Modesto band Whirr returns home to play Centre Plaza as only California show
Selling out Centre Plaza, Modesto band Whirr returns home Sunday, Aug. 31, to play its only California show.
“Are we gonna book this venue and get even 200 people to come?” guitarist Nick Bassett wondered at one point. “But we took a chance on it and booked it, and it sold out, which is crazy.”
The five-member group sold about 1,500 tickets, and this will be the biggest show of its 14-stop tour, which started in Boston and ends in Houston.
Whirr formed in 2010 when, as Bassett described it, two post-high-school friend groups that met while attending rock shows around the Central Valley decided to start playing together.
Some members have rotated in and out over the first years, and the current band consists of Bassett, vocalist and guitarist Loren Rivera, guitarist Joseph Bautista, bassist Eddie Salgado and drummer Devin Nunes.
Whirr released its fourth studio album, “Raw Blue,” in December and will play that and earlier songs, performing an exclusive extended set, said Bassett. “We want to make it special,” he said. “We’re playing probably an hour and a half, vs. a normal hour, and playing songs we haven’t played since our first record.”
The road to this album and show was long and featured many turns and stops. Bassett said he felt as if Whirr’s previous album, 2019’s “Feels Like You,” was likely the last.
“Being in a band that’s not famous or making a ton of money, or any money at all, it’s hard to maintain that forever,” Bassett said. “As you get older, you have careers, whatever life thing that happens. We made a record in 2019 that we’re just kind of like, this could be our last record, so we wrote it with that in mind. We might play, put another record out. We might not, but this is a good ending.”
Bassett and Rivera recalled a resurgence in Whirr’s popularity in late 2020 as its genre of music, shoegaze, had its own revival. Shoegaze is a subgenre of alternative rock music characterized by walls of sound, dreamy melodies, and distorted and subdued vocals. The genre got its name because of the musicians staring down at their shoes as they emote with the music while switching effects on their guitar and effects pedals.
“We noticed younger generations finding our band on Spotify and would see monthly listeners just like going up,” Bassett said. “It started with 20,000 and then 50,000, 100,000, 200,000, and we’re like, this is kind of crazy. The genre was having a resurgence, so we came to the realization that we should try again.”
Rivera and Bassett began to play together again, and in 2024, they had enough music to record a new album.
The band set off to record in a friend’s studio in Illinois and spent a month together crashing at the studio. “We had this experience, like sixth-grade camp,” Bassett said. We had bunks there and we stayed there like 24 hours a day for a month, just us and our friend, who is also our engineer and producer, and we’re just performing.”
The result was the 12-song “Raw Blue.” Bassett said the album is the most ambitious attempt the bandmates have made, both lyrically and musically.
“We’re more mature, but also more experienced, and it’s way more complex and elaborate than our previous records. Not to say anything against those records, it’s just a more mature band making,” Bassett said.
Rivera is the songwriter, but he said the songs come together collaboratively. “I’ll write a song, the melody and essentially the whole blueprint of the song, and then I’ll send it to Nick and say, ‘Hey, Nick, will you add your leads?’” he said.
“This is kind of the foundation, and then we make a demo of it,” Bassett said. Then we’ll work them out as a band, where everyone’s doing their own part.”
Rivera cites influences including My Bloody Valentine, Smashing Pumpkins and even R&B music when it comes to songwriting.
Bassett said what makes their music unique is their long and tight friendship and the shared experience of growing up together in Modesto. All of the band members went to local high schools and some of the members still reside in the area.
“We’re actually all best friends. Like, if this band didn’t exist, we would still be friends,” he said.
Bassett spoke of the importance of the upcoming homecoming. “We could have played San Francisco or Sacramento or even L.A., but we said no, we’re playing only one day in California, and it’s gonna be Modesto,” Bassett said. “ I wanted to make a point that you don’t have to be from a big city. You can come here, you can have notoriety and be successful and still come back and play here.”
A Pitchfork review of Whirr’s early album “Pipe Dreams” highlighted the band’s distinctive identity, saying, “Its sadness manifests itself in a variety of ways. It’s dense and powerful one minute and spacious and quiet the next, never settling into one mood long enough to become stale or seem one-note.”
Bassett said the band members are thrilled to play for their local fans but have seen ticket sales from all over California and even internationally.
To prepare out-of-town guests, the band created a Welcome to Modesto pamphlet, which lists favorite places to stay, eat, and things to do and see with a fold-out map. They will be given to the first few hundred guests at the show.
The show will also include exclusive merchandise, including a T-shirt styled after the “American Graffiti” movie poster and featuring the band, and sold only at this tour stop.
Bassett is not sure about the next chapter of the Whirr story. He said they don’t chase fame or even fortune; they just like to play together as friends, and if people like it, that is just a bonus.
“We will just see what happens. I mean, there’s definitely not an aim to do anything further after this, you know,” he said. “But it’s also not a shut book, either. Everything I could hope for has already happened.”
Rivera agreed and added, “ I want our families to be proud, too.”
The Whirr show will be at Modesto Centre Plaza on Sunday, Aug. 31, and is sold out. The lineup includes Modesto band Night School and Bay Area bands Nothing and Midrift, with a special DJ set from C-Minus. A portion of the proceeds from the show will be donated to Mo Pride.
“Raw Blue” is streaming on Apple Music and Spotify.
