Hometown: Athens, Ga.
Fun Fact: When White was an NYU graduate film student in the '80s, X-Files creator Vince Gilligan, who was then the school film-equipment manager, would help White produce student films.
Why He’s Worth Watching: Transnormal Skiperoo is only White's fourth album after 10 years of performing, but his idiosyncratic blend of the backwoods philosophy and Southern storytelling is as strong as it's ever been, delivering one of his most inspired works yet.
For Fans Of: Tom Waits, Flannery O’Connor, The American South
“Wow, look at that!” Jim White exclaims as a barista at an Atlanta-area coffeehouse uses a late model bagel slicer on White’s poppy seed bagel. Puzzled, the barista turns around and quips, “You don’t get out much, do you?” White pauses for a second, then sighs, “No, you’re right. I don’t.”
And, in a certain sense, he’s not exaggerating. While the singer-songwriter has toured Europe on multiple occasions, received a bucketload of five-star reviews from the British press, and even inked with David Byrne’s record label (Luaka Bop), White still lives with his wife and child on two acres of farmland in rural Georgia.
One microcosm into White’s world of folksy surrealism is his website. While he offers up the standard fare found on most musical web homes (news, tour dates), he also posts some thoroughly unorthodox fare, like an uncompleted genealogy and a link to a yard sale.
With references to Superman cutouts, truck stops, turquoise houses and televangelism, White's trademark imagery of the deep, weird South shows up on his latest album, Transnormal Skiperoo. But unlike past albums, White isn’t telling stories mired in the murky worlds of sex and fundamentalism or drugs and stock-car racing.
“Over time I had developed a very elaborate vocabulary of words for 'sorrow,' and I knew about three words for 'happiness,'” White explains, munching on an absurdly over-buttered bagel. “So, on this album, it was sort of like use the muscle you use the least.”
White’s evolution of mood is readily apparent on Transnormal Skiperoo, a record very obviously imbued with a sense of thematic and melodic uplift. The opening track, “A Town Called Amen,” is a sunny celebration of everyday redemption in every little thing, from dog kisses to afternoon rain showers, that avoids feeling like the soundtrack to a laundry detergent commercial precisely because of its pointed earnestness.
“I could have made another mopey record, but that does not fit with what I’m feeling,” the middle-aged White says. “I’m unabashedly happy for the first time in my life.”
A serial collaborator in the past, White's cooperative approach to Transnormal Skiperoo was no different. Superb roots-rock band, Ollabelle, backs White on seven of the album’s 12 tracks, while songwriter/producer couple, Laura Veirs and Tucker Martine, as well as Athens locals, GOAT, guest on other tracks.
“I think people get caught up in what excites me,” White says. “That’s very liberating to get out of the straight and narrow.”
White’s collaborations don’t stop with music, though. Currently, he’s at work on a short story, “Pecan Trees Are Self-Pruning,” for a series from Melville Press involving musicians who are also writers. Several years ago, a film-production team financed by the BBC, inspired by one of White’s short stories and his first album, Wrong-Eyed Jesus, made a documentary, Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, chronicling small-town life in the South.
“Of course, I didn't make this film, or even devise it's themes,” White says of the film. “I'm just a chatterbox they got to discuss certain things they found curiously compelling about the South.”
Nevertheless, the peculiar look at Southern religion, prison and nightlife, amongst other things, has upset certain regional purists. Colonel J.D. Wilkes, frontman of Th' Legendary Shack Shakers, even made his own documentary, Seven Signs, in direct response to the one White stars in.
“My role in the movie has certainly provoked some interesting responses among Southophiles,” White says. “I cherish my role as lightning rod! Hopefully I'll get assassinated and my album sales will skyrocket into the tens of thousands and my family will finally be able to afford soap and toothpaste.”
Listen to Transnormal Skiperoo on Luaka Bop radio.
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[Above: Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell perform at the 2007 Americana Honors & Awards Show]
