We were lucky to catch up with White Lighter recently and have shared our conversation below.

White Lighter , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

We are working on writing and releasing new songs throughout the summer and fall in hopes of creating our second album. This is the most meaningful work to us so far. We are extremely proud of the songs that are out right now including “You Don’t Have To Go” and “Excuse Me Love.”

We are writing, recording, mastering, marketing and distributing the music 100% independently, which is a lot of work but it is also very rewarding.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Dan Matthews, Rob Mandujano, and Christian LeDuc met in the University of Cincinnati marching band in the summer of 2018. After playing music for an entire marching season, the boys decided to form a band, but they needed a singer.

One night in December, Dan invited Ben Jervis to jam. The moment Ben got on the mic, the guys knew they had something special. That night White Lighter was born. Throughout the first part of 2019, the band started performing in Cincinnati and writing music.

In the summer of 2019, Rob moved to Los Angeles for grad school so the band brought in Ethan Qureshi to play lead guitar. The guys didn’t miss a beat. They continued playing shows and gaining fans until March of 2020 when COVID-19 hit. White Lighter didn’t play a show for more than a year. During that time the guys focused on learning covers and writing originals.

In April 2021, the band played its first live show in more than a year and really hit the ground running. After the COVID lockdown local music took a massive rebound. White Lighter has been playing out just about every weekend since. In between gigs, the band began releasing singles and working hard on an album.

The band released its debut album “Natural Law” on the very last day of 2021.

In the summer of 2022 Dan took a step back from the band and that’s when bassist Hallie Menkhaus was introduced.

Throughout 2022 and 2023 the new lineup played constantly all around the country in places like New York City, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Lexington.

The goal in for the rest of 2023 is to continue growing our fan base and booking shows. We would love to be able start touring as a supporting act for international artists. Hopefully with the release of our new singles and our successful marketing campaign we can get the exposure we need to take the next steps in our career.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

The four of us share a common goal in life: Make a living playing music.

It is way easier said than done because it is very difficult to make a sustainable living in the music industry. We would obviously love to be one of the biggest bands in the world… touring all over the world playing to massive stadiums. But I think as long as we have a solid fan base and are doing what we love, then we can call that success.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I would say that being able to maintain consistency as a band is a great example of resilience.

Being in a band is absolutely crazy. We are four unique individuals with our own lives and journeys yet we’ve all been able to prioritize our band for the last four years.

Each year we grow and learn more about the industry. It is extremely difficult even on a small level to make progress. You have to be ready for people to laugh at you and not take you seriously. You have to be ready for almost constant rejection. For example, for every 200 emails we send to try and book a show, we will maybe get 10 responses that will turn into 2 paid shows.

We are all musicians but we’ve learned how to become small business owners. Not only are we writing, recording and publishing all of the music but we are booking the shows, managing our budget, booking hotels, plane tickets, negotiating with venues, running various marketing campaigns on various social media platforms along with playing live nearly every weekend.

On top of all of this, we all have full time jobs that we do during the week. We all are so hungry for success in this group that we keep pushing no matter the road blocks in front of us.    

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.whitelighterband.com/home
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whitelightercincy/

Image Credits
White Lighter