Interview by DJ Johnson
"When I look back now, I guess it was pretty different to be doing what I was doing and sounding like I was sounding. I haven't changed a whole lot; I'm almost like a lone wolf out there. I just play my guitar and don't worry about it. They don't know if I'm black, white, country or rock." - Tony Joe White

"Tony Who What?!" It's Tony Joe White, ya silly American. Our European and Australian readers already know exactly who I'm talking about, but for some reason, you Americans seem reluctant to discover Tony Joe. Why is that? Ain't he rough enough, baby? With the unpredictable characters that populate his songs, he's certainly rough enough. Ain't he cool enough? Oh dear, if you don't get a chill from a vibey Tony Joe White guitar lick, you might just need to have your pulse checked to see if you're still with us. There's just too many reasons to discover Tony Joe and not one durn reason not to.

Tony Joe White is the King of Cool. Not the stereotypical kind of cool, but the real deal, the laid back, sunglassed, swamp fox, "hey look, a big ol' gator, ain't it cute" kind of cool that comes naturally in the Louisiana bayou, where they separate the men from the gator bait. Hey, this is a guy who's so cool even his guitar has a name: the Whomper Stomper. A descriptive name, at that. His music ties backwater mystique with slowly percolating blues so fine they make you smile and cry at the same time. We're talking about a truly American listening experience.

So why isn't America listening?

Part of the problem is American record labels. The last four Tony Joe White albums were never released in the US in acceptable numbers, so even his hardcore fans had to pay huge prices to importers. Thanks, Record Industry Types. They can only see the sense in records guaranteed to move 10,000,000 units in a few months, and unfortunately there may not be that many people in the country with the ability or desire to actually listen to the music they buy. This is why N-Sync tops the charts while Tony Joe White heads off on another tour of Australia. Funny thing, though... Tony Joe doesn't mind one bit.

"It's always been that way, but I don't mind," says the 50-something swamp rocker. He doesn't have to bow to any commercial pressures because he's written a lot of songs that have made a lot of money, usually when recorded by other artists. "That makes it so I can do what I want to do and write and play what I want to." He first broke through on his own with the 1969 top ten hit, "Polk Salad Annie," and another of his tunes, "Rainy Night In Georgia," became a Brook Benton hit the same year. His songs have done well for Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Waylon Jennings, Tim McGraw, John Mayall, Hank Williams Jr., and many others. His work with Tina Turner on her 1989 album, Foreign Affair, hasn't hurt the checkbook, either. It's all just insurance, as far as he's concerned, and the benefit is artistic freedom.

Two years ago, Tony Joe teamed up with Roger Davies (Tina Turner's manager and producer) to create a wonderful album called One Hot July. Thanks to Hip-O Records, it has just been released in America. I had the pleasure of talking with Tony Joe White by phone a few weeks back, and we discussed One Hot July, his experiences before the audiences of the world, and all kinds of other things that popped up along the way.

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Cosmik: I understand you're at home today. Where is that, exactly?

Tony Joe: Tennessee, right outside of Nashville about forty, fifty miles. A little town called Franklin.

Cosmik: Ah, okay, for some reason I thought you were somewhere in Arkansas.

Tony Joe: Well I've got a place in Arkansas, and I go down to Louisiana with my folks a lot, but right now I'm in Tennessee.

Cosmik: So you're right in the middle of music country.

Tony Joe: Pretty close. I try to keep back in the woods pretty good, but you know, you've gotta go in every now and then.

Cosmik: It's been a really long time since there's been a Tony Joe White record in the states. Where have you been?

Tony Joe: Well, it's been a long time since an American release, but my record company for the past eight or ten years has been out of Paris, France. We've done three or four albums out of there. Between Europe and Australia, I'm on tour all the time, and putting records out and keeping real busy. It's just that in America, it's hard for them to find the records over here.

Cosmik: I'd say it's a huge compliment that you have as many fans in the music industry itself as you do, but how frustrating is it to you that the American public hasn't ever really caught on?

Tony Joe: It hasn't ever bothered me. I have just as many fans here as I have anywhere else in the world, it's just they can't find the music. American record companies are more about the flavor of the week. If they can't box you up and ship you out like a McDonald's burger, then they don't really know what to do with you, so they don't put your record out.

Cosmik: On top of that you have to deal with the radio stations in this country, which all cling to Arbitron ratings and not playing anything outside the narrow strip of hits.

