Ralph E. White’s music could be described in many ways — Americana, folk, traditional, experimental. Maybe his work is best described as an exploration of sound from someone who’s lived a lifetime of travels and experiences.
White calls it “outsider folk music.”
Over the years, he’s played everything from Cajun and French music to Irish fiddle tunes and punk bluegrass, continually drawing inspiration from traditional music across countries and cultures. His work lives firmly in the underground. It’s the kind of music released on small labels that might press 500 LPs.
White has released 25 solo records this way.
“The first time I heard music that made me want to play, it hit something that makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time,” he says. “And that feeling alone is the reason I play music, because I can cultivate that feeling and I can share that feeling.”
Though he doesn’t seek it, perhaps his biggest claim to fame is his six years playing fiddle in the punk bluegrass band the Bad Livers, a group that developed a cult following in the 1990s and was later inducted into the Texas Music Hall of Fame.
These days, however, White is content playing solo, performing music that refuses easy categorization. His sets incorporate banjo, guitar, button accordion, and the mbira — a wooden thumb piano traditionally played in parts of Africa.
“When I play a show, I just surround myself with all my instruments and play,” he says.
He improvises.
Although he writes his own lyrics, White doesn’t consider songwriting the foundation of his music. When he does sing, there’s a pronounced twang to his voice. His hands flutter across instruments as if in a trance, his vocals moving from low hums to sudden howls, riding the modulations of intricate, frenetic compositions that explore every corner of a melody.
It’s an approach rooted in an ethos he adopted early on: “I’m going to do this my way, even if it’s not cool.”
These days, White can be found touring Arizona, taking joy in playing small towns like Miami, Oracle, Arivaca, Bisbee. He travels in his van with Sissie, his Catahoula dog, who curls up inside his guitar case during shows.
On Dec. 27, White’s musical travels will bring him back to Thee 23 Skidoo in Miami, a venue he’s played several times before.
White grew up in Austin, Texas, where, from a young age, he gravitated toward outliers. In his community, those were the “Cedar Choppers,” a community of rugged, self-sufficient Appalachian laborers living in Central Texas. By his teenage years, White was into hard drugs, which kept him from being drafted.
At 18, he hitchhiked to Mexico.
What followed was a lifetime on the move. He busked on the streets of Europe in the 1970s and ’80s, biked from Cape Town to Zimbabwe in 1999 with a backpack and a banjo, rode a motorcycle around Australia, played Cajun music in Louisiana, and picked apples for seven years in British Columbia.
He also learned tree trimming at a young age, and between travels maintained a tree-trimming business back in Austin.
“I've been really devoted to music, but the kind of music I play, I knew at the very beginning I wouldn't make any money, or at least a living,” he says.
His paychecks funded his travels. Along the way, he listened constantly, educating himself in music with his Walkman and immersing himself in sounds from around the world.
“I came of age during Jimi Hendrix, and that kind of music just blew me away. And Pink Floyd, early Pink Floyd,” he says. “But I also discovered traditional music, and it's not really on the menu, traditional music.”
“I've been more inspired by ethnic folk music than anything,” he adds.
White’s first love was the blues. His mother listened to blues and jazz and kept a massive blues collection at home. Lightnin’ Hopkins’ records, in particular, left a mark. With a guitar in hand, White taught himself blues progressions from those recordings.
From there, he moved into folk and English psychedelic music.
“Fairport Convention, I think, was the band that made me sell my acoustic guitar and buy a fiddle out of the blue,” he says. “I must have sounded so bad.”
At this point he was in his early 20s trying to learn Irish fiddle music, which none of his friends were interested in. He found mentorship with a couple who took him under their wing and taught him old Irish music.
Eventually, he met the members of the Bad Livers, who were intent on getting famous. They brought him on as their fiddle player.
While touring and playing festivals with the band, White found himself listening to tapes of field recordings from Africa, sent by friends who were ethnomusicologists. The music captivated him. Meanwhile, the band wanted his attention elsewhere.
“There was pressure on me to learn the bluegrass style of fiddle, which is okay,” he says. “But I don't take to it. It's not my intuition. Bluegrass jumps ahead of the beat, and I like music that stays behind the beat.”
White eventually left the Bad Livers and joined a Cajun dance music band, where he stayed until 2007. The only thing that kept him from fully committing to Cajun music as a career, he says, was having to learn to sing in French.
“I really did want to just pour myself into whatever kind of music I was supposed to play,” he says, “and all this time I was still wondering what kind of music I'm supposed to play.”
That was when he began writing his own songs, playing instruments other than the fiddle, like the button accordion and banjo, and experimenting with his instruments, adding strings to his banjo.
For years, Austin remained his home base. That changed in the early 2000s, when the crowd on his side of town transformed from rural working class to wealthy.
“The politics of the world sort of showed up in my little place,” he says. “Austin is a perfect example of the one percent that's taking over.”
“I became a lot more publicly aware of the politics of the world, inequality and all those things,” he adds. “You can't really play folk music and not learn about that kind of stuff.”
Driven away by the gentrification of his hometown, White sold his house and his massive record collection in 2019. He bought a touring van and hit the road, having already recorded roughly 20 solo albums with small labels. While touring cross-country, the COVID-19 pandemic hit as he was playing a show in Oracle.
He decided to stay.
White now resides at Rancho Linda Vista, a sort of old school artist compound in Oracle.
“I really like the society in Arizona of people that are from really different places. I come from a place in Austin where everybody's a Democrat,” he says.
“The big conspiracy is to make people not like each other and against each other,” he adds. “Arizona is a good place to practice going against that conspiracy.”
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