White Reaper’s Tony Esposito on ‘The World’s Best American Band’ in advance of Saturday’s Riot Room show

It is without hyperbole that I say the title track to White Reaper’s latest album, The World’s Best American Band, is the rock jam of the summer. The single from the Louisville quartet is the sort of thing that makes you roll down the window, crank the volume and pump your fist. It opens with fake crowd roar that’s still somehow absolutely genuine, especially when it’s followed by a monster riff and a dance-worthy rhythm section and some self-mythologizing lyrics.

I really like that song. Obviously. So, it was a pleasure to speak with the band’s singer and guitarist, Tony Esposito, as the musician chilled in a Philadelphia bar and grill on a rare Friday night off.

%{[ data-embed-type=”oembed” data-embed-id=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B09kpkZyDtg” data-embed-element=”aside” ]}%

The Pitch: Bummer you’re off today. White Reaper seems like it’s a really great Friday night band.

Tony Esposito: We’re a great Friday night band.

I’ve been mildly obsessed with the title track to your new album, since it’s so huge. How did it start? I mean, I know songs begin as demos and all that, but I have trouble picturing that track as being smaller.

To tell you the truth, I was buying weed from this guy, and I was driving home. I had to drive all the way across to town to get this weed. It was a fucking pain in the ass, but for the longest time, he was the only guy who would sell me it. So, I went all the way over there — like, a 30-minute drive from where I live — and I brought Ryan [Hater, keyboardist] with me.

We were just stoned out of our minds on the way back, and we kind of got lost on the way. We were just kind of driving around on some back roads, and one of my favorite ways to come up with new songs is to just drive around in my car with no music playing. Because basically, that’s when I listen to all of my music, is when I’m driving the van.

When I’m trying to come up with new shit, I don’t listen to anything. I just let my brain do the work. I was just driving around, lost, and heard the beat and the riff, and when I got home I made a little iPhone recording and brought it to the guys, and we made it happen.

Which riff are you talking about? Because what I find killer about that song, is that there’s that opening riff, as well as the secondary one. For a song to have two powerful riffs almost seems too much, but in a really good way.

[laughs] It was easy to come up with the second one, because it’s all the same chords — just little, like, roots and a pentatonic stuff — the verse riff and chorus riff. The chorus riff came verse, and then the verse riff came later. I was doing guitar lead stuff, originally, in the studio, and then decided I didn’t like it, and started doing what the bass was doing, instead.

When you’re on tour, and playing these songs, it seems like “The World’s Best American Band” should be the opening number, but how do you actually track your sets?

It’s funny you mention that. We’ve had it toward the end, lately, but we’ve been talking about pushing it up, just ’cause it’s really tricky. We’re still trying to figure out where it belongs in the set, because you’re right — it kind of sets the bar — but we’re still working on where it goes. [laughs]

I was playing the record at work today, and people were happy, because they were like, “You can dance to this.”

That’s exciting to know that people can dance to it. It is music, after all. I think we just spend a lot of time on the road and a lot of time with our instruments in the studio and at shows, regardless of practice, and I think we just got better and wanted to be more complex in our songwriting, and less linear.

I feel like, in the past, our songs were just like, a straight line from one point to another, and that was a White Reaper song. Now, I feel like there’s peaks and lows and more texture. I don’t know. I feel like I just figured out how to write a song on this last record and I’m very excited to get back in the studio and make some more music.

White Reaper plays the Record Bar with Ron Gallo on Saturday, July 1. Details on that show can be found here.