The White Animals
Playing 9:30 p.m. July 3 at Dancin’ in the District
When The White Animals said goodbye to the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle in 1987, the five core members settled into varying degrees of middle-aged, middle-class comfort. Founding member Kevin Gray had been in residency at Vanderbilt University hospital when he took a leave of absence to become a full-time musician in 1979, so he picked up where he left off, and now alternates between researching geriatric neurology and lecturing about pharmaceutical therapy. His fellow guitarist Rich Parks moved to Gatlinburg, where he still plays music periodically. Bassist Steve Boyd started a successful landscaping business. Drummer Ray Crabtree runs a PR firm. And keyboard player/band engineer Tim Coats hewed closest to the rock, serving as a concert boardman and go-to guy for the likes of Leon Russell, Foster & Lloyd and Steve Earle, before opening a recording studio with Garry Tallent. (Coats is currently working with Steve Forbert, and recently wrapped work on Jim Lauderdale’s magnificent LP The Hummingbirds.)
The White Animals reunited in 1999 in support of their best-of compilation, 3,000 Nights in Babylon. After that, they stayed together to play a limited schedule of about six dates a year, half of which have been private parties, and all of which have had to be booked months in advance, so that the band’s members could clear their schedules. So while the Animals have returned, their approach has, by necessity and by desire, changed. Coats cites the recording of their new, eponymous album as a case in point.
“We used to be relentless on the road,” he says, “and then we’d book a couple of weeks in the studio and have to live with what we got. Now we go in when it’s comfortable, and we have plenty of time to step back and evaluate. We’re old men, and we don’t play every night, so we can’t just go in and hit it.”
About half of the songs for The White Animals were written during a trip Boyd made to Dallas, where Gray now lives; most of the rest were written during Gray’s periodic trips to Nashville. Parks and Coats contributed the balance. Coats says that his bandmates came in to his studio more or less whenever they wanted, sometimes working on a song for hours, sometimes nailing a track in 20 minutes and heading home.
That’s the way The White Animals do things these days: no hassle. Of their infrequent touring, Coats says, “We go back to places that remember us, and we don’t ask for any money (up front), just for the door.” They also take gigs that wouldn’t have fit the band’s party spirit of two decades ago. “We played a show from 5 to 8 p.m. in Mobile recently. It was so civil. I wish we could do that more often. I know our demographic would appreciate it.”
If so, that following will certainly appreciate the change in plans for The White Animals’ now annual Independence Day show in Nashville, which, for 2002, will be taking place July 4 at Dancin’ in the District. “Normally, we’d play the Exit/In for our July Fourth thing,” Coats explains, “but the schedules wouldn’t lock up. The more we tried to make it happen, the more it became un-fun. If we don’t want to do it, we don’t have to. This is just a really great hobby.”
Even the recording of The White Animals was hobby-like. The band don’t have to make much money on the record, since it didn’t cost much to make. Because Coats uses his own studio, he says, “there’s no studio costs, and no engineering costs.” Also, recording technology has changed in substantive ways since the ’80s. “Analog has a sound, and it’s a good sound, but the cost of tape is ridiculous. We’re not even using tape anymore. Digital is better anyway, in my opinion. You’ve got the advantage of data manipulation, so like if you get the sound of a line right on the first chorus, but not on the second, you can cut and paste. Everybody does it now. Of course, we try not to do it too much. We don’t want our records to sound totally slick. We left some fringe, so it would sound like us.”
In fact, the songs on The White Animals sound like the band in their earliest incarnation, when they played clean, catchy rock songs derived from the wing of classic American garage rockers who spent hours listening to Revolver and whatever Yardbirds sides they could find. It’s the sound of endearing amateur music, but coming from five grown professionals who know how to play and how to arrange. It’s a blast of youthful bar band fun from a mature angle—and Coats says it won’t be their last hurrah.
“We’re looking toward the next record,” he says, then adds, with a laid-back chuckle, “If we started recording today, it would be ready in two years.”