Tony Joe: Oh, yeah, that's why I rarely listen to radio. But you'd be amazed at the stations over in Australia and in the South of France, where you can turn on your car radio and it really is fun again. You hear every kind of music there is, from Led Zeppelin to John Lee Hooker to Waylon Jennings, I mean, they play it all on one station.

Cosmik: And WHERE is this?!

Tony Joe: (Laughs) Anywhere but America, man.

Cosmik: I only find that on Internet stations.

Tony Joe: There ARE some cool little places in Louisiana that'll venture out and do that, and a few parts of Mississippi, but over there it's just kind of a standard thing. If they like it and it's a good song, they play it.

Cosmik: But over here, a Tony Joe White fan has to special order the records. Ain't that a shame?

Tony Joe: I get a lot of mail from people in America who are ordering my albums from places in France or Germany. They'll say "I just bought you new album. It was thirty-five dollars, but I like it a lot." And I say "Maaaan! There's gotta be a way to get past that." (Laughs) Now with this Hip-O release in America, hopefully everyone who wants my music can get it without having to order it from all over the world.

Cosmik: Does it surprise you how well you do in Europe when you consider that your music is so very American in subject matter?

Tony Joe: It's funny, you know, it started over there with a song, even before "Polk Salad Annie" came out over here, called "Soul Francisco." It was a big hit in France. It was about the hippy movement and the flower child days. I knew those people wouldn't really know what I was saying much in the words, but they felt it, and people were dancing and jumping up on the stage. I don't know if it was my voice or my guitar or what it was, but they've always stuck with me all these years, and I think it's because it has that little bluesy root to it.

Cosmik: Ah, that vibe. Blues. I guess that's a pretty universal sound, isn't it?

Tony Joe: Yeah. And Australia's the same way. There's a huge blues festival I do every year over there, and I tour there for a couple months, but there's old blues artists at that festival, you know... the real blues guys, and hundreds of thousands of people come to that festival.

Cosmik: Must be kind of nerve wracking, in a way, to get up in front of a crowd like that.

Tony Joe: Well now it's funny about that, but I've been just as uptight in front of ten people as I have a hundred thousand. It gets past a certain point where you just play your music and get on into it. But for some reason, a quiet room is harder. Say a golf tournament or one of those celebrity things, like the Willie Nelson Tournament every year down in Austin [Texas]. We play golf two days and we play music two nights. They have this little room called The Riders Room, and it'll hold maybe seventy-five people. It's like a small classroom you might remember from your school days, and to just sit down with your guitar while those seventy-five people are waiting for you to tell 'em somethin', that's a lot spookier than a hundred thousand when you can crank an electric guitar way up and just rock.

Cosmik: I'm amazed at how many people I've interviewed that have said that very same thing. Some of them have played just fine in front of twenty thousand one night and then they were petrified the next night when only twenty people showed up at a club.

Tony Joe: Funny, isn't it? Once you hit the first note it's all over anyway, and all the butterflies leave. I played at the Isle Of Wight and all them huge pop festivals they used to have. There was six hundred thousand people there, so it was like... you just play and don't think about it.

Cosmik: What was it like playing at the Isle Of Wight?

Tony Joe: Looked just like an ocean. Everybody was there. Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Blood, Sweat and Tears, you name it. As far as you could see in that valley was tents and sleeping bags and human beings.

Cosmik: That must have been a wild experience.

Tony Joe: It sure was.

Cosmik: The image you project is very laid back, like you roll with whatever happens in your career. Is it really that easy?

Tony Joe: I've been really luck with my music because my writing has allowed me to keep playing and singing and writing the way I feel. Well, I couldn't ever have went any other way; there was no choice. But I've never had to really try to write something for the radio or to try to be in the top ten in Billboard or anything like that. I've always had the good, sweet time to write and play good songs, and if that's laid back, then that's what it is.

Cosmik: So the money from songs you wrote helps. "Polk Salad Annie" getting into the top ten... you didn't expect that at all, did you?

Tony Joe: No, not at all. I was playing at a little night club in Corpus Christie, Texas, for ten dollars a night when that song came out. But you know, I wouldn't miss nothin' even back then. Ten a night, and I had a big ocean out there where we fished, and stayed on the beach most of the time and played the clubs at night. I never really did miss out. So like I've been really, really lucky with the writing through the years, and I don't have any complaints about the whole deal.

Cosmik: Let's talk about One Hot July. Your guitar has always been important in your music, but in this album there's a layering of bluesy guitars that seems more intensive. Especially on "Crack The Window, Baby." You're going to turn a lot of young guitarists on with this. Do you ever approach an album as "a guitar album"?

