The Whimbrels release self-titled debut on Dromedary Records in June 2025

Transmission 224: Interview with The Whimbrels

The Whimbrels is a New York-based power art-rock band formed by guitarist and vocalist Arad Evans. After the acoustic shift of his previous group, Heroes of Toolik, Evans launched the project to focus on louder, electric compositions.

Title: The Whimbrels
Artist: The Whimbrels
Release Date: 2025-06-27
Genres: Alternative Rock, Art Rock, Experimental Music, Post-rock
Label: Dromedary Records
Description: NY’s power art‑rock band The Whimbrels release debut LP on June 27, 2025 via Dromedary Records. Features three‑guitar setup & upcoming tour.

The current lineup includes Matt Hunter (New Radiant Storm King, J. Mascis & The Fog), Norman Westberg (Swans), Luke Schwartz (Glenn Branca Ensemble), and drummer Robert Dennis (The Scene Is Now, PG Six). Their debut LP, out on June 27, 2025 via Dromedary Records, follows the singles Scream for Me and She Is the Leader. The band is currently touring and preparing new material for a follow-up release.

Featured image: Mark Richards

What were your earliest musical influences—not just in terms of sound, but in how they made you think about what music could do?

Well, I was fortunate to have some very good teachers when I was a teenager. I grew up in what was then a small town in Anchorage, Alaska.

There was a very interesting arts community there. I learned a lot from that. There was interest in conceptual art.

The person who wrapped Christo was a big influence at the time amongst the artists in town. I had a teacher who exposed us to chance music and the idea of game theory in music. We listened to Cage and other non-conventional composers in class and school.

It exposed me to the idea that music was something to be taken seriously, as fine artists took their own work—that it could transcend its general function as social or entertainment. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it really broadened my horizons. It took me a long time as a practitioner to catch up to that.

I was an acoustic guitar strummer and singer back then. It wasn’t until I got outside of Alaska to go to college and to New York—and I spent a lot of time in San Francisco—that I was able to realize some of that more ambitious material.

But I would trace that as early influences and a realization that music could be a statement—an artistic one, as opposed to a literal one in the sense of protest songs, or as social background. I came of age musically in the early ’70s, late ’60s. That was a great time, but it was also a time when access to music—particularly if you lived away from big urban centers—was controlled by the music industry.

There wasn’t anything like the free flow of ideas and materials you have now. It took people like me, coming up in the provinces as it were, real effort to find your way in and make it your own. There was a big premium on sounding like the bands of the day.

And because those were mostly big professional outfits, there was an assumption that you had to sound like a professional and fit into that milieu to be legitimate. Of course, we should have known better. People like Pete Seeger and the folk movement showed us you could pick up anything and make it your own.

But I think it was really brought in by the punk movement—for my generation at least—that you could own it. Access to a musical medium to make your statement was all around us. You didn’t have to wait to be blessed by EMI or Polydor or whatever the big label was at the time. You could get together with your friends, start banging away, and make your own statement.

It can’t be overstated how much impact the different media had on the way people approached music back then compared to now.

How did the idea for The Whimbrels first take form, and what drew each of you to this specific collaboration?

I, for many years, had a band called Heroes of Toolik. We put out a couple of full-length records and an EP. I’m still very proud of that band.

It was songs for fun, but also art songs. The lineup was trombone, violin, guitar, bass, and drums. That band started to become more and more—well, I won’t say conceptual—but it became completely acoustic at a certain point. We had stand-up bass, and I played acoustic guitar in it. We still work, but it took a branch more in the arty direction. I wanted to do something art and loud.

I wanted to do something that was interesting and personal, but that didn’t forget the joy of rock and roll—something loud and fast. I also wanted to use some electric guitar sounds that had been left behind by Heroes of Toolik.

That’s why I started The Whimbrels. It had a kind of prototype before the pandemic that lasted for a little while. Ernie Brooks, from the Modern Lovers, played bass in that. Robert Poss, who had the band Band of Susans—he’s still around, sort of the godfather of drone or the king of distortion, people have various names for Robert—was also in the band. He’s a brilliant painter with guitar sonorities.

That lineup got shut down by the pandemic. Robert moved to Boston.

When things opened up again, I still had this itch to do a louder, faster, harder, higher project. I asked Matt Hunter to play bass. Matt is a great player. He’s been in a number of projects. He’s from that Connecticut River Valley rock hotbed—Amherst, Holyoke, Northampton. He played with J Mascis, Silver Jews, and David Berman. He had his own outfit, New Radiant Storm King, that put out a bunch of records in the ’90s and 2000s. I strongly recommend someone take a dive into that.

Because I wanted to do songs, pieces, compositions—whatever you want to call them—that involved polyrhythms and more complex interlocking counterpoint, I needed at least two other guitar players. I asked Norman Westberg of Swans, who I’ve known for many years. I was in the Glenn Branca band for basically the bulk of its duration. A lot of people came in and out of that band, including a lot of ex-Swans, so I had a connection to Norman through that. To my delight, he said yes.

Luke Schwartz, who was a later hire in the Branca band, also came on board. He’s a brilliant guitar player, a true shredder—which neither Norman nor I are—and a very facile musician.

And there we were. It really clicked. There are a number of attributes you could say The Whimbrels have, but one of them is that everyone is very good at their instruments. It’s a real delight to be able to throw material at them—they have no problem executing it with the feel and approach I hoped for, and then adding to it with their own ideas.

