GIG ALERT: Tony Joe White's Album Release Show 9/26 at City Winery Loft NYC

Tony Joe White’s music is as primal as a lizard’s backbone. It echoes from the magnolia groves and bayous of his Louisiana childhood, and looms into the present every time he unleashes the molasses and tanned-leather combination of his guitar and voice. The legendary songwriter’s new blues-based album, Bad Mouthin’, which arrives September 28, 2018, comes straight from the swamps with its blend of classics and five White originals, including two of the first songs he wrote — just before penning his breakthrough hits “Polk Salad Annie” and “A Rainy Night in Georgia” in 1967.

“When and where I grew up, blues was just about the only music I heard and truly loved,” says White, who’s 75 and, if anything, an even more visceral performer than in his youth. “I’ve always thought of myself as a blues musician, bottom line, because the blues is real, and I like to keep everything I do as real as it gets. So, I thought it was time to make a blues record that sounds the way I always loved the music.”

And that’s down-to-the-bone raw. Over the course of Bad Mouthin’ ’s 12 songs, White conjures a world of meaning that transcends the lyrics of classics like Jimmy Reed’s “Big Boss Man,” Lightnin’ Hopkins’ “Awful Dreams,” and Charley Patton’s “Down the Dirt Road Blues,” using his deep river of a voice and the dark, spartan tones of his guitar to evoke the mystical South — a place where ghosts roam among abandoned pecan groves covered in Spanish moss and, indeed, the Devil might be encountered at a moonlit crossroads.

That White — who has written hits and cuts for a compendium of fellow legends from Elvis Presley (“Poke Salad Annie”) to Brook Benton (“A Rainy Night in Georgia”) to Dusty Springfield (“Willie and Laura Mae Jones”) to Eric Clapton (“Did Somebody Make a Fool Out of You”) to Tina Tuner(“Steamy Windows”) to Willie Nelson (“Problem Child”) to Kenny Chesney (also “Steamy Windows”) to Robert Cray (who recorded White’s “Don’t Steal My Love” and “Aspen, Colorado” just last year) — would now craft a blues album after more than 50 years spanning the rock, country, R&B, and Americana genres is an incredible testament to his versatility as well as to his roots. 

Mostly, Bad Mouthin’ features White accompanied solely by his road-worn 1965 Fender Stratocaster, the guitar he’s favored for his entire career. That’s all he needs to conjure the same kind of simmering emotional magic that John Lee Hooker distilled into his historic solo recordings — just one man and one guitar essentially defining what it means to be human in a story as simple and yet as profound as a Zen koan. His official NYC release show for Bad Mouthin’, out on Yep Roc on Sept. 28th, will be:

Wed., Sept. 26 • NEW YORK • City Winery Loft

155 Varick St.; Showtime: 8 p.m.; Tickets: TBA

https://citywinery.com/theloft/concerts.html/

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