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LP
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WS 006LP
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LP version. 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. 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 over 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. Opener "Lead Man", signals the beginning of a wild and unsettling record, at times dark and foreboding, at others eerie and enigmatic, taking you a step further into Ralph's very own American mystery zone. Ralph takes you 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. 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. 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. Artwork of Max Kuhn.
"This is what Ralph White really sounds like. It's what time passing really sounds like. It's what a look really feels like. This record is someone touching you all over!" --Bill Callahan
"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." --David Keenan, The Wire
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LP
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WS 009LP
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Here's artist Max Kuhn on hearing the new Ralph White recordings for the first time: "I was driving a familiar round trip across the high desert when I first put it on. It immediately spoke to me. In the lyrics there's a familiar geography for me, a familiar emotional landscape for all of us. And maybe it was driving an almost 40-year-old truck on sun baked and cracked asphalt in July, but it's like you can hear his songs coming apart -- the cadence, the rhymes stumbling and defying expectations, consistency but they just keep moving. You have no choice but to go with it. Probably a good lesson for how to live in this era we're in, cracking up but keeping it all running somehow, trying to make something pretty with the time."
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. 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. Ralph takes you 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. 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.
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CD
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WS 006CD
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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. 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 over 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. Opener "Lead Man", signals the beginning of a wild and unsettling record, at times dark and foreboding, at others eerie and enigmatic, taking you a step further into Ralph's very own American mystery zone. Ralph takes you 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. 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. 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. Artwork of Max Kuhn.
"This is what Ralph White really sounds like. It's what time passing really sounds like. It's what a look really feels like. This record is someone touching you all over!" --Bill Callahan
"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." --David Keenan, The Wire
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FTR 157LP
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"This album represents a particularly whacked-out session for the peripatetic Austinite Ralph White, who is renowned for many things. Not the least of which is the fact that he's one of the few men who Michael Hurley will join on tour. It's no small thing? Most of White's fantastic solo output makes use of his multi-instrumentalism, often with a focus on his violin or banjo playing. Here, however, Mr. White focuses exclusively on button accordion and a variety of songs that can be done in waltz-time, regardless of whether they were first planned as waltzes or not. He says that the concept first came to him when he was recording a waltz version of "Sweet Jane" for a Lou Reed tribute album. The impulse to continue creating in this vein seized him and he seized it back. The results are shockingly great. One is used to hearing such stuff done with thick English accents, bad teeth and a scholastic attitude. White's approach is rural, American and a bit strange. The overall feel is actually more like Hurley than anything else Ralph has done, even though the sonic similarities are vague at best. A very cool record by any standard. And ours are fucking high, champ. Enjoy." --Byron Coley, 2014; includes download code. Edition of 300.
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