Drake White’s latest album ‘Low Country High Road' is a masterful blend of soulful country rock, gospel, and blues. A journey through love, family, and the simplicity of country living, White’s new project is both a reflection of his roots and a testament to his personal growth and resilience. Read our review of it right here.
We were thrilled to catch up with him on album release day last week to talk all about it.
Thank you for your time today, Drake, particularly on album release day, we know how busy you must be.
It's a good day. Release days are always busy but that's what you want them to be! I've been working on this record for a year and a half now and now I just want to put some gas on the fire and keep it going!
We said in our review that this might be your best album so far. How do you feel about that and what was your mission statement going into the making of it?
I thought I had a great bunch of songs going into this album and I had a great friend in Jonathon Singleton who produced and co-wrote on the album. We wanted to do something different this time around and tap more into that ‘Soul Country' sound, that's what I do and we wanted to highlight that.
We love Nashville but we wanted to get out of town and go down and do the Mississippi ‘Delta Blues' thing and see what came out. We mixed this record ourselves, they are all songs that I wrote, some older and some newer and we wrote new verses, new bridges and there were really no rules to what we were doing.
I really believe it's my best work yet, for sure. It took me a journey to get to this point and that journey is reflected in songs like ‘The Last Time,' which has a real depth to it but there's also some lightness in there to keep the album moving along too. I'm super-proud of it.
We conclude our review by calling you Country music's ‘Soul Preacher.' Is that a title you are happy to have?
Yeah. Absolutely. Growing up in Alabama there's a depth to the soul and the spirituality of what I carry around with me everyday and what I have been through. It takes a lot of faith to keep going in a business where we have met a lot of setbacks. That's just part of the industry that you have to accept but it helps me relate to my fans who also have barriers and struggles in their everyday lives too.
God gave me this platform to help people and if my songs help people that makes me feel soulful too. The soul part of the record is what I'm most proud of.
You mentioned working with Jonathon Singleton on this project. What did he bring to the album?
Well, we brought 15 years of friendship to the album! I have felt the excitement, in this industry, of being in a place where everybody is ringing you and your phone is blowing up with people calling you for writes and wanting to involve you in opportunities but I have also felt the fear and the sting of when even your best friends won't pick up the phone anymore too. Jonathon has always been one of those guys that picked up.
I came to him after my stroke and told him that I just needed to make a record. He said, ‘Well, man, let's do what we've always wanted to do and go down to the Delta and cut a record then!' It just all worked out. He was a massive part of this record but it's easy when another guy just speaks your language and you've been friends for 15 years. I mean, we go on vacations together, the wives are best friends – we smoked cigars, drank beer and made an album! (laughing)
We've been fans of yours since ‘Spark' back in 2016 but I really feel like you've captured who you are on this record, down to a tee.
Absolutely. Thank you, man. I always released what I've thought was genuine and authentic to me at any given time and this record feels no different but I feel like I took more risks this time around in the way it sounds and the swampiness of it. In the past I might have steered away from the swampiness and the Blues a little for fear of moving away from what is considered commercial in places like Nashville. This time, what sounded good to me is the way I wanted to be portayed.
The way the industry stands at the moment, with your Zach Bryan's and your Sturgill's and even someone like Luke Combs, there are chances being taken with horns, with soulfulness and with instruments like fiddles and banjos. Good grooves and good, honest music – that's me, I'm from Alabama and I don't know how to be anything other than I am.
Which artists have provided you with the influences and the blueprints to be able to go down to the Delta and produce and album like ‘Low Country High Road?'
Oh man. Artists like Lightning Hopkins, like Muddy Waters. Ray Charles is one of my favourite voices of all time. Otis Redding. Aretha Franklin. Percy Sledge. In the Country world, it would be artists like Roger Miller, John Prine – the writing quirkiness of those guys is amazing. Jim Croce is amazing, ‘Bad, Bad Leroy Brown' is one of my favourite songs of all time.
I'm an earthy guy when it comes to music and I love clever and honest storytelling, right even across to Bob Dylan and the Nashville skyline type of feel too, I love that.
