Resurgence Of Rock

Resurgence of Rock is the debut album and mantra of the new musical project BLANCAWHITE. The virtually unknown “band” consists of lyricist and international lawyer Ken Savage and his musical partner, guitarist Austin Schell.

Their self-financed debut album is a collection of nostalgic hard rock songs which serve as a celebration of the late ’70s and early ’80s rock and metal bands such as LED ZEPPELIN, AC/DC, DEF LEPPARD, SCORPIONS and JUDAS PRIEST. The record took two years to complete and features iconic ’80s guest vocalists such as Paul Shortino (ROUGH CUTT, QUIET RIOT), Terry Ilous (XYZ, GREAT WHITE), Lorraine Lewis (FEMME FATALE) and Jeff Paris (CINDERELLA, VIXEN).

Savage and Schell are not well-known musicians, but are enormous rock fans. They have modeled themselves after the ALAN PARSONS PROJECT by surrounding themselves with hired musicians to fulfill their musical quest. Savage created the project, wrote the lyrics and fronted most of the money to record the album.

“It’s really just out of very humble origins,” Savage says. “I’m just a fan of hard rock music and grew up in the 1980s, as well as my partners on the project Austin and Rick Schell. I travel a lot in my day job and I always used to take my ipod with me with several thousand classic ’80s hard rock songs like AC/DC, Judas Priest and everything else. It just got to the point several years ago where I was having more and more trouble finding any new classic-sounding hard rock music. So, I just had the idea to try and do something about it.”

Savage and Schell never claimed to be rock ‘n’ roll singers, that’s why they wanted the vocalist’s involved in the project to have a specific voice.

“Instead of just finding a local singer, we wanted to find singers who have had some real success in the 1980s and who had that 1980s persona and voice. It was really important to match the individual singers to the individual songs.”

For instance, with ‘Your Boyfriend is Lame’, the perfect choice was Terry Ilous. Ilous, of French and Spanish origin, sang verses in three different languages without missing a beat.

“They thought I would be perfect for the project because I speak and sing in different languages,” Ilous said.

Ilous and Lewis were the first singers to come on board for the project. While Ilous was participating in a French TV reality show, he needed Savage’s legal advice. After the initial talks between the two, Ilous was locked in.

“I was given free reign for the song,” Ilous adds. “But I have to tell you, I was puzzled when I first got the lyrics (laughs). I have a great sense of humor, so to me, playing the lyrics were a lot of fun. That’s the way I approached the song, with a lot of humor.”

Having difficulty in finding the two additional singers that Savage and Schell desired, Ilous put them in touch with Jeff Paris and Paul Shortino, who happened to be friends of his.

“I figured if Terry was involved with the project, I might as well check it out,” says Shortino.

Shortino possesses a professional rock star attitude, and his soulful and gravely voice fit perfectly with what BlancaWhite was looking for. After receiving the lyrics to the title track, Shortino approached it as a bit of a challenge.

“It’s always a challenge to do other people’s stuff,” Shortino remarks. “Usually when you’re writing something yourself it’s something that you’ve experienced and you’re writing from your heart. They sent me the idea, and they said I could run with it. Which was really great because it gave me a lot of freedom to expand on some of the melodies and phrasings.”

“The stories are kind of funny. The lyrics are good story-telling stories. It relates to a lot of folks who have family now and who are not single. The music has changed so radically, but it seems like it’s swinging back around to classic hard rock. I think where they’re coming from … it made it easy because I could relate to the songs, even though I didn’t write them. I had the flexibility to elaborate on how I would sing it.”

The writing process was actually done in reverse of how one would think most music is traditionally written. The lyrics came before the riffs — as opposed to the other way around. Tracks were then sent to each vocalist with guide vocals in place and the individual singers recorded their parts in their own studios.

“It was a little bit of a challenge because when you think of rock ‘n’ roll, you’d think you’d start with riffs or chord changes,” Schell says. “There are some of the songs where Ken had an idea of where he wanted it to go — like AC/DC-ish or more VAN HALENy — and it kind of gave me an idea of where to go. I would usually start by speaking the lyrics out loud to get a feel for the rhythm of the phrases and start coming up with the riffs and the melody lines. It was an interesting challenge.”

The name BlancaWhite plays a significant role in the group’s lives. It was the name of a Mexican bar that Savage would frequent on the weekends as a teenager while growing up in south Texas along the Mexican border. It’s also the basis for the song on the album called ‘Living It Up At A Mexican Bar’.

“I actually sang that one a few different ways,” Shortino continues. “They coached me through on certain things and how they wanted me to emphasize certain things. I took their direction and ran with it. I would record what I did and send them a copy of it to see if they were happy with it. That’s how the whole process for the project went down. That song was a lot of fun and it also was an eye-opener on where they wanted me to go on certain things. It was an interesting project to do.”

Financing most of the money himself for the project must have cost Savage some serious coin. Since he and Schell live on different continents, they also spent a significant amount of money and time traveling to work on the material together. But to Savage, it was certainly worth it.

“I don’t think we could have done this album five or ten years ago, certainly not ten years ago. We were helped by the fact that today, you can send significant sizes of musical electronic files around that even I don’t think seven or eight years ago you could do as well. I also felt that it was important to get together and work on the music together and keep everything cohesive. We certainly spent some time together in both France and the US doing that.”

Because of Savage and Schell’s age, their material is obviously catered toward the older rock fans. Yet, it’s imperative that the open-minded younger generation of rock fans seek out and discover some of the older bands’ music. Savage is convinced that a resurgence of this type of rock needs to make a comeback.

“It does go beyond the album,” Savage comments. “We are hoping, obviously not entirely on our own, but we are hoping to be part of a movement to bring back this kind of music and have more people listening to it again. Those people who grew up on it back in the ’80s, as well as younger folks nowadays, there’s a lot of them out there who have missed the music and always have wondered what it’s like. We made the music sound like it was from the 1980s. At the same time, some of the lyrics to our songs are written from the perspective of somebody in their 40s who grew up in the 1980s. It’s kind of an interesting mix, I think, of classic hard rock-sounding music but written from the perspective of somebody today.”

The duo has started some initial work for the next album, which might see daylight later this year or in early 2013. After learning some of the tricks of the trade during the recording of their debut album, Savage hopes they can do the second album even more efficiently and quickly than their first one.

Since BlancaWhite is more of a project and not an actual band, a full-fledged tour is most likely out of the question. However, talks of some kind of a live show is in the works.

“We spoke of putting some shows together in certain major cities,” Shortino closes. “I’m up for that, and I think Terry, Jeff and everyone involved would probably be into doing that as well.”

For more information about BlancaWhite visit Blancawhite.com.

Download BlancaWhite’s Resurgence Of Rock at Loudtrax.com.