Photo by Jimmy Fontaine
Such is the life of a band. Following White Reaper’s 2023 release, Asking for a Ride, and subsequent touring, the band’s rhythm section quit. They also dropped their major label (Elektra) after a two-album run and signed with Blue Grape Music. While these changes may have detoured a lesser band, Tony Esposito (vocals/guitar), Ryan Hater (keyboards), and Hunter Thompson (guitars) took advantage of the situation. The trio found a new freedom as they wrote, recorded, and self-produced their fifth album in ten years. The resulting Only Slightly Empty is an action-packed effort, cramming ten songs into 30 minutes yet leaving the listener fully satisfied.
Esposito has called Only Slightly Empty a fresh start for the remaining trio and is excited about what’s to come. I recently had the chance to chat about why this effort is the band’s best, how personnel changes affected the output, playing to older audiences, and the strategies of designing merch and touring.
Every band says that their most current album is the best one they’ve ever made. So, tell me why Only Slightly Empty is the best White Reaper album.
TONY: It’s the most focused record thematically, song by song. There’s a clear start. The messaging in the songs is there and it’s clear. I don’t think that was a strength on the last record. I feel like I’m bashing the last record all the time, but it’s just a recent frame of reference.
Whenever you make the next record, you’re thinking about the last one and what you did and didn’t like about it and how you could do it differently. This is my favorite White Reaper record for sure, and maybe that is just recency bias. I guess we’ll find out what people think of it.
There was a lineup change between the last album and this one. Your previous rhythm section is no longer part of White Reaper. When you went to record the album, did it feel strange or was it exciting to start with a fresh slate?
TONY: It was definitely both. At first, it was strange, and then we had some friends come into the studio. Our buddies Myles and Layne Ulrich, from Taipei Houston, came and hung out for a day, cut drums on a couple songs and bass. It was just super fun, and it was a little different. I was able to, for the first time, record drums on the record. That was very fun. Hunter and I would ask each other, “Do you want to do bass on this one, or should I?” Whoever was feeling the laziest would be like, “Oh, you already have it on, why don’t you just do it?” There’d be times where Hunter would record the bass for a verse, and then I would record the bass for a chorus, or things like that.
I think every White Reaper album sounds like White Reaper, but you explore different styles of music from album to album. There’s some power pop, there’s some pop-punk, there’s some metal. Do you find audiences change depending on what style of music you’re playing? Did you find that metal zines and sites were reaching out when your music was heavier? Or, are White Reaper fans White Reaper fans regardless of what style of music you’re playing?
TONY: I definitely think it’s that last one. I think there are these strange, weirdo people out there that are White Reaper fans that are just gonna like what we do. And, there’s always gonna be the people that are like, “Well, I like the first two records,” and there’s even people that are like, “Well, I only like the first one.” Ryan, our keyboard player, says this all the time, that each record sort of has its own fan base, and you can kind sometimes tell by looking at the fans which record they like.
I grew up in the ‘80s and love metal. When I heard your last album (Asking for a Ride), it felt like you made it just for me. I felt the same way about The Dirty Nil’s Free Rein to Passions. Did the metal influence come from what you were listening to at the time that you were writing for that album?
TONY: 100%. I think it’s a diet-based thing, for sure. As soon as COVID hit, I was pretty much listening to Master of Puppets, top to bottom, on repeat, just driving around. I got super obsessed with thrash music, the really super-fast, right-handed stuff, and I thought it would be fun to see if it could be something that we could put into some Reaper stuff. I still don’t know the answer to that, but we did it.
I caught you on the tour with Narrow Head and Taipei Houston in Columbus, Ohio. Honestly, I felt like I was old enough to be the parent of probably 90% of the audience. But, as I mentioned, your music really appeals to me, even at my age. I’m guessing I’m closer to your parents’ age than your average fan base’s age. Do you find that “older” people like me are showing up to your shows?
TONY: Absolutely. And, my parents were at that show, too.
Oh, were they? That’s hilarious.
TONY: Every chance they get, if we’re in a 5-hour drive radius, they’re gonna be there. They love it, and I love them. But yeah, absolutely, a large part of the fan base is people who were born in the ‘70s and ‘80s. And, I think a lot of bands kind of wish they could go back in time and be play during those times.
Are the songs on the new album all things that were written in the last few years just for this album or did you pull anything out of a drawer?
