![]() He gave TG the lowdown on how it was recorded back in 2002: the trebly lead tone comes from his Ibanez WH10 wah, left in a fairly forward position, and an envelope filter. “White was a member of well-loved punk bluegrass outfit Bad Livers, but his solo work is possessed of a much more lonesome spark, exaggerating the implied drone at the heart of the music of Dock Boggs and The Stanley Brothers…White plays wooden six-string banjo, violin, button accordion and kalimba and his voice has a high, eerie quality to it…extremely psychedelic.Frusciante solos for almost all of this song, one of the 21st century’s first guitar hero moments. "What Ralph White puts on albums and onstage is so mind-boggling and vast, it forces those of us in the description business down a treacherous path." Lyrics wind and twist and pull back: "Motel 6, Motel 6, Altoona, Altoona missing you, missing you so, great big hole in my-." Brave, beautiful, a high point in White's long career. ![]() Here, tight song structures meet open, unadorned instrumentation: guitar, banjo, kalimba, accordion, fiddle, and White's elastic voice, unspooling pitches and syllables. ![]() “Striking, electrifying acoustic music from an underappreciated legend of the American Southwest. This record is someone touching you all over!” It’s what time passing really sounds like. “This is what Ralph White really sounds like. Housed in the beautiful artwork of Max Kuhn. “I’m going where I’ve never been,” Ralph warns the listener on the closing track listen real close and he may just take you with him. In addition to his solo work, White has recorded or performed with a diverse group of folk and avant-garde musicians: Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Jandek, Jack Rose, Eugene Chadbourne, Michelle Shocked, Sir Richard Bishop, and Michael Hurley. Just a few of the titles: ‘Lead Man’ is a bleak and longing look in the mirror ‘Motel 6’, plays out a haunting lament set upon roadside America ‘The River Daughter’, reimagines life on the sandbar, akin to McCarthy’s Suttree ‘Lonesome Fugitive’, acts as a cautionary ode to a life spent looking over one’s shoulder. ![]() Ralph takes us on a journey through his myriad of travels: from Dock Boggs to Syd Barrett to William Faulkner to Stella Chiweshe to Blind Uncle Gaspard…scratching banjo, rasping train whistle hollers, rolling kalimba, rousing accordion, taut shimmers of guitar, caustic fiddle and lyrics - that could have been hidden amongst the dusty inner groove of a lost Harry Smith 78 - weaving in and out of streams of consciousness, time and place. Here’s Ralph on the record: “there was and is, and was before, an uncertainty about the collective future…somewhat looming…causing worriedness that can only be countered by…some kind of empathy, summoned (not hope). “Never felt so bad, so damn bad, so sad, so blue…” hollers Ralph on opener ‘Lead Man’, signalling the beginning of a wild and unsettling record, at times dark and foreboding, at others eerie and enigmatic, taking us a step further into Ralph’s very own American mystery zone. Ralph, having recently converted his van into a mobile living and touring quarters equipped with a wood-burning stove, left Austin, the city where he was born 70 years ago, and retreated to an Arizona commune where he began building a new house in the desert hills to escape the virus and insanity of daily living. Recorded in Austin, Texas in March of 2020, just days before the city and the rest of the world shut down, Ralph White spent two days with producer, Jerry David DeCicca (Will Beeley, Ed Askew) and recording engineer, Don Cento, capturing a raw and wild set of performances. ![]()
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