Soul of the bayou

THE ARTS: Tony Joe White, the man who wrote 'Rainy Night in Georgia' and many other classic songs covered by other artists, is bringing his unique swampy growl to updated versions of his own work, writes Siobhán Long

WITH A VOICE that could be siphoned from the sap of a Californian redwood and a birth certificate that says Goodwill, Louisiana, Tony Joe White sings as if he emerged from the womb with a singular goal in life: to dig deep beneath the belly of a song, excavating every note that gurgles to the surface.

That voice is White's unique selling point, a calling card that's propelled him from the Louisiana delta heavenwards. Ever since he wrote Rainy Night in Georgiain 1962, White has been at his best when teasing out the (often mundane) realities of daily life that echo from Lafayette to LA and points north, south, east and west. Rainy Nightis more closely associated with other artists who covered it - from Ray Charles and Otis Rush to Randy Crawford, Aaron Neville and Shelby Lynne - and for the past four decades White has cannily married a below-the-radar touring schedule with a seriously healthy roster of songs covered by everyone from Elvis to Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, Dusty Springfield and others.

The secret, if there is one, is in sticking with what you know, he insists. No use writing about the noises of New York City if you're more closely acquainted with the lonesome bayous of the Deep South.

"I've always tried to write something real, and something I knew about", White reflects. "Once a song sounded good on my guitar, I never had any ideas about what it would sound like on radio, or whether it would chart, or this or that. I was totally into the song and trying to make it come out of me in a good way."

So writing to order or to a formula isn't part of his work plan? "Right now, I got a couple of songs I'm working on," White says. "But I just let them grow up and be what they wanna be. I'm not tempted to do anything else with them 'cos I wouldn't know how. I've had plenty of offers down through the years to do this or do that, but it was like I always wanted to keep hold of the reins, you know. The horse always wants to run, but the music, I just keep it lopin' easy.

"I look back on what made me write Rainy Night in Georgia. . . When you write songs, you gotta be like a receiving station; you got to be aware of what's going on around you. I never know what a song is going to be about before I write it."

White's first taste of the Top 10 was when he wrote Polk Salad Anniein 1969. It was later covered by Elvis Presley, who recorded it live in Las Vegas. White had some good times hanging out with Elvis, playing guitar in the dressing room in Vegas and later in Memphis, where the two crossed paths again, although they had entirely different perspectives on life, he acknowledges.

"I asked him to come visit me in my place in the Ozark mountains," White recalls, "where I got a cabin by a creek - to write or fish, or just to hang out. At that time, people up there wouldn't have known who Elvis was. It was like the movie Deliveranceup there. My old buddy, James Brolin, was in the dressing room with Elvis after I'd left, and he said Elvis thought this was one weird suggestion I'd made. Here's the guy who used to fly to Memphis to buy a cheeseburger! So we never did get to go fishing together."

WHITE'S LATEST CD is a rich recasting of some of his own classic songs, including Swamp Water, Roosevelt and Ira Leeand Soul Francisco,replete with drum loops and backbeats that update them for a new generation without losing any of the original funk that defined them.

"Jody's like a mad scientist up in his room every night," White drawls, referring to his son, who's responsible for retooling his father's trademark swampy growl by using a mess of lo-fi backbeats, strings and organ. "He spends a few days tinkering with a song and comes back saying 'hey, what d'you think of this?', and I said 'keep rocking' because I thought he managed to stay with the swamps, but he managed to add some 'newness' to it too, so it's cool. Truth is, he's the only person I'd have trusted to work on my music like he has."

Ironically, considering his Deep South roots, White has found that European audiences have been more attuned to the subtleties of his music than those in his home place. It was a French journalist who christened his deep-bellied, bass-laden music "swamp rock" way back in the 1970s, and ever since then White's been happily returning to a world old enough to appreciate his idiosyncratic repertoire of bayou blues.

"Matter of fact, European audiences 'got' it first," White says. "I was still playing clubs at home when Soul Franciscomade it to number one in France. I find that when I play on my own with just my guitar, in Norway, Sweden, France, and right across Europe, folks are either into the guitar or into the words, but it don't matter: they just come and they boogie."

White is distinctly nonplussed by the hoopla surrounding the US presidential campaign for the past 12 months, but he has no qualms about naming the canker, as he sees it, that has crippled American politics for too long.

"There are a lot of people in America who are filthy rich, making a lot of money on our gas," he declares animatedly. "We don't seem to have no heroes no more. America is run by about 15 real powerful men. Those men decide on cattle and gas and so on, and you can't be president of the United States unless these people get behind you. And, of course, if they get behind you, then you owe them.

"So I don't pay too much attention to all of that any more. I just write my songs and see where they take me. And you know, I can't just sit by the campfire, playing my guitar. Sooner or later, I gotta take those songs and let folks hear 'em."

• Tony Joe White's Deep Cutsis on Swamp Records. White plays Crawdaddy, Dublin, next Tuesday, September 16th