TONY: We have a song on this record called “Freak Show.” That was the first demo I wrote for this record, that might have been written in early ’23. We have a song called “Touch” on this record that would have been written shortly thereafter, so, like, late summer, early fall, ’23. And then January ’24 was kind of a prolific time in the writing for this record. I think 3 or 4 of the songs we recorded came that month. There are songs that I hadn’t written until as late as February of this year that snuck in there and made the cut at the last second, so it’s a pretty mixed bag.
When you write a song in 2023 and don’t release it until 2025, is it still fun and exciting to play or does it feel old?
TONY: There’s definitely some songs that I think we all get sick of, for sure, but if they hang around long enough in the live set, then there’s also some that I’ve come back around on. The new ones feel super fresh, and I’m always excited to get them into the setlist, and then it won’t be long until we figure out which ones of those are the most annoying to play live, and that we’re sick of. Maybe we’ll be like, “Oh, there’s some songs off of You Deserve Love that I kind of miss playing.” It’s a very bratty sort of mindset, but it’s kind of a hard one to ignore. Complaining about your own music is so funny, but it’s something that we all do together.
I could write, record, and post a song on Bandcamp tonight. I couldn’t make any guarantees that it would be good, and I think that’s kind of what is taking so long, really. I feel like it takes me 3, 4 songs to find the arena that I want to play ball in. And then it’s a matter of making enough of those, and then it’s a matter of finding the time to record. It can take a long time.
Are there songs that your fans expect to hear every time they see you play live?
TONY: There are certainly songs that people expect to hear and that they would be upset if we didn’t play. That is one thing that’s cool about streaming. We can see what the top 10 most streamed White Reaper songs are and we’re like, “We should probably play these.”
I never thought I’d quote Ace Frehley from KISS when I interview bands, but Ace Frehley once said, “The song’s the same, but the audience is different every night.” And he’s like, “I feed off the audience. I might get sick of playing the same song every night, but there’s a different audience every night and, for them, it might be the first time they’ve heard it.” I thought that was a great way to look at it. I think about a band like Jimmy Eat World. They must be tired of playing “The Middle” but they can’t not play it live. And, when they look out each night and see a thousand kids singing along, that’s got to energize them even if the song doesn’t.
TONY: I’d say Ace is 100% correct on that one. There’s songs in our set that, when I’m looking at the set list and we get to them, I’m like, “Alright, here we go.” If people are excited, then it’s like, “Okay, okay. Yeah.” I couldn’t have said that better than Ace did.
The older I get, the less I retain lyrics that I hear. So maybe this is very obvious, but are there any Easter eggs in the lyrics, or the title of the new album, or the song titles that reference something that either is very obvious and I missed, or not so obvious, but that you put in, that somebody else might recognize?
TONY: There are. Oh gosh, and now I can’t think of it. Mine are just, like, names of bands or things of that nature. We have a song called “Blink” on the new record. There’s an industrial, drug-type band – My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult – that we were listening to at the time, and maybe I was looking for a rhyme. It just so happened that “Thrill Kill Cult” fit the phrasing and the rhyming, so I just threw that in there.
What about song titles, album titles, do those come to you first and then you build around them, or do those come as sort of like the, “Oh crap, we need a title for the song,” or a title for the album?
TONY: Historically, album and song titles had kind of been things that we would do much later than most. And that’s kind of why we ended up with titles like White Reaper Does It Again for a record, and The World’s Best American Band. Obviously, that was a joke. This time, though, Only Slightly Empty was something I had been thinking about for a while, as well as the song titles. On the last record, Asking for a Ride, there are song titles like “Getting into Trouble with the Boss,” that doesn’t really have anything to do with that song. The version I have of it on my computer has unofficial song titles and I’m remembering how ridiculous those were.
I interviewed Jacob of Narrow Head about his solo album, and he said as he was recording, he was naming songs after the band that influenced the song. Like, “The Lemonheads Song” or whatever. And then, obviously, he changed the title to fit the song. Do you ever give your song titles based on a band that influenced the song when you’re writing and recording?
TONY: For sure. There’s a song on the last record called “Bozo” that, when we sat down to write it, me, Ryan, and Hunter were like, “Let’s just rip off the Ramones’ ‘Bonzo Goes to Bitburg,’” and we’re like, “We’ll have to change the title at some point,” but we just never did. We just left it as “Bozo.”
Listening to the new album, there are some moments in certain songs that remind me of things I’ve heard before. Not sure if that’s intentional or not. For instance, there are moments of “Pocket” where I hear The Police. So, in my head, I call that “The Police Song.” And the opening of “Rubber Cement” sounds like the Foo Fighters “My Hero,” so that’s “The Foo Fighters Song.” I struggle with remembering the real titles!
