De Volkskrant.
Time did not really get a hold on his way of playing. Tony Joe White can live a relatively happy-go-lucky life. For years already, his revenue comes from the hits that he wrote and that were recorded by Elvis, Brook Benton, Joe Cocker and Tina Turner. However he did not manage to link himself up with this new age. Until his son Jody stood into the breach for him.
Next July he will turn sixty, but Tony Joe White likes to be very vague about his age. He claims to have written the songs that drew attention onto him in 1968, such as Polk Salad Annie and Rainy Night In Georgia, in the same week- when he was nineteen years of age. Just like many other artists of a certain age he wants to appear younger than he really is.
That might also be the reason for him wearing (expensive) sunglasses, on the terrace of the Hyatt hotel in Austin, the day after his performance in a filled out Antone's, where he presented his new songs to the visitors of South By Southwest (SXSW). There too, he sat on a stool wearing sunglasses, sung with his deep, sonorous voice, and got the typical sweltering Tony Joe White-riffs from his guitar which have become synonymous with the swamp blues.
Time did not really get a hold on his way of playing. It could also be true that he genuinely has no idea of his age. For years he has been able to live a happy-go-lucky life as his revenue comes from the hits that he wrote and that were recorded by Elvis, Brook Benton, Joe Cocker and Tina Turner, but retiring is not his style. 'I have tried to withdraw myself several times, by living solitarily in a cabin near the Louisiana Swamps, just hanging around, doing nothing except for fishing, but that doesn't work for me. I always end up grabbing my guitar, starting a song.'
He has always had this restlessness, but, for one reason or the other, he has had difficulties, right from the early seventies onwards, to stay in connection with the popmusic. His first six records have been rare collector items for decades, but his attempts to renew his sound in the early eighties have failed miserably.
It was Tina Turner, or rather her manager Roger Davis, who approached him in 1988 for a couple of songs. Tony Joe White wrote four songs for Turner's record Foreign Affair, amongst them was the hit Steamy Windows. Partly due to this he was able to negotiate a new record contract, but his comeback that was launched with the album Closer To The Truth in 1991 never received an appropriate follow up. White started to sound more and more like Chris Rea, the force of his guitar-play seemed to have worn away.
'Not that I cared' says White today. 'I withdrew myself again, played some golf and went horseback riding, just went on doing those things that I have done all my life. And, as always, there would be those moments that phrases of a song or a lick would come to my mind. Only, I never came any further with these than the demo-phase.' Until son Jody knocked on his door a few years ago. 'He suddenly had begun to listen to my music and apparently he liked it. Businessman that he is, he wanted to help me out. I remember saying realise what you get embarked on, but it was all very clear to him.'
Next father Tony Joe White had no idea of happened to him. 'I was used to expensive 64 track-studio's, musicians walking in and out, and takes of songs that had to be done over and over again. Jody said: we will be doing it very basically with only 16 tracks, as you sound best when it is simple and direct.'
The new Tony Joe White CD Snakey sounds as swampy and bluesy as we are used to from the old days. 'If only I would have known earlier that it could also be done this way' recognises White.' And it turned out that I had no need for a record company. Jody and I founded our own label, Swamp Records.' Snakey is mainly sold through their own website, or through Munich Records in the Netherlands. 'Those people simply sended me an email and the record was theirs. Jody said that it felt good, all right for me. I am here to play music. Who ever wants it can ask for it, I am not going to hawk around with it.'
If necessary he will keep everything for himself in the future, but Tony Joe White has known from the moment that his older brother Charles made him listen to a record of bluesman Lightning Hopkins, that that was what he wanted to do: play guitar and write songs. And those songs preferably were a kind of mini-stories. Inspiration was sought for close to home as 'I have never had much imagination'.
Polk Salad Annie did not take long to finish. 'I had eaten so much polk salad as a child, it tastes much like spinach, that a song simply had to come out of that, and don't we all know an Annie?' His most beautiful ballad Rainy Night In Georgia also did not require much brain racking. ' I once made long journeys with a truck through Georgia, and occasionally it did rain.'
It is not hard to write a song, 'just write down what you go through'. How close to his reality is then a song like Dark Horse Coming from the CD Snakey, which deals with a nearing death? Tony Joe White: 'I wrote that song in 1997 when I lost several people that were near to me very shortly one after the other. At that moment I was struggling myself with my ears and some other ailments. Suddenly it scared me, as maybe my own ending was drawing near. That's how hypochondriac I can be. It is too early for dying, I thought. There are things that I would like to do over again, that is what I sing in that song. But there's a dark horse standing, I'm not ready to ride.
First of all there is 'something new' with Tina Turner in the pipeline. And 'Helmut Lotti called me two weeks ago. I had never heard of him before, but according to Jody he sells quite a number of records in Europe, so I've send him seven songs. It nice when people like him still know where to find me.'
Tony Joe White: Snakey. Munich Records.
May 1st 2003
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