Tony Joe: I've always kind of approached all the albums with the guitar doing what is necessary for each song. On this particular album, a lot of those are one-takes, and I went back in and overdubbed a harp or a guitar lick here and there, but it was like me and Boom Boom [Mark Cohen] on drums and Doctor Gloom [Carson Whitsett] on the B-3 and the bass player [Eric Watkins], we just had the tape rolling down there in that little studio, man, and it sounded so good. We cut it in three nights that way. Later on when I went in there to overdub, there wasn't much space to do it. It was like the simplicity and quietness of the thing had already been said. That's sometimes a hell of a lot more powerful than fifty licks when maybe two licks covered it.

Cosmik: The guitars on that song, in particular, just feel electrifying to me.

Tony Joe: You know, "Crack The Window, Baby" just might be my favorite tune on the album. There's just something so funky about that intro, and then about that old road dog. You've seen 'em out there. Always got babies and in bad shape, howlin' in the night. That's the rhythm guitar goin' first, and then that's the old swamp box fuzz on top of it.

Cosmik: The way the guitars are layered they almost feel like a character in the song.

Tony Joe: It takes off on its own, you know?

Cosmik: I just recently started paying closer attention to the lyrics in your songs. There are some songs on this album that get to me, personally, and "Cold Fingers" is the best example for me. Are these songs autobiographical?

Tony Joe: Pretty well most all of 'em, or about someone I know or someone I've seen or something I've heard about or saw happening, you know? And you've named the other one: that's my favorite slow one on the album, "Cold Fingers," and that's REALLY autobiographical there.

Cosmik: The longing and the sadness of it is enveloping, but in a cathartic way.

Tony Joe: It's painful in a way, and then you have two or three cold beers and it's almost happy in a way. There's a goodness to it, but at first it's like gloomsville, man. (Laughs)

Cosmik: It's sure easy to relate to a line like "how can I feel so alone with so many people gathered round." It seems like you have a gift for wording things simply, things that most people can't word at all.

Tony Joe: Like I said, my writing is my life, and I don't know where they come from. If I had to just sit down and write I'd be as blank as can be, I couldn't think of nothin'. But those things come by, and sometimes they come by in the form of a guitar lick or sometimes maybe in the form of a title or maybe a line, but when it flows by me I'll stop what I'm doing and sit down, get me a few cold beers, build a fire and sit and work on it. Otherwise, I won't ever just sit and try to write.

Cosmik: It's the theory of the muse. You've been able to write at this level for thirty years, and other people are written out in half this time. You've been very fortunate.

Tony Joe: Well you know, It's very lucky. From the very start. I remember with "Polk Salad Annie" and "Rainy Night In Georgia," I was still in Corpus Christie workin' in that little club, and I just decided to write about something I knew about, and I knew about polk because I was raised on a cotton farm down there in Louisiana, and I knew about rainy nights in Georgia because I drove a dump truck for the highway department when I got out of high school. It's like what you were just talking about: if you always write about what's real, who knows? When you hit sixty five or seventy, you might write a good song. If you don't try to corral it or put it in a commercial box. That's all I've ever asked of myself, to not ever put out anything for a [financial] reason.

Cosmik: Is that one of the reasons you've never stuck to a traditional schedule of new releases, so you don't have that pressure?

Tony Joe: That's right. Right now I've got several good new songs I've been writin' on for over two years now, not to mention One Hot July. That album was supposed to come out last year, but we got caught up. There's been a lot more songs come by me since then, and I'm always glad they're there. It's like you can sit down with a guitar in front of a friend or your family, you play it and they go "yeah, I like that!"

Cosmik: It seems like you've avoided all the traps of show biz. You've been married to the same person forever, stayed in the small town, and just avoided all the show biz traps.

Tony Joe: Well, that's a lucky thing, too, to be with one person. My wife is a writer, too, you know? She's written three or four big songs, with me, with Tina Turner -- she co-wrote "Undercover Agent For The Blues," and "Goin' Down Rockin'" on Waylon's album, so we have that in common, too, and that really helps. We give each other a lot of space, but I'll tell you... music is a powerful thing, and it's nice to have that in common.

Cosmik: You've been at the recording thing for a long time, so I wonder what a producer like Roger Davies has to offer a veteran like you in the studio.