TONY: Absolutely. I mean, we’ve certainly incorporated some influences, and that’s proven to be an effective tactic.
Only Slightly Empty opens with a bang, two out of the first three songs (“Honestly,” “Blink”) were released as singles before the album came out. If you think about it in album terms, is there a song to you on side B that maybe won’t be released a single but that you think is the “star” of the back half of the album?
TONY: I like “Rubber Cement” a lot. I like “Blue.” It would have to be one of those two for me. I also like “Enemy John.”
I had “Pocket” and “Rubber Cement” as my stars of side B. In the CD era, bands tried to fill as many of the 72 minutes of the CD as they could and it often resulted in throwaway songs. I appreciate that you’ve got 10 songs on the new album that come in 5 seconds shy of 30 minutes. Not a wasted second and it’s solid from start to finish.
TONY: I really appreciate that. We have to take into account everyone’s attention spans in the iPhone world. There’s not nearly as many people today that are going to listen to a record front to back no matter how short it is.
Just like the album, I like podcasts where I can listen to an entire episode on my morning commute, which is about 25 minutes. If it’s 60-ish minutes, I can listen to the first half on the way to work and the second half on the way home. If I see a 2-hour podcast, I might not listen because it doesn’t fit into my commute. That being said, I love the Bandsplain podcast where episodes are typically 4 hours long. I split it into multiple listens, and it usually takes me a week or so to get through an episode. The whole thing about that podcast is Yasi Salek and a guest do deep dives into a band thus requiring it to be so long and a compelling listen. Is there any band that you think you could talk for 4 hours about?
TONY: I mean, I loved My Chemical Romance. I still do. As a kid, I would listen to those records start to finish on my iPod, because my school bus route took like an hour, so I could pretty much get through Black Parade on the way there, and then I would just listen to it again on the way back. Because I’m so enamored with the music a lot of the time, I never really delve into the stories of the people. I might look up what sort of amps and guitars and pedals they’re into and that sort of thing, but in terms of personal lives, which I feel like is kind of necessary for the Bandsplain format, I don’t know if I’ve obsessed quite that hard.
You had so many great opportunities to open shows for well-known artists. Is there an artist you haven’t opened for, whose audience might not be familiar with White Reaper, that you think would be a good match?
TONY: I think it’s tough because one thing we learned is that when you’re opening for bands as big as Weezer, Pearl Jam, and the Foo Fighters, people don’t really care who’s opening. But opening for Cheap Trick would be a good one.
Do you ever pinch yourself when you’re opening for a band like Pearl Jam or the Foo Fighters? Are you ever like, “I had you on my iPod?”
TONY: Definitely. The iPod one is super funny, too. Being at music festivals where, in the artist area backstage, you see these people walking around that you’ve idolized, and they’re drinking from the same water bottle that you have in your green room. You’re just like, “What?????”
I know some bands who have become more strategic. Instead of doing a 2-month run with a day off here and there, they’ll do shorter 3 or 4 day runs, take a few days off to regroup, then do another short run. Do you have a tour strategy to support the release of the new album or are you just taking any date or tour that’s thrown your way?
TONY: It’s interesting this time, because with the changes in the personnel, we have to coordinate with the people that are going to fill those spots. And, being older now and having home lives and personal lives to look after, maybe we’re not as available as we would have been when we were 18, 19, 20. It’s a little bit trickier, trying to pick our battles. And the other thing is you also want to save some time to be writing so that we don’t end up start working on a record in 2025, and people don’t hear it until 2030. It’s a balancing act, and the weights on either side are evolving and changing, so you have to morph along with it. I don’t know that we’ve got a specific philosophy or strategy, but we’re at least all in agreement on all these variables that need to be considered.
The way that musicians have made money has changed dramatically, especially in the last 10 years since the Spotify revolution. I read all the think pieces that are like, bands make money touring now, but that goes back to your point that you can’t tour every day of the year. How do you make money being a musician?
TONY: Touring is the main way because merch really is the big one. These days, it almost feels like songs and albums are just ads for t-shirts. And the best way to sell merch is to get out on the road.
So essentially, you’re running a retail store selling clothing, and people get music when they come to buy. That’s the current business model.
TONY: Basically, yes. It certainly isn’t record sales, it certainly isn’t streaming.
Because that is a way you’re making a lot of your money, do you play it safe with basic designs, like “White Reaper” on a black shirt, or do you get a little bit crazy on some stuff?
