White Denim On Lucky No. 13
- Josh Kitchen
- 13 minutes ago
- 9 min read
By: Josh Kitchen / April 23, 2026
On White Denim’s 13th studio album, simply titled 13, James Petralli is reflecting on this crazy thing called life. I’m talking to Petralli over Zoom, and while I’m cooped up in my apartment, he’s in a comfy lounge chair in his backyard, his pup Sergio by his side. It’s beautiful in LA—I can see it out my window—but Petralli is the luckier one of us right now. And if he looks lucky, you can rest assured there’s more to it than just that.
My father-in-law used to say, “You have to be good to get lucky.” That statement comes to mind when I’m chatting with Petralli on this sunny morning. We talk at length about the new record, and it’s a fine one—maybe even my favorite White Denim record. It’s filled with all kinds of sounds for any fan of good old classic rock and roll: there are Southern rock-tinged jaunts like “Hired Hand #2,” blues-rock psych dreams on “(God Created) Lock and Key,” and funky jams reminiscent of the Doobiest Michael McDonald-era Doobie tracks.
What I hear on 13 is reflected in what I see looking at Petralli as he carries himself in this interview—a rich man, as rich as a man can get. Maybe not financially rich like the headliners who just played two weekends at Coachella, but rich in a way that can’t be measured on the latest stock market roller coaster. James Petralli is a man fulfilled by a family that loves him and the life he’s been lucky enough to create by spending the last twenty years living the rock and roll art life. If he had to go back to driving trucks, it wouldn’t matter to him, because now he’s got this outstanding body of work behind him. As he told me, “If I had the opportunity to go out and earn a million dollars, but I would lose a year of my kids’ lives, I think that would be a very easy choice for me to make.”
13 carries themes of shame, power, and survival, but—most importantly—the importance of holding your family close, and the creative freedom and salvation that comes from a fulfilled life. In 1978, Bruce Springsteen sang, “It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive,” and on 13, White Denim is as glad as a man can be.
James, you’ve got a new record, 13, coming out tomorrow. It’s a rollicking good time. Talk to me about this new record and this kind of epic, all-encompassing White Denim experience.
I feel like you really kind of understand the idea. I kind of threw everything at this one. Being a musician right now is a pretty precarious occupation. I'm 40—I’ll be 45 soon—and I’ve been chasing it for a really long time. The past couple of records I’ve made in this little building right here behind my house, so the music-making has really become integrated with my home life. All that kind of stuff is in this record. It could be the final record—I feel like 13 could be a nice place to land—but if it goes well, maybe not.
I love hearing the ideas behind this record, and seeing your home life with Sergio, along with your partner out in sunny Los Angeles, because when I hear this record, it sounds a lot like life to me. That sounds basic, but I’m serious—there are so many different aspects of living and I can hear it in this record. There’s funk, groove, sexiness, hardcore jams, psychedelia—so much that anyone living any kind of life will hear themselves in it.
Yeah, that’s kind of what it is. I tried things on this album that were homages to growing up as a fan of music. I thought, I’ve never really tried to do something like The Gap Band or The Isley Brothers overtly—let me study those productions and see if I can make something that works like that. Music has been a huge part of my life since I was about 17. In a lot of ways, it was kind of a shield for me—a way to be around people, like a security blanket. That carried on probably to the midpoint of the band, and then I started to slowly find myself. The stuff around the mid-aughts is more oblique, but I’m putting more of myself into the music. This is all of that. I’m not hiding anything. I’m a dad, I make records at home, I’m coaching baseball, I’m juggling all this stuff and still trying to be a rock musician. It’s really changed over the years.
I think what makes music like yours and this album so refreshing is that we’re in a time where authenticity feels really present. Not that it wasn’t before, but people crave it in this era. On 13, it feels more organic, more real—less bullshit. I think people are going to hear that authenticity and really connect with it.
That’s encouraging. Thank you.
I think it's cool when artists talk about that, because there are so many ways to disparage artists by saying, “Oh, they're trying to copy so-and-so.” But it's like, man, we just love music. We all draw from what we listen to. On this record, I hear things I love, but through a White Denim lens—Gap Band, sure, but also ‘70s vibes, The Doobies. “Only a Fool” even reminded me of “What a Fool Believes.” Or on, “Crossfire”—I hear Michael McDonald and Thundercat-type funk, really chill stuff. You can tell you love this music.
Absolutely. I’m a music collector and listener—that came before playing. I started imagining how my life could be different from my parents’ lives in headphones. I’d listen and think, “How did they do that?” and then try it myself. I’m definitely a fan first. And about disparaging artists—I have that impulse too, I can be a little stinker—
It’s fun to be a music snob sometimes.
