Sky White

Foxy Shazam’s Keyboard Showman Rocks Hard with the RD-700NX

Sky White (photo)

Foxy Shazam has been making a name for itself since 2004, touring constantly and releasing four albums to date. Sometimes referred to as “the Evel Knievel of rock and roll” and having a stated ambition “to be the biggest, most ostentatious band on the planet,” the Cincinnati-based quintet delivers heavy, keyboard-driven pop/rock with a ’70s glam flare. Their latest album, The Church of Rock and Roll, was released on I.R.S. Records in early 2012, with the single “I Like It” reaching the top five of Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart.

Keyboardist Sky White, an accomplished player with a classical and jazz background, anchors Foxy Shazam’s powerful sound with the RD-700NX Digital Piano. The band is known for its intense live shows, and Sky plays every one like it’s his last. On stage, he’s a rare and refreshing combination of chops and over-the-top showmanship, taking risks that few keyboard players would ever consider. It's not uncommon for Sky to stand on the RD-700NX, or to literally toss it into the audience (with the audio and power chords heavily taped to the instrument) and stage dive and surf the crowd as they hold him and the piano aloft.

Sky's theatrics and playing skill have gotten him noticed not only by Foxy's intensely loyal fans, but by the music press as well. In Rolling Stone, a photo of him stage diving with his RD-700NX was voted by readers as one of the best live concert shots of 2012. Despite this serial torture, Sky’s one RD-700NX has made it through 450 shows and counting without failure, a testament to the rock-solid build quality of Roland products.

I met up with Sky recently before a Fozy Shazam show in Fullerton, California. We discussed his background, musical influences, the RD-700NX, and his latest acquisition, the JUPITER-80.

What was your first instrument?

My first instrument is piano. I found baby pictures of me playing, like this little baby bashing on pianos with fists. So I’ve played piano forever. I’m 24 now. I started taking classical lessons at eight, jazz at 10, and then lots of both of those until I was 20. My first band was when I was 12. I was playing close to 100 hours a week of piano my entire childhood from 12 to 18. I was in five bands—I was in a cover band that played four hour-long sets, we had 200 songs. I was in an instrumental surf band that had 200 songs. I was in a jazz-improv band and a jazz-fusion band…weird hardcore bands…I dressed up in radiation suits. Everything.

Who are some of your favorite keyboard players?

Thelonious Monk is like the piano god for me. He’s just the perfect player. Every single thing he ever does is just perfect. Soul and taste-wise, he’s the guy for me. The perfect shredder player is Art Tatum. To pull licks out of a guy and techniques and shapes of moving your hands on a piano, he’s just the best for me.

Tell me about your playing style with the band. What’s your approach on stage and in the studio?

For me, the Foxy Shazam keyboard/piano style is whatever it takes the get the sound out, the feeling of the instrument out. On stage, a lot of that is uncontrolled violence and insanity and throwing the instrument and stomping on it and lots of slides going into chords, lots of very strong hitting of notes. In the studio, I have to tame that back a little bit. But still, on every record there’s like screaming into a piano or the smashing of a keyboard or things that are just used to get the full intensity out of the instrument.

I also try and play in ways that I haven’t heard before, or pull out voicings that I wouldn’t think normal piano players or keyboard players would come up with. So I try and come up with stuff that’s just a little bit outside of the box all the time. And then if that doesn’t work, I’ll go back into the basics and just do chords. But I also try to go with something that’s more creative, more personal, because you know, it’s art. You’re supposed to do something that’s unique for you. 

You exhibit a lot of showmanship on stage. What’s the key to your stage persona? Where does that come from?

I’m not sure where it comes from. It’s hard to explain. As an artist, as a musician, you’re trying to put yourself, your art, into the crowd. I know if I go to a show, I want to see a show. I want to see someone putting their lifeblood into what I’m witnessing. So, literally, if I don’t feel like I’m about to die after a set, I feel like I’ve let people down. After a set, if you see me, I can’t talk right. I can’t converse with people. I’m probably bleeding out of somewhere in my body. I have scars all over my body from things that have happened on stage.

You’re very abusive to the RD-700NX. How does the RD stand up to your playing style?

Well, let’s just say in seven years of touring, I’ve gone through like 30 keyboards until I got the RD. And I’ve been playing that same one 450 shows in a row, and it’s still trucking, it’s still going great. It’s a machine—it’s awesome. I’ve literally thrown it into the crowd. I’ve jumped on top of it. I’m a big guy, too. I hit this thing as hard as I possibly can. If it were a living being, it would be dead by now. It’s still doing great.

So, it’s served you well.

[Laughs.] Exactly. Yeah.

It’s become almost a symbol of you—Clapton has his Strat, Herbie Hancock has his keytar, Sky has his RD.
Sky White (photo)

Yeah. It’s exactly my instrument. The piano sound is perfect, the organ is perfect, the electric piano is perfect. Everything I need it for, it sounds the best out of anything I’ve ever used for live. It’s a big keyboard; it’s an 88-key beast. It’s a little heavy, but I can still carry it by myself with one arm if I feel like it. But being able to put everything into that keyboard every night, day in and day out, and it still works for me, it’s great.

