Ralph White: press

Ralph White was weird folk when weird folk wasn't cool. He spent seven years with the Bad Livers playing a punky, twisted take on bluegrass. Known as a fiddler with serious traditional chops, these days, he'll bust out Syd Barrett covers and folk tunes on the kalimba, an African thumb piano, or "Down By the River" on accordion. His strangely underrated solo albums "Trash Fish" and "Down By the Waterline" are mutant solo Americana of a bright and gleaming strain, the kind that comes from nearly 30 years of musical exploration.

White says he's had trouble fitting into any scene — a little too weird for the traditional crowd, too song-oriented for the free improvisors. "My banjo style has nothing to do with bluegrass, and the traditional Irish music groups I've played with aren't too into the banjo/kalimba stuff."

"I stopped listening to music because playing it is all I want to do, really," White says. "You can try to be faithful to traditional styles, but if you're dedicated to music, you pretty much have to find your own voice."

Year of the Squirrel

Ralph White's old, weird Americana

On a dreary Wednesday night in October, patrons walk into the Parlor on North Loop for pizza, a Lone Star or two, and then continue on their way. A dazed man with a backpack wanders in, then out, then in again, clutching a copy of the local Fugitive Post.

Next to the entrance, Ralph White sits oblivious, eyes closed, his hat tossed down in front of him as a tip jar. There's a song about murder. The next one's about death. This one's about conspiracies. There are Syd Barrett covers, "Terrapin" and "Long Gone," taken down from hallucinatory heights on the banjo to be baptized in the Delta. Later, he sings of "sycamore leaves and mustang vine," and it rolls off his tongue so languidly it's almost obscene.

This is the fight or flight experience of a performance by Ralph White, a fugitive from old, weird America. He certainly channels the past, but his path of least resistance has been well-traveled by the ghosts of his craft: Bill Monroe, Dock Boggs, Charlie Bowman. He fiddles with traditional Cajun band the Gulf Coast Playboys. He did time with Austin's premier bluegrass punks the Bad Livers. He played fiddle and accordion in traditional French/Cajun group Bourée Texane. He cites religion upon witnessing a Lightnin' Hopkins show as a child but just as hungrily devours African ostinatos and traditional mountain songs. Years ago, an ethnomusicologist friend turned him on to tapes of African music featuring mbira and kalimba, two instruments White now plays live.

"I wanted to play something original like that stuff but didn't want to become what I called an '-oid' – someone who plays one type of music and gets it down really good," White explains in a pleasant Texas twang. "For some reason the music I play is kind of crooked, as far as playing guitar chords. I'm not very taught as a musician, and at first I was kind of embarrassed of it being like that, but now I don't try to stop it from happening. I like the idea of learning something wrong and letting it evolve into something different. A lot of my music is just me playing a melody I couldn't figure out."

White often has a difficult time putting his music into words, and perhaps it's always been that way. The Bad Livers' Monday night Saxon Pub residency became legendary, whether for their covers (notably Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life") or manic energy, but their sound was still as hard to pin down as a buttered-up hog. His time as a Liver turned White on to a lot of punk stuff, as did members of the Butthole Surfers, who took notice of the band – banjo player Danny Barnes and stand-up bassist Mark Rubin being the other two-thirds of the trio – and took them on tour in 1991. Their Paul Leary-produced Delusions of Banjer CD was released in 1992 on Touch and Go, and their first cassette, a collection of gospel songs called Dust on the Bible, was re-released in 1994. Lots of touring ensued, and Hogs on the Highway would be the fiddler's last Livers album. Life on the road, at least in this form, was not his bag.

When White left the Livers in '96, he began toying with a solo career. Since 1999, he's amassed an impressive collection of traditional instruments and has been "obsessively" playing banjo and kalimba, a small, thumb-plucked instrument. Live, he lays down a mixture of traditional bluegrass, Irish, African, Scottish, and original tunes. And there's always the occasional Syd Barrett cover. In the process of gigging, White has gathered local fans from Honky and Rubble to Weird Weeds, Peter & the Wolf, and Shawn David McMillen, bridging the gap between traditional and experimental, infusing old with new. Of course, he's probably destined to be overlooked in his day and rediscovered by some bearded, eccentric musician or record junkie 20 years from now. White, however, is less analytical about it: "I'm kind of between an old guy and a young guy."

He's the human embodiment of that "I'd Rather Be Fishing" bumper sticker. He's got dirt under his nails and a gracious smile. The lines and creases of his face belong to a man over 50, but the dart of his eye betrays youth. The tattoos on his forearm – a blue heron on his shoulder and a gar (the fish on the cover of his 2002 triumph, Trash Fish) – signal something more at work here.

Growing up on the outskirts of Austin in West Lake Hills, he witnessed the creation of MoPac and the overdevelopment of his neighborhood. To hear him tell it, Barton Springs once ran wild with catfish. His father, Ralph White Jr., was an esteemed UT art professor who passed away in 2004. Like many musically inclined youths growing up in the Sixties and Seventies, White didn't care much for high school, really liked Pink Floyd, and dropped lots of acid.

