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White Shag

Detroit, MI

Biography

Say the name and you can feel it - a velvety touch that could easily give you a rug burn.      With Detroit’s formidable psych-rock power trio White Shag, the emphasis is on the emphasis  Laura Mendoza (vocals/bass), Jorge Cortez (vocals/ guitar) and Joe Leone (drums) aren’t doing their job if they aren’t tearing the place down. Their M.O. is energy and their tastes are for the seediest, prickliest, raucous roots of rock.      Like a raunchy and ra...

Say the name and you can feel it - a velvety touch that could easily give you a rug burn.      With Detroit’s formidable psych-rock power trio White Shag, the emphasis is on the emphasis  Laura Mendoza (vocals/bass), Jorge Cortez (vocals/ guitar) and Joe Leone (drums) aren’t doing their job if they aren’t tearing the place down. Their M.O. is energy and their tastes are for the seediest, prickliest, raucous roots of rock.      Like a raunchy and rambunctious revivalist tent preaching the good word of grime, grit and spirited rock music –way out by the side of some lost highway haunted with druggy drifters, heartbreaking bikers or amped up alt-rock reverent hedonists in need of their fix for hard chugging grooves, pedal-twisted solos and bursting rhythms, White Shag preach from an altar underneath wax effigies of Iggy Pop while paging through newer testaments from Queens Of The Stone Age.      "There are power trios and there is White Shag - a band with a powerful sound that's taking the town of Detroit by storm."  -Rock Wired Magazine     You could say it’s like something out of a movie -but it was more like out of a video store - that’s where, four years ago out in Ann Arbor, MI (the birthplace of proto-punkers The MC5) Cortez and Mendoza encountered each other, revealing their similar upbringings and accommodating tastes in music. It only took Cortez one look and barely a minute of conversation to know that Mendoza had something - inviting her, on the spot, to come jam with his band (formerly The Brothers Cortez). Her accented pronouncement of his last name bent Cortez’ ear and, the pair of them both runts of large families presided by Chilean and Paraguayan parents respectively, started speaking in fluent Spanish about the possibilities of maybe busking the streets sometime soon (a date they’d make later that year).       Mendoza joined the original Bros. Cortez line-up in 2010, rechristened as White Shag. The line-up shifted through 2010, settling soon after with drummer Leone. Their new batch of songs came quickly, girded by Jorge’s experienced sensibilities for fast, catchy riffs, ebullient soloing flourish and tasteful deployment of dazzling pedal-effects as well as Mendoza, a musical instructor at a metro Detroit School of Rock, being keen on improvisatory adaptability and training in arrangement. Cortez brought the riffs, Mendoza brought the words and melodies, they both brought the attitude. Once fellow-music instructor and lifelong musician Joe Leone joined on drums—the band was complete. (Good thing, too, since Leone joined just 5 days before the pair planned on recording their debut EP – released in Fall 2012).     The Point is Presence! Pushing out raw emotion to their audience and getting it right back, a celebratory cycle of exertion, whipped along to wicked psych-rock glory.    

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Songs (4)

Videos (1)

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