In the Fall of 2021, Rainbow Llamacorn and The Scream Queen caught up with WHIT3 COLLR, a band who formed in 2018 and are based out of Orange County, California. The Rock ‘n Roll trio is made up of drummer Donovan Hess, who is on the very left in the interview and began playing the drums when he was only 18 months old, vocalist and guitarist, Will Sawyer, who began playing at the age of 7, sat in the middle, and his younger brother, JT Sawyer, began playing bass when he joined WHIT3 COLLR, after taking piano lessons for seven years starting at the age of 3, and learning guitar several years later.
At the time of the interview, WHIT3 COLLR had just won That Space Zebra Show’s Battle For The Big Stage competition to play the mainstage at the Danny Wimmer Presents Welcome To Rockville Festival in Daytona Beach, Florida, which took place over a five day span from November 10th-14th. They won the mainstage spot by submitting their songs to the DWPresents Twitch Channel, a platform that broadcasts and elevates unsigned Artists’ careers in front of a supportive and positive online fan community. Bands can submit their songs to the show for the fans in the chat to decide and vote on which band makes it through to the next round in the bracket, ultimately leading up to the final four bands, which in this round ended with WHIT3 COLLR winning against Actus Reus, Soft Spoken, and Revision Revised. The show is hosted by entrepreneur Josh Balz of The Strange And Unusual store and Parlor Beverages, Bobby Schubenski of Blackcraft Cult, and Producer Jake Miller.
WHIT3 COLLR performed twice at the festival, first playing the Twitch stage, which was held at the Welcome To Rockville campgrounds, and then their mainstage performance on the Sirius XM Octane Stage.
Check out the video below of some of the highlights of their performance at the festival!
WHIT3 COLLR are no stranger to the Space Zebra community. They’ve also appeared on Starving Artists and Will appearing on Riff Wars as the reigning and undefeated six time champion. Riff Wars initially started out with guitarists from all over the world riffing head to head against Wes Borland of Limp Bizkit & Black Light Burns, with the show soon evolving into guitarists going head to head with each other for the chat to decide who will be the Riff Wars champion of the week.
In our interview, they chat about how they initially got involved with Space Zebra. They also share their feelings about winning Battle For The Big Stage and how they think it’ll be performing a massive audience at Welcome To Rockville, especially since the largest crowds they’ve played to were at The Viper Room and a sold out Whisky A Go Go show, which are legendary club venues on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California.
Check out the Music video below for their song Sunset Cruisin’, a video directed by Tony Shriller, shot live at The Viper Room! They describe Shiller capturing the vibe of three boys growing up in L.A in the video.
Another song they discuss in our interview is called Endless Hours featuring dancer Autumn Miller in the Music video, you can check out below. The song was written during quarantine when they were going through tough times, and becoming philosophical thinking about the past-present-future, how everything is meant to be if it’s bittersweet, sad, or happy. Their idea was to parallel that to the song and turn it into a story with the video… The song deals with loss, heartbreak. This video was also directed by Tony Shriller, who presented the story of what the band had envisioned for this song.
WHIT3 COLLR released a brand new song in April titled Indecision and will be on their upcoming, debut album. You can watch the video below.
In our interview, they also discussing balancing school and Music Life, their goals as a band, and much more!
Fan Facts:
Donovan’s first concert was KISS, to which he says was Life changing and from that moment, he knew he wanted to be a Rockstar.
JT’s first concert was Guns ‘n Roses when he was 10 years old.
Will uses Rock Music as workout motivation. When he’s in a bad place, he’ll switch it up to Hip Hop sometimes, being able to relate to a different type of sound… Or sometimes he’ll throw on Classical.
