Tonstartssbandht

Photo by Andy White

Few bands are worth traveling up to Asheville to see hours before a deadline. This is one of those few.

I had to haul ass back home after the show and type this up while our editor-in-chief jammed his forearm into the printing press to prevent the new issue from running away from this piece. I can hear his inked screams from my house. The arm is surely breaking now so I better make this quick. Or maybe the damage has been done and I can take my time thanks to Kip’s Herculean sacrifice.

Tonstartssbandht (Say the name however you fucking want. It’s a word that the two brothers from Orlando, Andy and Edwin White, made up. Though it usually goes one of two ways: Tahn-Starts-Bandit or the equally valid Tahn-Starts-Band. There you have it. Now you can quit having a stroke.) are one of the greatest things going on right now, and they’re a secret kept far too well. Consider this a tell-all.

The music is more of a moment. It’s a shifting particle that expands into a ribbon with no beginnings and surely no means of an end. It’s like watching an hourglass in zero gravity. Time stands still. And you may never leave it. Good riddance I say. I’m happy here. Well-to-do. When I first heard their last album Sorcerer I think I could remember my birth. I was a rainbow coming out of a dark cloud. I turned around and waved goodbye to the storm. You sit back and slap your knee thinking worriedly that this band can’t just be two brothers. And maybe it’s not. It’s one thing. An entity that controls the weather and translates space to song. And it has all our souls in cradled orbit.

Now they have a new record out called Petunia. They played it all last night in Asheville at The Grey Eagle. I don’t remember a roof or a floor to the place now that I think about it. Really unbelievable stuff. Like riding the pyramids of Giza through the sky like the flying ace.

After their set we arranged their equipment in a nice pile and watched it from a picnic table as I asked them some questions for RP. Here are a few of those now…

This and all subsequent photos by Z Staehling

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Andy White: Guitar

Edwin White: Drums

I understand that Petunia-Which is out now off Mexican Summer and available on all streaming platforms and for physical purchase through the website- is the first Tonstartssbandht album that was created in one place at one time. How was this conventional method of recording music unconventional for Tonstartssbandht?

Andy: I feel like over the years when we were recording, at first we were living apart- different cities, different countries- and we would meet in either Montreal or New York to to write and record at our respective apartments. Then after a while we would record on the road or in between tours in whatever space was available to record in. And from all those recordings we would put together a record. There’s no record of ours where every song was recorded in the same space or in one chunk of time, right?

Edwin: Yeah it was Patchwork. Quilt. Hodgepodge; whenever we were visiting each other. Or record it separately and email Logic project files back and forth dozens of times and it was a mess.

Andy: Petunia is singular to this process because we knew we had a bunch of material we were wanting to record in maybe the fall of 2020 when we could hunker down and do it. And then when everything shut down in March 2020 we knew we had a bunch of time on our hands and we’d spent a while sort of cleaning up and prepping our home studio.

Edwin: I took to the garden and your project was getting the recording space ready.

Andy: Yeah, and I took my time because what was the fucking rush?

The music has this undeniable symbiosis between the two of you. The way y’all play off each other, it seems at times the band breaks away from roles and occupies a single consciousness. How does being blood brothers lend to this phenomenon?

Edwin: I’d assume it’s a key component but it’s the only reality I know, being his brother. We have spent our entire lives together. Even when we weren’t living together or in the same city we talk everyday. Everything is very relatable because we are brothers in a truer sense of the word than just by blood we’re brothers in a shared perspective on life. It’s easy to share a feeling and a vibe with him on stage and in sound, to kinda know what we wanted to sound like next. It’s intuitive.

Andy: It’s kind of easy to expect the next step from him because I kind of know what Ed likes or what he’d be stoked on.

Edwin: And it’s not that you’re acquiescing to what you think they’ll like, it’s what you know we’ll both like. Because if a songs falling apart we know when to kill-switch. But we know when to press the gas pedal too.

There’s been a clear shift in the last few years in y’all’s sound. Where you once started as a vocal-heavy and loop-laden noise pop band, you are now this entity that seems to create these shifting musical moments in time and space. Can you speak to this evolution?

Edwin: For me I would say when it started those were the equipment pieces we had because, hell, when the band started I was in school. I didn’t have a drum kit. Andy was also in school.

Andy: We both lived in dormitories. At the time the stuff we were writing and jamming on was stuff you could do in headphones.

Edwin: Or even later just in small apartments still with not enough money to afford even the cheap monthly rental spaces in New York where you share with a bunch of people, not even knowing enough people because you’re still really young. You don’t have a big enough social network. And dude we had no money for many years.

Andy: And with the earlier recordings there was still a little bit of guitar and drum stuff because when we did have an opportunity to record we always had stuff we wanted to write on that, but most of the stuff is just plugging your headphones in and singing into a mic. And whoever’s in your apartment just hears you going, ‘WAAAA OHH AHHHH’.

Edwin: We had looping pedals and effects pedals and a sampler.

Andy: That’s what we were writing and expressing ourselves on. I would always love to go back one day and have a set where it’s the old school shit. ‘Black Country’, ‘Andy Summers’, ‘5ft7’.