While he has an obvious affinity for the blues, folk, and bluegrass, he doesn't use traditional banjo tunings. His tunings are lower, and as a result, sound haunted. "African slaves living in Arkansas, mixing with Indians – whatever kind of music that was, I would want to explore it," he explains.

In southeastern Hill County, Texas, just northeast of Mount Calm, is the Navasota River. His new LP, Navasota River Devil Squirrel, is another exploration in cross-cultural pollination. Recorded "in a frenzy during a heat wave," Squirrel traverses death (a cover of "Oh, Death" by Dock Boggs), nature, summer, and three separate songs about that titular rodent, which may actually exist.

"Up until I was a teenager, I used to hunt squirrels," White relates. "When I was in the Bad Livers, Danny Barnes and I decided to revive our childhood. So we went down to the Navasota River with my freshly acquired gun. I saw this squirrel and took a shot at him, and he, like, attacked me. Well, he was really trying to get from one tree to another."

That sort of describes White's outlook. His level of success might not be measurable in sales or show attendance, but the distilled tradition of his music has a generational life span. His 2002 album, Trash Fish, was a local gem, achingly bittersweet and dusty, burdened with not being able to "feel at home in this world anymore." Perhaps like his nemesis the squirrel, White feels most comfortable among the mustang vine and sycamore leaves. He seems to have a song about every kind of blues: Natives coming back from the dead and lamenting oil refineries on their land? Yes. A song about rain falling on his easy chair? Check. Of course, there's some dirty dealing, too. On "Wild Hog in These Woods," White's yelp reveals that hog, well, he don't "run or jump so good." He chases that damn hog into his den, and what does he find? "The bones of 13 men." "Crooked blues," sure, but there's also something pure and absolute.

"Ralph embodies everything I love about music and none of the characteristics valued by the commercial music industry," says Weird Weeds drummer Nick Hennies. "He's someone who realizes the music in his head with expertise, sincerity, and dignity, with a complete disregard for current trends."

"There are a lot of narrow-minded, capitalistic ideas controlling [music] in a way," White says. "I can't get too wrapped up in that, though. I heard Jonathan Richman in a radio interview say any sort of success you get in life is like icing on the cake. I love to play out. If I don't have any gigs, I wonder sometimes why I'm doing it."

"Ralph's music is pure Ralph," adds Honky bassist Jeff Pinkus. "We all play with ourselves; he just sounds better doin' it. There's something so humble and honest about the way he sounds."

Like his bluegrass forefathers, the country wild and nature are recurring themes in his songs, as his cover of Bascom Lamar Lunsford's "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground" can attest. White thought he was growing up to be a herpetologist, spurred by his fascination with reptiles, but his day job as a self-employed tree trimmer keeps him in touch with his muse. White built the studio behind his modest South Austin home partially from trees that people paid him to cut down. Inside, wooden banjos, myriad kalimbas, a gourd banjo, cello, accordion, bongos, a turtle shell, various percussion instruments, and his dog, Stella, are splayed around the small room, while a bookshelf hovers over a small bed. The walls are dotted with photos, several of which White took during his African bike ride of 1999.

"It was absolutely wonderful," he says. "I was just gonna go to Zimbabwe and throw my bike on a train from Cape Town. Well, you couldn't take your bicycle on the train. On the map, there looked to be all these dirt roads I could take to Namibia. So I started riding, and I didn't want to stop. I spent a lot of time in wilderness areas where there was nobody. By the time I got to Zimbabwe, I almost wanted to go home. I brought this backpacker's banjo with me so I could learn. Mbiras and kalimbas are everywhere, in the markets, so I would just pick one up and play it, and people would be like, 'Holy shit.'"

Back at the Parlor, this time on a not-so-dreary Thursday night, there are a few more warm bodies, including members of local band Rubble. Again, White's eyes are closed, and his foot taps the floor, matching his dexterous dry bone picking. He plays a frightening version of "All Along the Watchtower," then a song about native Indians. A song about murder follows. To hear the banjo and fiddle, those mythical instruments that invited the devil and God in equal amounts, with White's voice low and dense like Appalachian fog, is a "holy shit" moment. Then his eyes snap open, suddenly aware again, and he asks the young man behind the counter a very pointed question.

"As usual I don't have a watch. What time is it?"

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RALPH WHITE

INTERVIEWS CD REVIEWS

Ralph White On Calypso, African Ostinato, & the Dead


Ralph White: One of those incredibly well-kept secrets you expect Austin to harbor.
Listening to Ralph play banjo on the grass at the Church really got me thinking about my generation. Why were Dave and I the only two people sitting there with Ralph when later that night kids would flock to all the local parties to hear untold numbers of mediocre bands play utterly vacuous music for hours and hours without a word of complaint? I think Bob Dylan once nailed it--I'm paraphrasing--, "Kids today have no sense of history in their music."