Tony Joe: One thing about Roger is he's a bass player. He had a band in Australia, and in England, and he's a real musician with a real good ear. Him and I get in there, or when he's with Tina or Joe Cocker or whoever, he listens and he don't add a lot or holler a lot, but when he says something, it's usually something really cool and really good. The main thing he does is keep your vibe up. He'll lean into the mike now and then and say "aw, man, the tone on that guitar is killing me," and that just makes you play.

Cosmik: Almost like a cheerleader, huh?

Tony Joe: Sometimes. But he's got a wonderful ear. I'd like to see him get more involved in producing Tina, for instance. Her new album is great, and it's geared to be so huge it's gonna be unbelievable. I saw her in New Orleans about six nights ago, and the place was packed and the show was great. But I'd love to see Roger go in and produce her with four instruments, just B-3, guitar, bass, drums, really down and raunchy again. I'd love to see him do it, but I don't know if he ever will.

Cosmik: Well, he has that kind of influence with Tina, that's for sure.

Tony Joe: Oh yeah, God, he does everything for her.

Cosmik: A few minutes ago, you said "oh yeah, he's a bass player." Do you feel a bass player hears things from the ground up, maybe, or has a better handle on all the parts of a song?

Tony Joe: I think they have a great feel of the groove. If you've got the bass and the drum goin' good, that's the backbone of the music. My kind of music, especially. If you've got a bass player and a drummer that are together, then you've got the move and the groove.

Cosmik: Got that lock between the kick drum and the bass.

Tony Joe: [Roger] really knows whether that's happening or not. The foot kick and the bass player are always together on the hit records.

Cosmik: Listen to all the Memphis Stax stuff.

Tony Joe: Oh man, yeah! The kick might throw in a triplet or something like that, but the bass player and the drummer have to be together for all good music, I think.

Cosmik: What's your plan right now? New album? Tour?

Tony Joe: Well I've got a lot of new songs for a new album. When I do it I'll go back down to Louisiana and cut it there, but for right now I've just been doing some interviews, and we're going to start doing some shows across America, for a change, and then back to Australia in November.

Cosmik: How do you like touring over there?

Tony Joe: Oh it's great, man. We've been doing it a long time.

Cosmik: You've gotten to see a lot of places.

Tony Joe: Yep. (Laughs) From Goodwill, Louisiana to Byron Bay in Australia, that's a long ways. You've got to think, though, Australia's got a lot of swamps in it, and those people over there know all them characters. MY characters in my songs. Some people come up to me and say "we've got a guy just like that over here." A "bloke," as they call 'em back there. And the Aborigines even come to the shows over there.

Cosmik: It seems like they have a better understanding of the mystical side of nature, and there's a lot of that in the characters in your songs. There's not a lot of people writing music like you do. There's maybe Warren Zevon and Rickie Lee Jones that have characters you can almost see, that you grew up knowing. It doesn't surprise me that Aborigines would appreciate your music.

Tony Joe: These people, there's about forty of them in this one group that walked all the way from the outback. They were waiting in the backstage area when I came off, and they all had my old albums in their hands. They wanted me to sign the records, and they said "you're the only white man we listen to."

Cosmik: That musta felt good!

Tony Joe: I felt it was a real honor to meet a whole tribe from that far away that had been listening to my tunes. They even had their healer woman with them. She was about three and a half foot tall, and she was sittin' over there real quiet. Most of 'em spoke real good English, and one of the guys came up and was talking about this and that with me, and I had this inner ear thing from something that happened to me in an airplane flight. It had messed up my equilibrium and made me kind of sick, and I was just gettin' back out on the road again. I hadn't mentioned nothin' to nobody about it. So anyway, they introduced me to all the tribe members, and when they introduced me to the little woman, they just said "this is the elder." I reached down to shake her hand, and she didn't take my hand. She just reached up and put her hand on my left ear and she said "you come to the outback. I'll fix this." I was standing there with my mouth hangin' open. I had not told nobody nothin'. She could barely reach my ear, but she said come to the outback and she'd fix this.

Cosmik: Did you?

Tony Joe: I'm gonna go this November. No tellin' what they'll do. I may come back REALLY swampy. (Laughs) Cuz they've got it. Those people still live in the OLD old ways, you know?

Cosmik: After all these years, your music stays right to the roots. Think that'll ever change?

Tony Joe: No, I don't see how it could when you're writing about real things. The roots is my guitar, and the words change but the funkiness and swampiness will always be in there or it wouldn't be the right thing to do.

(C) 2000 - DJ Johnson