But in this marketplace, there’s so little left for working-class artists. I think it’s important for people to understand what it’s really like—how money is earned, or not earned. I had a situation with someone I was playing with that turned into a legal issue over masters, and it pushed me to be more transparent about my life. Touring is hard, it’s expensive. Making records is expensive. Streaming doesn’t pay the bills. These are real things. It’s something I live with every day. The love of listening and creating is what brings me back. It’s not driven by commercial success—if that happens, great—but it’s been a few years.
I think that’s refreshing to hear. It’s relatable. Listeners are going through similar day-to-day realities. Not everyone is going to be a massive top act, and hearing that reflected in both how you talk and how the music sounds makes it more human.
I’m glad to hear that—it makes me not feel like an alien.
White Denim is about 20 years old now. How does that feel?
It feels really good. I just had Steve [Terebecki] and Josh [Block]—the original guys—come out, and we made a commemorative album together. We might call it something else, but it was really nice to reconnect and work without pressure. There are highs and lows, but I feel grateful. It’s weird—I feel like I finally understand what I want to do and what I’m capable of. I’ve got a level of mastery I didn’t have 5 or 10 years ago, but fewer people are interested. It’s strange. But I love it. I can’t imagine not walking out to the studio every day and working on something. Even if I became a therapist or went back to driving trucks—or even went to cosmetology school—I still come back to the shed and think, “Yeah, this is where I’m supposed to be.”
I mean, there are artists who don’t even start until they're 40! Someone could want to cut hair at 45 and then go make music. It’s all part of a larger picture.
Thank you. I don't feel like there's a great tragedy in that, because the work exists. And I do feel a level of confidence and security in my life that I didn't feel 10 years ago. And connectedness with my family — coaching baseball has been so fun. My son is 10. I have a 13-year-old daughter, and she's a visual artist, and I'm fabricating little things for her to use in sculptures and building panels and doing light carpentry and things like that. So I'm learning and supporting them in a way that feels super fulfilling. And all that compared to, I don't know, the promise of a super successful music career is pretty amazing.
"I was thinking just a couple of days ago, if I had the opportunity to go out and earn a million dollars, but I would lose a year of my kids' lives, I think that would be a very easy choice for me to make."
I think that's the choice a lot of musicians make. I think a lot of parents make that choice. I know most of my friends — a lot of their dads chose to focus on their careers and all that kind of thing. And I feel very, very lucky to have had the past five years with my family. The pandemic really kind of created that opportunity for me.
I think what’s powerful about your career is that 13 doesn’t sound like something you could have made 10 years ago. This is about what you're talking about with your family and your life, and building little models for your daughter's projects. This is an album that only exists in this White Denim reality.
Yeah, that's totally right. And I have the pandemic to thank for that. I'm not sure that I would have had the self-control or self-awareness to make that decision. Even 10 years ago, I was so mad that my old bandmates went to a bigger project, and I was just stuck in this place. It took me years to process that, and it felt like I was just spinning all the time. From record to record, it was like, what is the thing that makes me— it was anger. I was writing from a place of anger all the time. And if I wasn't angry about something, I would look for something to be angry about so I could write something powerful or whatever. That worked for building on past White Denim successes.
I imagine that music written through forced anger is a lot different than music made from righteous anger, you know?
I mean, definitely not— I think anger is right and powerful and good. But yeah, you're onto it there. What I'm looking for is something right about something being out of balance. So yeah, I mean, this album definitely has anger in it too. But it's much more of an honest representation of what my life is like.
I loved the Aleister Crowley reference on “Earth 2”—that made me do a double take.
Yeah, and that's really a reference to a period of time before I started playing. I was reading Hammer of the Gods, the [Led] Zeppelin book, and that led to me kind of building myself — what kind of person am I? And yeah, I would read these books, but really it was about carrying them with the cover out of my classroom. In Catholic school, that was like the edgy thing. So that's a little self-referential bit, the “Earth 2” thing.
People love to make fun of people who have the book out on the subway, right, so everybody can kind of see. But on a different level, when you buy books - I buy so many books and I know I'm never going to read them all. But at least my intention is there to want to be creative and to expand my worldview, you know?
Yeah, I'm the same. I have the books on my shelf. And I've actually developed a practice of doing it with my kids. My son likes to rap, and he's got a couple of friends who are interested in music. When they'll hang out over here — and I've done this with the band too — I'll pull books off the shelf and be like, “If we're gonna make a beat, you guys have to rap, but you have to open pages at random and write down the first word you see.” So a word or two is getting read, and they have to incorporate it into their raps.
They wouldn't have heard that word otherwise. I have a copy of The Power Broker on my shelf. Let's be real, I'm never gonna read that. But I love it.
That's right. Like Ulysses — I've tried a couple of times. I'm like, oh man, I hope no one asks about that when they come over.