned on our Instagram @whitehalltheband for updates on what we’re up to!
Connect with Whitehall
Facebook // Instagram // Spotify // Bandcamp // Website
Listen to Whitehall's latest single, 'Baby Steps'
About Chris Roditis
Chris Roditis has been an active musician since 1995 in various bands and projects across a variety of genres ranging from acoustic, electronic to nu metal, british rock and trip hop. He has extensive experience as a mixing engineer and producer and has built recording studios for most of the projects he has been involved with. His passion for music steered his entrepreneurial skills into founding MusicNGear in 2012.
Contact Chris Roditis at chrisroditis@musicngear.com
In this section of the blog we host interviews with established but also up and coming artists we love and recommend as well as music industry professionals with tons of useful information to share.
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