Edwin: I had daydream in the shower the other day and it was like, ‘We’re doing a tour, and it’s just a sampler tour.’ And it says on the billboard poster, ‘Tonstartssbandht Performs An When and Dick Nights’. You never know it could happen.

Later we moved into this space in Brooklyn-The Wallet-where the living room was gigantic. You could play music there pretty much anytime, and everyone there was musicians. So we all were allowed to practice. We could leave the drums set up and play the amps loud so that kind if started the Overseas era of the band. And playing way more guitar and drums and wanting to continue with that, push ourselves above the instruments. Andy’s always had this level if guitar playing, I wanted to push my drumming a little more and I think I’ve progressed with it bit by bit. I don’t consider myself a fully-trained drummer, I’ve just kind of learned on the fly playing with Tonstartssbandht for the last decade plus. Usually just playing live, making mistakes live. I don’t really like to practice.

I’ve noticed an almost gospel or sermon like delivery to your music, and some of the songs are even seen as hymns to you. Are you religious at all? How does the spiritual world relate to music?

Andy: I wouldn’t say I’m religious, in a religion sense. I’ve definitely been opening up my head to spirituality lately. Maybe it was more intuitive or unidentified through most of my childhood and into my 20’s.

Edwin: I’ve had spiritual experiences with universal consciousness-very personal experiences-but nothing religious. It’s a thing I didn’t have until later in life. It’s funny, it’s a cliche, but there’s a lot if things that connect every single human and every single thing, and yeah, it affects my life, but I don’t have a religion or even like a God.

Andy: Let’s say like a homie that walked up tonight was like ‘This one record speaks to me like this’ and they’ll say something that was not explicitly on the record and I’m like ‘That’s exactly what I was trying to say with that record. That’s fucking insane. How did you know that?’ And they’re just like ‘I listened to it’. Okay. Something is there. I’m not saying a record is a spiritual object but yeah somehow we’re all connected in someway and in that sense music is the same form of spirituality that makes people feel like there’s a presence among them that isn’t explicit or physical.

Edwin: If it can bring you to a higher state of consciousness then it’s a religious experience.

Weren’t you guys choir boys growing up?

Edwin: We were! We traveled singing in churches. We were in a choir that was tied to a Episcopalian church but we didn’t go to church growing up. I joined it because in third grade my friend’s older brother was in it and they traveled and I wanted to travel so I tried out for the choir. And we had always been singers, singing to the radio and just singing to music at home. It probably helped train our voices on how to sing and the proper techniques. Boy choir helped hone our skills. And we’ve definitely used that. I mean, you’ve heard us, we sound like choir boys. We sing really high because we still have that range.

Where do you think the subconscious mind belongs when it comes to the creation of music?

Edwin: For me it’s essential for quality things that you feel good about. When you make something and you’re not vibing with it and you scrap it, maybe it’s because it wasn’t tapping into something deep like that. And if it’s powerful and you know it, when you love it then you wanna share it. So anything we release is something we’re proud of and like, and we think we did what we were trying to do with it and we connect with it-if we can listen to it and get psyched-that’ll be on the record. I feel like that comes from the subconscious, that well.

Andy: Fishing into the well.

On your last album Sorcerer and this new album Petunia I see this theme of ascension and maybe even the welcoming of death on songs like “Pass Away”. If I’m not misreading this, is Tonstartssbandht eulogizing something here?

Andy: Honestly I feel like there have been some heavy losses in our lives. I try not to get too explicit or personally identifying in the lyrics, but I feel it’s cathartic in a way to sing about the losses in people around us. And on a personal level I have for many years struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts and stuff like that. Sometimes I feel like our lyrics are one hair away from being ‘THIS SONG IS ABOUT SUICIDE’ but there’s something kind of tacky or gauche about that I think. But ask any number of people you walk up to if you can get them feeling unguarded and being honest people think about that shit all the time man. I don’t think there’s anything wrong or exploitative about just being like ‘Yo what’s up, sometimes I feel like this’.

Edwin: It’s honesty. If you can stand behind the message you can say whatever it is you need to say when it comes to art.

Your music catches the fancy of countries most bands seem to miss on the map. Your band will hit the crannies of eastern Europe and even Asia because there are dedicated fans there. How are these spots different than the usual suspects of an American tour as far as the relationship between audience and musician and environment?

Edwin: Our eastern Europe and Russia fan base is an integral part of the story of this band and it’s pretty freaking amazing and it’s been a beautiful ride meeting these people who’ve become some of our closest friends and it all started from them discovering us. I don’t know how, on the internet some way.

Andy: To get us over there, like, to be fair we’re not a big band and they paid out pocket. The experiences for a small band like us playing in a far flung place like Eastern Europe or southeast Asia. If you’re there and you’re a small band that doesn’t have a big promo push or a lot of money behind you you’re probably there because somebody cares a lot about it. So I don’t know if it’s necessarily reflective of Eastern European culture or southeast Asian culture as much as it is a crew of people that are invested in bringing you- a broke band-somewhere and showing you a good time. And they put in money for it trying to throw great shows for people in town for a band that no one knows.

