BLUE KING - Warp Magazine

12 Music
THE SWAmp FOx:
TONy jOE WHITE
KEEPIN’ IT SWAMPY, KEEPIN’ IT SIMPLE AND KEEPIN’ IT
REAL, THE SWAMP FOX LEGEND TONY JOE WHITE CHATS
WITH LOANI ARMAN ABOUT WHAT KEEPS MUSIC PULSING
THROUGH HIS LOUISIANA VEINS.
If you’ve never been turned on by a sexy Tony
Joe White guitar lick or had one of his swampy
tunes seduce you into an easy and languid
mood, then you need to find a good record
store and welcome yourself into the world of
the man they call the ‘Swamp Fox’.
Sitting in his backyard, outside his home studio
in Tennessee, Tony Joe White takes my call.
I don’t need to lay eyes on him to know that
he’s dressed head-to-toe in black; a cowboy
hat slouched over dark sunglasses, shadowing
a face that has been tenderly weathered by a
career spanning almost 50 years.
“I’ve been sitting in my backyard and we have a
pretty day here for a change. It’s the only way,
baby, being outside. Everything is open
and beautiful.”
Since his youth in Louisiana’s swamp country
and early days paying his dues in some of the
roughest honky-tonks in Texas, White has
been one busy man. His recording career
has amassed a remarkable 29 albums and
he’s toured with the likes of Steppenwolf,
warpmagazine.com.au
Creedence Clearwater Revival and Sly and
the Family Stone. His songs have been laid
down by everyone from Elvis Presley to Ray
Charles, Otis Redding to Tina Turner and most
memorably, Brook Benton with his moody
interpretation of Rainy Night in Georgia. Since
Benton’s release in 1970, the track has reportedly
been covered by over 140 different artists.
On his latest release The Shine, White keeps it
achingly real sounding like it was cut live from
the floor. “Everyone knows when I sit down
with a guitar in a studio, at any given moment
everybody may see the red light go on,” he
says. “The writing, the guitar playing, the
realness of it has to be there. It has to be there.
I wrote these songs over the last year and just
went in with only 20 seconds and 30 seconds to
the drummer and bass player, and I’d say ‘now
play what comes out of your heart’ and we’d turn
the tape on. Hit and record.”
As a musician of exceptional expertise and
one who plays close to his heart, that kind of
spontaneity is a luxury White can afford. “To do
an album like that was, to me, really soulful
and real. It came out of what everybody felt at
that moment without rehearsing or anything.
I always stay with the freedom of the song and
I try to record them like they came to me.
They came from a higher place, and I was
almost like a receiving station.”
With his Fender Stratocaster and Boomerang
swamp box in tow, White is set to tour Australia
in April and May, playing a mix of club and
festival dates. It’s yet another chapter in the
long standing love affair White has with
this country.
“I DON’T hAVE A SET
LIST. I USUALLY TRAVEL
ThROUgh LIfE WITh
NO SET LIST. IT’S LIkE
WRITINg A SONg –
YOU NEVER kNOW WhAT
LINES ARE gOINg TO COME
UP NExT.”
“Why I love Australia so much, it reminds me
of here and down in Oak Grove, Louisiana,
where I grew up. Y’all have the crocodiles,
we have the ‘gators. We got the swamps, you
got the swamps. Everyone pays attention to
the environment down there, and I do too. It’s
like, people watch the stars. They care about
patterns, you know?” he says.
“Everybody’s real. They let you know they
care about your music. It’s beautiful to come
that far and to see people singing the words
to your songs.”
As to what songs fans can expect to hear on
the upcoming tour, White leaves some of that
decision up to them.
“Usually, the audience has their own set list
and they’ll holler out the older tunes,
Polk Salad Annie and all the way back there.
All of a sudden you’ll put out some new ones
like off The Shine and they go ‘alright i’m with
you, let’s go’. I can do that with just a drummer
on stage cos he don’t have to know the key.
That way, it has a certain kind of wildness to
it that I can’t get if I have a bunch of people
onstage with me. As long as the fans know
that I mean what I’m saying and doing, we all
become part of it,” he says, before winding
down our interview with a few simple words
that sum up his philosophy on life and music.
“I don’t have a set list. I usually travel through
life with no set list.”