Robert Dennis is now playing drums. He’s in some bands that may not have reached your ears—The Scene Is Now, PG Six, Escape by Ostrich, which is one of the best band names I’ve heard in forever. He’s also bringing new ideas to the material.

So that’s how The Whimbrels came about.

Did the album take shape around a central theme or feeling, or did it evolve more track by track?

I would say track by track. It’s not a theme album.

At rehearsal last night—we’re getting ready to go out on tour—we were arguing about the setlist, because that’s what bands do: argue over setlists. The consensus was to put She Is The Leader up first. If people are interested, She Is The Leader is out now in a beautiful video on the Dromedary Records website.

The statement was made, “We’ve got to start with that because it states who we are.” And I think that’s true. It sums up a lot of the elements of The Whimbrels.

But no, I wouldn’t say it’s a concept album. Two of the really strong pieces on the record are by Matt, so it keeps the ear moving. That’s it. There are common threads, but the common thread is the statement we’re trying to make as a band.

Were there moments when the band had conflicting ideas about how something should sound?

Not really. Norman comes from a very specific place sonically—when you think of him, you think of Swans and his solo work.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how broad-minded he’s been in accepting material I brought in that might, at first glance, seem off the regular track of The Whimbrels. But he digs right in and makes it better, which is great.

There was one time I brought in something particularly silly, and he said, “That’s not what we’re trying to do here.” I said, “OK,” and put it back in the bank. We didn’t pursue that one further.

Were there any albums, books, films, or non-musical sources that unexpectedly influenced the atmosphere of the record?

I think there are lessons learned. I’ve been doing this quite a while. I was going back with some family trying to figure it out, and I think the first time I got paid for playing music in public was 1973. So I’ve been kicking around.

I can’t say there are specific works we were trying to channel. But my guitar playing comes from a different place than Norman’s, and I think that contrast is one of the strengths of the band. My playing draws more from the Tom Verlaine, Lloyd, Richard Quine school. I play notes, I play melodies with the guitar. I can bang away and play rhythm, but it’s very different from Norman’s soaring distortion solos—breathtakingly beautiful, but not something I do, or could do.

That sound and approach comes from the kind of players I listened to and played with. I was in the Glenn Branca band for years and also toured with Rhys Chatham. You can hear that in our music—the interlocking and overlapping rhythms, the phase shifting. I had a short brush in my career with Steve Reich, who was hugely influential, especially for those early innovations in phase shifting.

So it’s more about influences than specific pieces. The Velvet Underground was an early one—not many people bought their records, but everyone who did started a band. Maybe I’ve just listened to too many records over the years to pinpoint one. But I’ve had great teachers, and I owe a lot to them. And I think the rest of the band would say the same—it’s not just me.

Were there tracks that didn’t make it onto the final album?

Oh yeah, there are. We’ve got another album about half written at this point, and we’re probably looking to track something early next year and get another release out.

One thing I’ve learned is that when you have a project like this that’s actually working, it’s still ephemeral. You need to work it and push it as hard and fast as you can while you’ve got it, because you never know—someone might get a big gig, get married and settle down in New Jersey, or something else could happen, and suddenly it’s gone.

So we’re still working hard. We have some offshoots we’ll be reworking, and there are tracks on the album that, because we’ve been composing and building out the set, we don’t play as much anymore. By the time an album’s in the stores, enough time has usually passed that, for a really active band, it’s already moved on to something new.

What’s your current favorite piece of gear, whether for live shows or in the studio?

My main battle axe is a Fender Jazzmaster I picked up some years ago. It’s pretty beaten up by now—it’s out of its case almost every day.

My main amp is a Vox AC30. It’s one of the last English-made Voxes, supposedly a Tony Bruno hand-wound model. I don’t know if the hand-winding makes a big difference—real gearheads would know better—but it sounds sweet. I actually rescued it from a commercial rehearsal studio that went out of business. I was working there when it came in new, and it sounded glorious.

Over the years, being in that kind of environment, it took a beating. But when the place closed, I bought it, had it retubed and set up properly, and that’s what I still use.

That’s pretty much it. I’ve got a couple of pedals, but I’m not a pedal guy by any stretch. I use a Fulltone GT-500—that’s sort of a classic. I used it in the Branca band, and it sounds glorious with the Jazzmaster.

What I like about the Jazzmaster—and the Vox too—is that you can get a wide range of sounds just by using the pickup switches and changing your hand position. More than you can get from a lot of guitars with a whole range of pedals. You can sweeten it up, or get a hard, aggressive, trebly sound. Flip it to the single-coil position and it overdrives really sweetly.

That’s why I use the Jazzmaster. It’s heavy and not particularly fun to hold, but it’s super versatile. And after the number of times I’ve dropped it—it’s also very rugged.

What are your plans for the band after the release—more recordings, touring, or something else?

We have a short tour coming up in the Northeastern United States. Starting on the 19th of this month, we’ll be in the Hudson Valley, in Catskill, New York. We’ll play in New Haven, then in Boston on the 20th and 21st. Our record release show is in Brooklyn, at The Broadway in Williamsburg, on the 26th. After that, we’ll be at Industrial Arts in Beacon, New York.

I’m planning to get back into the studio next month to continue work on our next project. Norman goes on the road with Swans for several months after that, so we’ll be woodshedding the new record and looking to get back to gigging late in the year or early 2026.

Photos courtesy of The Whimbrels

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others