Edwin: And we played the game because they also were like, ‘We can do it, but we’re gonna ride the crowded public trains overnight where you sleep with a bunch of strangers’. There’s no glitz to it. It was really hard. We didn’t have money for cabs so we’re talking about loading all your gear around on the subway.

Andy: When you enter the country do not tell the police you’re playing shows.

Edwin: But we were that broke too, that’s how we do it at home. So it was instant friends. Somehow the music they heard of ours told them something about us that they knew they had to see us and had to meet us. And I guess we filled their expectations and they blew our expectations out of the water because we had no idea what to expect. We were half-jokingly like ‘We’ll see if these tickets even work, if they let us on the plane.’ Are you kidding me? We’re going to Russian? We haven’t even played in Europe before and we’re going straight to Moscow.

Andy: We did it three years in a row.

Edwin: And I think playing over there helped establish a little bit of credibility to what we were trying to do as a serious band and helped to us get shows in Europe the following year so we were finally going to play Western Europe, places that people usually play first. So it was even easier this time. It was like a feedback loop. And it’s crazy that these kids from Russia that were like 20 years old had to take the first risk.

Andy: And a lot of those folks when we met them were always insanely talented and now they’re like successful fucking artists. That whole crew, they’ve all gone off to do such incredible things. And I could walk into a fucking record store in Asheville and hear them playing.

I know you spent a good portion your young adult years in Montreal where you met and became friends with people like Mac Demarco and Grimes.

Edwin: We lived at the wallet for about three and a half years and Mac lived there for one of those years in the middle. But people lived there about four years before we moved in and about four years after. Some people thought it was our house or Mac’s house, we were just passers through. That place existed long before we got there and long after we all left.

Andy: I remember the house bands being PC Worhsip, Ashcan Orchestra, The Dreebs, Guerilla Toss. A lot of people passed through there. People lived on our couch for years at a time, not even kidding. We had mushrooms growing out of a wall. It was basically a punk shit house and Edwin had his own bathroom and bedroom because of the way the rooms were cut out.

Edwin: When we met Claire did she even make music? She was just an interesting artist girl, she wasn’t Grimes yet.

Andy: Montreal is a big hub for young people in Canada. So you’d meet other kids from Vancouver and you’d meet Claire through them or you’d meet the people that ran Arbutus Records. Or just like all the writers and painters and shit. And Mac and the Edmonton kids: I remember hearing about Mac from his Edmonton friends before he ever moved there.

Edwin: Montreal for Canada is like a New York City as a hub for drawing creative types but the rent is Baltimore rent. Because the rent laws have been really pro-tenant. It’s also beautiful, it’s like a European city in this weird fucked up way. It’s a great place to live but it’s cold as shit so you have to be ready for that.

Andy I know you actually toured with Mac Demarco for a spell. And that period was known for being of some of his best live material. How did this come about? And how was riding shotgun different from taking the wheel on a tour?

Andy: Awesome. It fucking ruled.

Edwin: I’ve ridden in the van with them and it’s like a vacation.

Andy: we’re all old friends so it’s always easy to tour with a homie. It was a great paying gig, a very equitable share. The way that band works financially, I really respected that a lot. I got to play with my closest friends and travel the world. It felt like there was less emotional heft. I didn’t have any of the feeling like I had tonight where one’s mind races. They’re there to see music you wrote. With Mac we were just his side band. The only thing you have to do is try to pull it off exactly how the head honcho wants and stay safe and have a blast. But it was very different than with Edwin. It was very fun and exciting but it wasn’t as rewarding in any of the same ways as playing with Edwin is.

Edwin: Good save.

Andy: And I also like Mac’s music. It wasn’t like I was a hired gun. I got to play music I dug, that I didn’t have any sort if attachment to. I just loved playing with these guys.

What will become of the songs from Petunia along this tour? With they expand at all!

Andy: I certainly feel like they will. The vocals will get tighter. And as they get tighter at the same time you’ll feel us grooving a little more and being a little more relaxed. Probably a bit of medley work. We tried out some stuff in rehearsal that we were stoked on but we were mostly focused on relearning the music we recorded almost a year and a half ago at this point.

Edwin: and also we have to get used to playing on a stage again. The way it sounds to us on stage, it doesn’t sound like anything, it’s very different. And it’s about getting into that feeling where ‘this is what it sounds like, now how do I adjust to that?’ And that’ll take a little bit of time. Things will polish up with every gig. That’s just the way it is.

Is there anything in particular you would like to end with? Anything or anyone you wanna shout out?

Edwin: Very grateful to Mexican Summer for all the work they’ve done for us and with us the last two releases. Everyone that we work with there is so nice to work with and they put so much heart and soul into the music we make and getting it out to everyone. And leading from that: thanks to everyone that listens and is coming out to see us and is just supporting us even when we’re not doing anything for a year or two. Thank you for being there when we come back. Just know that we’re always very thankful for that.

Andy: It means quite a lot.

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This band is on the tip of Einstein’s stuck-out tongue, licks from relatively. So do yourself a favor and learn to stop worrying and love the bomb. Feast your eyes as I know they’re hungry.

Published in Record Plug Magazine as part of the November 2021 issue