If you haven’t already done so, get to know the
Swamp Fox. Not only will you find comfort in
knowing that his music exists, but that he, Tony
Joe White, does too.
LOANI ARMAN
The Shine is available now, on Swamp Records.
Tony Joe White appears at Wrest Point on
Saturday May 14
TIGER
CHOIR
FOR A BAND WHO FORMED
SIX MONTHS BEFORE THEY
MANAGED TO EVEN PLAY
TOGETHER, HOBART’S TiGeR
ChoiR SURE DON’T MESS
AROUND. THEY RELEASED
THEIR DEBUT EP AT THEIR
SECOND EVER SHOW AND
NOW HAVE THEIR FIRST
FULL-LENGTH ALBUM,
UNICYCLES, AT LARGE.
Speaking to Warp, Tiger Choir’s Hamish
Cruickshank recounted the slow start made
once Sam Nicholson joined he and Elliott
Taylor to form the three-piece.
“Sam, our drummer, sort of said he’d join the
band, but then we didn’t get together to play for
maybe six months. We just didn’t get around to
organising anything,” he laughs.
In the following 18 months, Tiger Choir have
managed to produce and release Unicycles
and make enough of a name for themselves to
score a couple of top-notch tour supports
in 2011.
First up were Melbourne and Sydney shows
with indie rockers Deerhunter in February,
closely followed by a slot on the bill at New
Zealand’s Campus A Low Hum festival. Next is
a trip around the mainland in support of muchhyped
Americans, The Drums.
“We did some shows with Deerhunter back in
February, two sideshows we opened for them,”
Hamish said. “We got that by talking to a guy at
a record company. We gave him the album and
he said he really liked it and sort of said ‘I can
get you that gig if you want it’ and we said that
would be amazing.”
Despite asking the obvious question,
Tiger Choir weren’t able to convince the powers
that be to bring The Drums as far south as
Hobart, but local fans should soon have the
chance to see the local trio live, particularly
as the material on Unicycles will only have one
airing, at the album launch, before the tour
commences.
As for the songs on Unicycles, Hamish revealed
that not all of them have made the cut for live
performances.
“(We’ll play) probably six or seven songs off it,”
he said. “When we’re recording we go in with
a few tracks ready to go and 75 per cent of it
done, but then we also write a few songs while
we’re playing around and some of them turn
out to be the better ones.
“Some of them, because they come together
as this built up thing are a bit hard to play live.
Some of them we work out how to play live but
some of them we’re like ‘bugger that, it’s an
album track’.
Elliott chimes in: “There’s a few songs on the
album we’re yet to figure out ways to pull off
live. But we’re pretty happy with having a few
tracks just to have on the album.”
According to both guys, the release of Unicycles
could not come too soon and is probably a little
later than what they’d hoped for.
Elliott: “I’m really excited to get it out now.”
Hamish: “We’ve been sitting on it for a while.
We had it finished and pretty much ready to go
a couple of months ago and we’ve been waiting
around for a label to release it. We were going
to go frickin’ crazy waiting.
“Going on tour with The Drums is a massive
opportunity to throw your album at people and
say ‘We’ve got an album’.”
They’re also hoping the album name and
distinctive art proves beguiling – and is the first
of many to come.
Elliott: “It (the album name) is basically just
down to the cover art.
hamish: “We didn’t have a name for it when
we started making it or even when we finished
it. We even had the picture for the cover for
a while before we decided on a name. We
thought, well there’s unicycles on the cover of it
so we’ll go with that.”
Elliott: “It’s pretty literal.
hamish: “When we made the EP we didn’t
give that a name because we had no idea. We
didn’t even officially call it the Tiger Choir EP
or anything, it just sort of became known as
the one with the Punch and Judy scene on the
front. We thought it’d be cool to find lots of
interesting pictures and every time we release
something give it a really literal name.”
Elliott: “We’re going to have to keep releasing
things for that to become the theme.”
hamish: “We’re thinking long term.”
Elliott: “There’s sort of an assumption
we’ll keep going. We’re into the idea of
releasing lots of records... I want to definitely
have lots of album covers on my wall. That’s
my long term aim.”
So, watch this space for more from Tiger Choir.
STU WARREN
Music 13
warpmagazine.com.au