TONY: Oh, for sure. There’s been a lot of surprising data. We always like to have a pretty big handful of options, because you never really know what’s going to stick, and a lot of times, the ones that sell the best, I’m like, “Huh?” And maybe a design that I would have thought would have been the one still in the trailer on the way home from the last show winds up selling a lot. We did a baby tank top, t-shirt thing, and I was like, “I don’t know, man, I don’t think this is going to sell” and they were all gone in one show. So, all I know is that I have no clue what the demand is, but, thankfully, we have the numbers to make educated decisions on what we need to re-up on.
Do you ever see people in Louisville wearing a White Reaper shirt?
TONY: Every now and then, for sure. A lot of my friends, obviously, who I spend the most time with will wear the shirt, so I don’t know that that counts. But it’s always funny spotting one in the wild. Chicago is probably where we’re the biggest band. We also went and saw The Misfits at the Prudential Center in Jersey a long time ago. After the show, I’m walking out, and I spotted two White Reaper shirts. But it’s in places that I don’t expect it. A buddy of mine sent me a screenshot of someone who posted themselves on Twitter wearing a White Reaper shirt eating a banana the other day, and that is totally outside of my circle of existence. It’s crazy.
Do you run into fans? Like, when you’re out grocery shopping?
TONY: Not really in Louisville. Again, we were eating breakfast at a cute little diner in Chicago a couple weeks ago, because we were up there filming some videos, and people at the diner were like, “Hey, you guys White Reaper? We’re going to the show in October.” But, yeah, I don’t know, not grocery shopping, I think I’m safe.
Is there a song that, when you hear it, it takes you back to a very specific time and place in your life?
TONY: I remember being very young, maybe like 4th or 5th grade, coming home from football practice in the backseat of my dad’s car, and he would always have classic rock radio on. I had heard “War Pigs” before, but finally, after the song, the guy on the radio was like, “And that’s Black Sabbath with ‘War Pigs,’” and then I knew the name of the song. I could find it at the store the next time. And that’s kind of what I remember, is just being super sweaty, with my pads still on, listening to the end of “War Pigs,” thinking, “Man, I really wish I knew what this was.” I also remember being 16, driving on these Kentucky back roads, leaving my friend’s house, going home, and it was icy, and I was listening to Crystal Castles, their song with Robert Smith called “Not in Love,” and I hit some black ice and just hit a guardrail head on. I remember that. I mean, there’s so many.
What is a realistic expectation you have for the album?
TONY: Realistic expectation, I’d like to do this tour and a handful of others bleeding into ’26, and sell some shirts doing it. That’s all I can ask. In an ideal scenario, we’d do this tour, I would be struck with this magnificent creative streak, I’d come home from this tour, demo out the perfect next record. Record that one, go on another tour for this one, come home from that, record the next record, one final tour for this record, start putting out songs from that record. That’s the ideal situation.
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Upcoming Shows:
10/02 Milwaukee, WI – X-Ray Arcade &^
10/03 Chicago, IL – Cobra Lounge &^
10/04 Iowa City, IA – Gabe’s &^
10/06 Indianapolis, IN – Hi-Fi &^
10/07 Columbus, OH – Ace of Cups &^
10/09 Grand Rapids, MI – The Pyramid Scheme &^
10/10 Buffalo, NY – Rec Room &^
10/11 Troy, NY – No Fun Club &^
10/12 Burlington, VT – Higher Ground &^
10/14 Portland, ME – Portland House of Music &^
10/15 Providence, RI – Fete Lounge &^
10/17 Amherst, MA – The Drake &^
10/18 Hamden, CT – Space Ballroom &^
10/19 Asbury Park, NJ – House of Independents &^
10/22 New York, NY – TV Eye ~^
10/24 Baltimore, MD – Ottobar ~^
10/25 Harrisonburg, VA – Golden Pony ~^
10/26 Raleigh, NC – Kings ~^
10/28 Nashville, TN – The Blue Room ~^
10/30 Lexington, KY – The Green Lantern Bar ^
10/31 Newport, KY – Southgate House Revival ^
11/01 Louisville, KY – Whirling Tiger ^
02/11 London, UK – Electric Ballroom +
02/12 Portsmith, UK- Kola +
02/13 Cardiff, UK – Clwb Ifor Bach +
02/14 Leeds, UK – Brudenell Social Club +
02/15 Glasgow, UK – Beech Ave Social Club +
02/17 Dublin, IE – Button Factory +
& w/ Lip Critic
^ w/ Worlds Worst
~ w/ Dazy
+ w/ Militarie Gun