Every song Ralph played was both a work of art and a lesson about something he's lived through. He could sit and talk forever about why he played each song he did, and we were glad to listen.

Listen to Ralph White on our compilation.

W & A: First off, it was great to sit outside and hear you play & talk about the songs you performed the other day at Church of the Friendly Ghost. There's a lot of history in the songs you played. Can you describe a few you played that day (like the Calypso one, for example) and where they originated?

R.W: I just learn whatever songs either really inspire me or just seem to come my way-that seems to contradict itself, but it's true-the most recent song I've learned is "Ripple" by the Grateful Dead. I've never been a fan of theirs in any big way, but I heard that song and just had to play it. As I think about this, I realize that songs, whether you write them or steal them, are magical vehicles; they can take you places where no car can go. I'm trying to let an attitude develop in me to where every time I play a song it takes me and whoever is listening somewhere magical. It's hard to do that without a plan or a teacher-but back to question:1-the 1 calypso song in my rep was learned from a "sing out" magazine-it fused with an algerian melody i've been playing on banjo -it sort of morfed into the piece on the wood banjo-"money is king" by,i think an artist known as 'the growling tiger'-i saw the words printed out in that zine -they're just too good to pass-another song i played that day, 'if i lose' is an old trad mourtain song-i started playing it years ago when it just got into my head-those old appalachian mt. tunes are african ostinotos in desguise-loops of magical rythmic tonalitys-i played that kind of music(fiddle music) for years before i started writing songs , so that shits an influence-question

You seem to have a real good friendship with the instruments you play. Could you talk a little about the different banjos you like to play? What about accordions, which are your favorites to play? Other instruments?

this is weird-but i learned(and am still learning) that your instrument can teach you by taking up the kalimba-i could talk for hours about 'banjo'-alot of my originol stuff is composed on a frettless 5-string banjo tuned in a low version of standard banjo tuning-i need to special order strings to match this tuning-my favorite accordian is a b-flat 3-row butten
diatonic one.my special affair is with kalimbas and banjos and i have several of each.?

How long have you been writing and playing songs? What got you started?

ive been writing songs for about 12 years -i've been 'writing' fiddle tunes for 25 years or so.?

What prompts you to write a song? Are there any general kinds of experiences that lead to a new song?

this ones too contradictory for me-some of my favorite songs came out of pure misery, and some from
seemingly nowhere-so i can honestly answer that i dont know what promts me to write a song and there may not be such a thing as a general expeirance (maybe theres a song for everything)?

I wanted to break up my question about your influences into periods because there seems to be so much history behind what you do. Who are the earliest songwriters you've been influenced by? Any before 1900?

you know-its music not song that first inspired me to play-i didnt start thinking a whole lot about lyrics until i
started singing-so much singing is inspiring!thats a hard question for me-i like to think about all the songs that i havnt heard-like if there was no recording industry and the music one vally over was totally different(maybe its still like that in ways)?

What early 20th century American songwriters have really hit you? What about non-Americans?

its weird but i cant think of any one particular songwriter that has influenced me from any time period(i hope that this dosnt make me aloof)exept that by the time i started writing songs i was allready too overwhelmed and influenced by music-i wanted music to help ground me. like right now the lyrics to 'ripple 'are devestatingly beautifull-and the greatfull dead suck-i mean they didnt even write their own stuff, had lyricist do it, just like big corporations design commercials-my point being not a judjement of the dead but that music and lyrics, too can have wonderfull runaway magic that just isnt logical.so i guess i'm too obsessed by just playing my own stuff to even buy records these days-i still get totally moved by music all the time tho-hearing people live and radio, wharever-and as i've repeatedly expressed, the song 'ripple' is my currant inspiration-and i heard it in my car late at night being played magicly superbly by jimmy dale gilmore(whom i'm not a huge fan of either) the question of what kind of pre1900 music to me is inspiring would all the great trad. folk music from just abuot anywhere, from what little ive heard is really good music.i like all those old mountain banjo songsters like doc boggs and clarence ashley but i havnt studied their sound or listened to that stuff as i much as i should.?

How does Austin affect your music? Where else have you lived and how has it been different in other places?

austin-i probably have all kinds of twisted feelings about that(this) situation that is austin-austin is a city in country full of citys that i have lived in all of my life-really strange that i feel so little about it-maybe it affects my music by not affecting it-you see i have also travelled most of my life under various circomstances and austins just part of america and my
perception of what that is is in a state of pathos(i read howard zinn) right now i like the alleys in south austin in the late evening. i also make a decent living as a self employed tree trimmer and have been doing that off and on here for 30 years or so and i actually like doing that ( this contributes to the 'issue' because i like playing music more)?

What's on the horizon? Collaborations, recordings, tours, etc.

ahh the horizon-its vast-i really feel lucky to have these hybrid banjos and kalimbas they seem to make more sense than guitars and keybords they blow my mind and i'm just now dipping into theyre waters -so 2 years down the road i'll be closer to swimming.