Tony Joe White - The Beginning

Brown Burnett

The future is the Internet and the future is Now. Singer/songwriter Tony Joe White is doing what he's wanted to do ever since he became a musician thirty-plus years ago – sell his own music his own way. And he’s doing it on the Internet (www.tonyjoewhite.net), particularly his new album, The Beginning.

"I always wanted to find a way to eliminate the bullshit people have to go through to get my records. Now I can actually record in my house, give it to my son Jodi, he goes down the street, gets the artwork done and gets it pressed and we can have it available to people for sale in a week.

"Incredible."

Tony Joe remains a busy songwriter some 30 years after his "Polk Salad Annie" recording sold millions of copies. He wrote the equally successful "Rainy Night in Georgia" and it sold millions more for other artists. The list of artists he's written for is a ‘who's who’ - Elvis, Ray Charles, Tina Turner, Waylon Jennings, John Mayall, Hank Williams Jr., Tim McGraw. He's written and performed jingles for McDonald's and Levis, worked on numerous soundtracks and remains an in-demand performer, particularly in Australia and Europe where he's maintained a long career.

"My record company was in France for many of those years, so you couldn't GET my records over here. The same with Australia. I go to Australia in the spring and Europe in the fall - big, big festivals down there - and that's worked for us for a long time."

But his new album may rejuvenate his audience in the States. It's startling in it rawness and is as acoustic as you can get. It's just him, an acoustic guitar, some harmonica and his foot. But that Louisiana voice, so deep and so rich has only gotten richer and deeper over time. The voice that launched what many called 'swamp rock' was Tony Joe White's voice. He's a true original.

The album’s liner notes explain how he recorded The Beginning.

"I started in early fall, and finished in late winter. I left 3 microphones plugged up in the studio in an old house with the high ceilings and wooden floors and the guitars and harmonicas were always close at hand. I would go for long periods of time without touching either, and then some days the feeling would be right. And I would sit down and the music would come out.

"The is all the freedom I could ever hope for."

Tony Joe learned to love music from his family while growing up in his North Louisiana home of Goodwill ("a grocery store, a church and a cotton gin").

"When I was 16, my brother brought home an album by Lightnin' Hopkins and when I heard that it was just him, his guitar and his foot, the next thing I knew I was playing my daddy's guitar and playing blues.

"And that foot on my album? I mixed it right in - put a mike right by it. The house has high ceilings and wood floors and you get a good echo in it."

His early musical travels took him from Louisiana to Georgia into Texas and life was good.

"I wasn't thinkin’ nothin’ about nothin’. I was playing in a club there in Texas, $10 a week, had plenty of girlfriends, had cold beer, plenty of music, the beach … "

And then he heard a song that changed his life forever.

"I was playing a lot of Elvis, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker in those clubs but it was after I heard "Ode to Billy Joe" by Bobby Gentry that it all became something else to me.

"I heard that song and thought 'I know what that's about! I AM Billy Joe!'.

"The realness of it hit me so hard. I started writing - and wrote "Polk Salad Annie" and "Rainy Night in Georgia" that same week."

But success was still a long way off. He eventually found somebody in Nashville to record him ("The only human in that town who would listen to the blues.") So he cut his first album, which to his astonishment became a hit in France.

"Here I was in Corpus Christi, still selling records in clubs and the next thing I know I’m in Europe touring, and all I’d been to was Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina."

Then "Polk Salad Annie" hit in the States and life changed forever.

"I eventually had to stop and pull back and get back to writing. I moved my family to Arkansas, raised some horses, put my kids in school. Got back to my writing. That’s what I’m about – writing songs."

He says he’s probably written around 400 songs and he talks about those songs as if they’re living, breathing entities – calling them by first names, talking about how he has to spend time with them, about how they want to eventually ‘get out.’

He’s now using a distributor to help him get those albums out worldwide now that he’s calling the shots. He has two albums in the can and those will be heard soon now that The Beginning is catching on.

"People like to hear ‘personal’ music – something that’s not programmed. It’s old-timey but it’s a brand new thing to a lot of people."

He lived in the Memphis area in the late 70’s and early 80’s and was in town recently to hear Sade perform. He says he may play here this fall and is impressed with the recent downtown revival.

"Man, where I was there in the 80’s, downtown was boarded-up. Everything’s new! I can’t believe it!"

He’s also quick to pass on advice about songwriting but it, like his music, is as basic as you can get.

"If you write what you feel, something good will happen to you sooner or later."

For Tony Joe White, that something good has been happening for 30 plus years and on into cyberspace.