The Long Journey White Shoes

The Long Journey White Shoes and the Couples Company
Tifa Asrianti , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Sun, 03/28/2010 11:42 AM | Music

A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step, a proverb says. For White Shoes and the Couples Company, the fruit of the journey they started in 2002 is now available for their fans to devour in Album Vakansi (Holiday Album), due out early next month.
And by journey, members of the White Shoes and the Couples Company mean a musical one. They promise their latest album will bear traces of all of their influences to date.
Besides, no one would consider the White Shoes and the Couples Company to be trailblazers who have torn down all rock clichés and have built a new musical genre of their own.
In fact, White Shoes and the Couples Company thrive on cliché. The band members’ penchant for wearing wedding party get-ups and their cheeky quoting of Indonesian idioms from the 1970s did much to bolster their retro-is-the-new-cool cred. Sonically, some of the band’s memorable tunes are reminiscent of Indonesian pop tunes from the days gone by, ones that were sung by Tetty Kadi, Dara Puspita and Koes Plus.
Ben Sisario of the New York Times, who caught White Shoes and the Couples Company’s gig at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, in 2008, said tunes from the band drew from the 1960s and 1970s bubblegum and easy-listening, with big nods to Neil Diamond, the Carpenters and disco.
White Shoes and the Couples Company at Haight Street, San Fransisco Courtesy of White Shoes and the Couples Company
For their current project, White Shoes and the Couples Company seem to be torn between two options: living up to the cliché or pursuing a new artistic direction.
Lead singer Aprilia “Sari” Apsari said that the new album had a more diverse selection of songs and by having “journey” as its main theme, Sari admitted her band wanted to give fans a new experience and take them on a journey back in time.
“The inspiration for this album comes from a variety of sources, music from 1950s, jazz, pop, ethnic music, funk even traditional Papuan music,” Sari told The Jakarta Post after a photo shoot for their album cover art in an upmarket joint in Central Jakarta recently.
Bass player Ricky Surya Virgana was convinced that all songs in the album, collectively written by band members, were their best shot at songwriting and it would be a filler-free record.
One notable difference in the new record is the presence of old timers from across the musical genre who lent their craft.
“One thing about this album is that we have had collaborations with musicians like pop legend Fariz Roestam Munaf and jazz maestro Oele Pattiselanno. We are serious about this collaboration, and we meticulously arranged the compositions,” Ricky said.
White Shoes and the Couples Company met the two musicians when they shared the bill at the 2006 Java Jazz Festival. White Shoes and the Couples Company were among a handful of non-jazz outfits invited to perform for the festival.
One of mainstays in Jakarta close-knit indie scene, the White Shoes has had high-profile gigs, including one where they performed at the SXSW music festival in March 2008.
Later in the same year, the band received an invitation to play at the CMJ Festival in New York. This weekend, White Shoes and the Couples Company is expected to open for Kings of Convenience for the Norwegian acoustic duo’s gig in Jakarta.
Before charming the international crowd, White Shoes and the Couples Company — a moniker they adopted to refer to a popular trend in the Jakarta Art Institute (IKJ) campus for wearing white shoes and an allusion to the fact that there are two couples in the band — has long been a darling of the Jakarta indie scene.
The band’s debut single Senandung Maaf (Ballad of Apology) was featured in the soundtrack to the movie Janji Joni (Joni’s Promise) in 2005. Two songs from their early period Tentang Cita (About Aspiration) and Senja Menggila (Crazy Dusk) were used as soundtrack for teen flick Heartbreak.com. In 2009, the band was nominated for the best cutting-edge artist at the MTV Indonesia Award.
After conquering the local market, the next logical step is to break into the overseas market. In October 2007, White Shoes and the Couples Company signed a record deal with the Chicago-based Minty Fresh record, which agreed to re-issue the band’s self-titled debut album and their second release, an EP titled Skenario Masa Muda (Scenario of Adolescence) for the US, Mexico, Canada, Australia and Japan.
November last year, White Shoes and the Couples Company signed a similar deal with Taiwanese label Avant Garden Record that will reissue their debut album for the country’s market.
In spite of the international recognition, White Shoes remains true to their indie roots. When Aksara Records, the band’s record label for five years folded earlier this year, the White Shoes and the Couples Company resisted the temptation to move to the other side by signing to a major label. For the new album, the White Shoes will remain in the fold of a Jakarta-based independent label.
The band also adopts a guerilla-style marketing campaign. Given the high cost of marketing through television, Ricky said his band would stick to the media that has served them well so far, the Internet. White Shoes and the Couples Company is apparently savvy enough to put links to their Youtube videos, MySpace page, Facebook account and Twitter page on their website.
“I think the Internet is more effective for promotion because it can reach our target market and fans. Besides, televisions are already inundated by pop performers,” Sari said.
To promote the new album, White Shoes and the Couples Company will send advance copies to radio stations. These radio stations are free to pick any songs to be on their playlists. In fact, fans will be offered with a chance to shoot videos for the album.
But the band will also embark on the tried and true marketing strategy of performing for gigs.
“We have a plan to do promotion in small venues, so that we can be more intimate with our fans. We plan to tour in cities where we had performed before, such as Yogyakarta, North Sumatra’s Medan and South Sulawesi’s Makassar,” guitarist Yusmario Farabi said.
White Shoes also plans to end this year with a bang. Rio said the band expected to stage a big concert in Jakarta later this year.
They also set their eyes on foreign market by planning to have a Southeast Asian tour. Rio said that the band would have shows in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
Of the three countries, Thailand proved to be the hardest terrain for the band.
“From the Internet, we could learn what the American audience expected of us. But for Thailand, it’s a bit difficult, because the language is so different,” Ricky said.
To tear down the language barrier, the band has commissioned electric guitarist Saleh Husein Machfud to learn Thai. Saleh has used this language skill when the band performed their last gig in Thailand, when he sung one song completely in Thai.
“Well, many people say I’m a genius,” Saleh deadpans.
After eight years together, a sense of camaraderie is palpable among band members. Band members even decided to live close to each other in Tebet neighborhood in South Jakarta.
“We are living in the same neighborhood, so we will know what the others are doing or the music they are listening to,” Rio said.
Being in the same neighborhood allows members to look after each other, literally.
“The good thing about living close to each other is that I can ask them to babysit my kids when I got important things to do,” said multi-instrumentalist Apri Mela Prawidiyanti, who is also a mother of two.
Being close to each other could also weigh them down but the friendship that they had formed since college helped a lot to prevent the band from breaking up.
“I think the reason we have survived this long is because we can talk to each other on issues other than music. We’ve been friends for a long time, back to when we’re still in college,” Sari said.