By Ley Shoemark
Xylouris White is the coming together of two mighty musical forces. George Xylouris is a proudly Greek singer and master laouto player, dancing his fingers over the long-neck fretted instrument of the lute family with ease. Jim White, the pride of Australia, is the drummer of the Dirty Three alongside Warren Ellis and Mick Turner, and has lent his considerable skins-smashing skill to Ed Kuepper, Springtime, Marisa Anderson, The Double, Venom P. Stinger, and Bill Callahan. He is also a songwriter.
Breaking tradition with a new sound
Xylouris White’s forthcoming Australia tour, and Canberra stop at The Street Theatre, will offer fans something new as the band breaks away from tradition as they showcase their brand new album, The Forest In Me.
“The Canberra show will be part of the first Australian dates touring the new album,” the venerable Jim White says. “We’ve completely changed our whole performance. Our latest release is a different record. It’s much less Greek traditional because not as much of that style developed on the new record, but remnants from previous albums will be included in the tour. We put our music through this new lens with the new album, and it’s pretty exciting for us. It has added a new dynamic to the live shows.”
This change could be attributed to the pandemic, with White gaining more out of recording in lockdown than expected.
“This record, The Forest In Me, was made during the pandemic, and we were separated,” White confirms. “I never knew how to record. I never really had that much interest in it, but I learned it during the pandemic. This record is basically the work of George, who was in Crete (Greece), and myself in Australia, mostly alone and remotely.
“I’ve been heavily involved in recording, but I’ve never done the knobs,” White continues. “I never looked at that side. To be honest, I never thought I would have the patience. But it was forced on me, and then I enjoyed it. It was good, it was fun. It wasn’t good fun, but it was productive.”
A movie soundtrack?
The way Xylouris White utilised their time and thought outside of the box when recording in such unusual circumstances led to the album’s different sound.
“This album is different in many ways; we wrote some songs playing to film, we did songs playing to each other’s contributions, we sent out the drums, and the others did their thing,” White explains.
Hang on… playing to film? Is this a movie soundtrack?
“The title, The Forest In Me, is that of the movie that we played along to, so a couple of tracks are a direct result of that,” White reveals. “We worked with a woman called Rebecca Marshall and did the music for her movie. Our album is not the film’s soundtrack, even though it shares the same name.
“At one point, we tried this type of scoring,” White continues. “We both played along to some scenes in the movie individually, without hearing each other, before putting them together. So, the album is crafted rather than just jamming.”
This is starkly different to the recording methodology of previous albums.
“With the other records, we were all in the same room playing together,” White says. “We get a direction from what we do, then start something, and we see what’s there. We explore some ideas about how it might go, and then we know what’s working and continue to take it in that direction. We’ve got five albums from that.
“The Forest In Me is a result of a very different process, partly due to the pandemic. But we were heading in that direction anyway, and the album was brought home by this process that worked so well.
Paired down and stage ready
What a development. It’s quite the collaboration, which will add that new dynamic to the live shows.
“From in George’s culture, you play until the people are exhausted, until there’s no one left,” White says. “It could be, like, ten hours when we first started playing if there were a lot of Greeks in the audience.
“We would add in a couple of songs and do really long sets. Over the years, we’ve really gone away from that.
“We started this recent tour in Montreal, which was the first show for this record and playing new material; next was LA. We really paired it down and got the essence of what we were doing in a performance sense. That preparation will emulate the Australian tour. That’s what we’ll deliver in Canberra.”
After so much time and so much experience, does Xylouris White have a steadfast pre-stage ritual?
“George plays his instrument all day long!” White exudes. “Even if he’s not playing it physically, he is playing in his mind. For me, I can be asleep about five minutes before the show—having a nap on the floor backstage—and then bang, it’s show time.
“You could get good at putting yourself into a particular state before a show. Sometimes, I ask people, what’s my attitude tonight? What am I taking out there? And then the first note hits, and I instantly know how it will be. It’s like losing yourself and engaging in a state of hyper-awareness at the same time. You lose yourself and find yourself.”
Tour tales aplenty
And with so much time comes plenty of tour anecdotes to enjoy.
“We got invited to China and flew in to play this festival in Shenzhen,” White says. “It’s like the Silicon Valley of China. It’s just unbelievable. You hear all these stories about it. Seeing how bad the pollution has become is awful, but it was incredible. The festival itself was quality: fantastic programming, a fantastic audience, and set in a beautiful environment.
“There was a time before that, also in China, when we played at a venue that had booked an acrobatic show on the stage after our concert,” White continues. “There were rumours among our audience that we played for hours, so they encouraged us to keep playing. And so keep playing we did!
“We were still going when the acrobats showed up. Our crowd was packed with university students, but the more upper-class crowd slowly started filling the venue to see the acrobats. “And we kept playing.
“The acrobats were on the side of the stage thinking about what was happening. Before long, they forcibly tried to close the curtains on us, but the crowd kept pulling them back open, so we kept going. Now, that was crazy.
Hearing such tales, it’s hard to imagine how you would wind down from a live performance.
“Touring, you are usually on the move even though you get a day off or a few moments here and there,” White says. “You frequent places, and you have your cities that you’ve travelled to a lot over the years. You just focus on the show or have friends in certain cities and feel like something other than a tourist.
I often walk around in the middle of the night, after the show, listening to The Cure.”
Now, there’s an image that wouldn’t look out of place in an arty black-and-white film, and a fascinating thing to learn about the man. Another quirk of note, I soon learn, is this: White is none too keen on being called a niche.
Not to be pigeonholed!
“You can’t pigeonhole us!” White declares. “The first three albums were like this trilogy; a statement of our coming together and expanding into this world,” White says.
“The fourth had a very different feel, and now The Forest In Me feels like a new start. It took us ten years to get to this. I really love it.
“We’re coming out of the Cretan music world and Melbourne music scene. George is from both worlds, obviously because he’s from Crete. He is also a traditional and radical musician. We, Xylouris White, have been described as niche because of that.
“Our fans are radical or traditional Greek audiences and indie rock lovers who have grown in number over the years, and niche is not the right word. Once I was young, they were older than me,” White reflects. “Then the crowd became my contemporaries.”
All that remains now is to see exactly what this highly experienced, broadly appealing outfit has in store for us in 2023.
“We played in Canberra many years ago with Violent Femmes at the ANU. We look forward to bringing the new tour to the Capital.”
Xylouris White plays at The Street Theatre on Wednesday, 29 November, at 7:30pm. They will be supported by Darren “D.C” Cross. Tickets are $45 + bf and are available from the venue.