On those rare occasions where you have time off from the road, do you practice?

I practice every day. I write a song every day I’m home. I play scales, I just sit and I write for hours. I do hand-strengthening exercises just hitting the keys as hard as I can. I do pinky workouts. I do Chinese medicine balls to keep my hands strong. Pretty much every single thing in my life, even when I’m home, is for my show, or for the band, or for making music.

On the new record, what’s the song you’re most proud of playing on?

For me personally, the song “The Temple” is like the perfect song of what I’m proud of on this record. I can play a lot, so it’s sometimes hard for me to just back off and play single-note melodies. The main riff of that is just heavy [sings riff]. The main riff of that, I back off and I’m playing single notes of the most distorted organ sound I’ve ever heard in my life. Every verse is slightly complicated: it’s tonally simple, but rhythmically kind of weird, piano in the verses. It has a slight variation throughout the song. The full outro, I’m just trucking on electric piano for the rest of it. So, it represents a lot of different things for me. Nothing’s like super piano shredding or anything, but I think it represents this record the most to me, I guess.

What was the evolution of you getting involved with Foxy Shazam?

Eric [Nally] and Loren [Turner], the singer and the guitarist, they were in different bands around Cincinnati. I talked earlier about being in all these bands; they were in different bands. We played together around town, [and saw] each other around town for years. I ran into them a few times, and they kept asking me to be in a project. I’d seen their bands before, and it was nothing that I liked. It was weird, heavy stuff that wasn’t exactly what I was into.

I was into a whole lot of the jazz stuff and all these other projects at the same time. Everybody I played with then was a lot older than me and graduated and went to college, so I was left with nobody to play with. So, through this weird set of coincidences, I ended up [playing with them]. They were demoing a few songs with a friend of my brother a block away from my house, which is completely on the opposite side of Cincinnati from where they lived. And they brought up to the guy recording them that they’d been looking for a keyboard player, and they knew of this keyboard player named Sky, which of course was me. So I walked over and listened to three songs that they had demoed for this unnamed project at the time. It was good, but there was like this perfect gap of what it needed, and it was everything that I’m good at. I started recording the next week or something. We started playing together and having shows just a little bit after that.

Do you do any side projects outside of Foxy Shazam?

I don’t know if I’d call anything a “side project,” but I write constantly. Just to make myself get better, I try and write all the time. For fun, I have an 8-bit project I’m working on, which is all video-gamey, just fun 8-bit stuff. I’ve been recording symphony stuff, like big orchestral pieces. I’ve also been recording this set of music I call “traveler music.” It’s accordion, harp, clarinet, really basic drums, [and] found percussion stuff. It sounds like weird Gypsy music, but with big [flowing] choruses.

I’m just doing them because I want to; I get an idea and just have to do it. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all these; right now I have between 270 and 300 complete songs, things that are just ready, sitting there. At some point, I’m going to have some time to do some stuff with them.

You recently got a JUPITER-80. How does it fit in with your music?

I’ve only had a few minutes to mess around with it, but it looks like everything that I could use for writing and for composing, [and] also for a board on stage. The organ patches and the electric piano patches, they’re exactly what I love.

Are you a gear geek at all?
Sky White (photo)

Photo: ©2012 A Horse with No Name

I’m starting to be more. I’ve never really had gear until I started [using] Roland. I’ve gone through all these pianos that I’ve just destroyed, so I’ve never really had any attachment to my instruments. It was just this thing that I knew that I would kill. [Laughs.] Everything that I’ve gotten with Roland has made me get excited about it. So yeah, I’ve never been a gear geek until I started [using Roland gear]. I’ve put my hands straight through like 30 [non-Roland] keyboards—just keys smashed everywhere. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on a keyboard that I broke in one day. It's hard to get an attachment to something like that. In that last couple of years, I’ve just started becoming a gear geek thanks to you guys.

What advice would you have for younger players who want to play in a band and tour?

I’m probably one of the most truthful people about this. We’ve been touring like crazy forever. We’ve been doing 200 to 300 shows a year since I was 17. Touring is hard; being in a band is hard. I was in college for astrophysics before this. That was easy compared to [touring]. If you want to be in a band, know it’s not easy. You’re competing against the best musicians in the world, the hardest-working people in the world. It’s great, it’s rewarding. Playing on stage is amazing. Being able to sit down and get your feelings out into a song is amazing. If you’re wanting to just play, [then] just play and have fun with it. If you’re wanting to be in like a touring rock and roll band, or something that you’re trying to do a lot with, make a life out of it…I’ve almost died literally a few hundred times on tour. We’ve almost gotten in an accident that would kill us every time. We’ve slipped on so much ice. I almost got in a fight with a drunk UFC fighter. I could go on…I got chased by a helicopter once. Weird stuff just happens. If you’re traveling around the country or the world, strange things are going to happen to you.

So you need to be tough?

You need to be very tough.

And you need to know your chops?

Yes. You need to impress everybody you ever play in front of, too. So your playing needs to be up good enough to be able to impress. And, as a band, you need to play together all the time even in the worst situations.

To keep up with Sky and Foxy Shazam, visit www.foxyshazam.com.