When you are really going for it, vocally, in the final third of ‘Faith' you sound to me like a younger Steven Tyler (Aerosmith). Were they ever an influence on you?
Oh, all the time. I actually had a great opportunity to meet and hang out with Steven Tyler and he's always been a big influence on me. The energy that he brought to his vocals and his performances on stage has always been massive to me, his spirit and his persona too. We talked about his career and I've got to learn from his mistakes and keep my voice in a better shape. I wanna be doing this till I'm 100 years old, right? Steven managed to keep going till he was an older guy but he has admitted he's abused his voice and can no longer sing live in the way that he would like to. I don't want that. As an influence, he's been an insane influence on me over the years.
My favourite line on the whole album is in ‘Life, Love and War' when you say you hope your son, Hawk, ‘does good things good and bad things when you have to.' That's such a powerful thing for a parent to pass on to their child.
I wanted to pass on what I have learned to Hawk, just like every parent does. There is so much being attacked about masculinity these days, in politics, in the media, right? For me, to be able to say that I want you to be a nice guy to your son is crucial but if it comes down to it, in a sticky situation, I want him to be able to stand up for himself or others and have the courage to do, what we in terms of the song call, ‘bad things.'
In layman's terms, if you need to kick somebody's ass, you need to kick somebody's ass.
Dangerous men are confident men. A dangerous man is a confident man who isn't afraid of being a nice guy but who is also not afraid to do the right thing, even if it means upsetting the apple cart. That's what that line is about.
What was the easiest song you wrote for ‘Low Country High Road' and what song took the longest time to get it where you wanted it to be?
‘The Last Time' was the longest, for sure, just getting that one to where we were totally happy with it. That's probably my favourite song on the whole album. With Covid happening and the stroke, that song means so much to me. We were mindful of making sure we got everything right on that one.
The easiest was probably ‘Life, Love and War,' which we probably wrote in about 45 minutes! I had the muse of my new son to inspire me on that song and it just flowed right out of me. Being a guy that was raised by a really, really good man, I've got a lot of thoughts and advice ready to pass down to him about what it means to be a good man. Both in the serious, John Prine-style lines and the funnier ones too.
I'm fascinated by the sound and style of ‘Tequila Mockingbird' which is a beautifully original song.
Me too. As far as the sound of this album, that song is right there and one of my favourite songs on the album. Marcus Hummon, who co-wrote that song with me, is a genius, man. That song is one of my proudest moments as a writer – would you believe that that song is 12 years old! (laughing)
You've written tributes to your wife before that are these lovely, romantic songs but this one is a completely different look at her……….
Because that's her. She's a kindergarten teacher who loves Jesus but she also loves a drink of tequila which turns her into a different person sometimes and I like that person! (laughing) She gets kind of charismatic and cocky when she drinks that stuff and I kind of like it. We wanted to show the world that side of her too!
This is an album that needs to be played from beginning to end live. You've got a nice problem in that I wouldn't know which songs to leave out of the setlist.
You know, we played an album release show last night and played a few of the songs and we've started the process of feeding the new songs into the set. Sure, you'll always hear ‘Makin' Me Look Good Again' and ‘Livin the Dream' because they were big hits for us but we've now got to work the new songs on social media and then add them into the set, which is what we did for a song like ‘Power of a Woman.'
Hopefully it will just be a matter of time before everyone is singing ‘The Last Time' in the same way that they do the older songs. ‘Stompin' Ground' too, you've just got to work them into people's minds and then into the live shows.
How have you evolved as a musician and as a person since ‘Spark' back in 2016?
Oh man! I've been through so much life! Life has hit me in the face so many times since the ‘Spark' days. I've played a thousand shows, I've almost died on stage, I fought my way back, I've had a kid, I got married – I've lived a whole lot of life! (laughing)
I've always had the fire inside me to do great things and take risks and this is the way that I want to go forward, this sound that we've achieved on ‘Low Country High Road' is what I've been chasing my whole career. When you listen to this album and the juxtaposition of the sounds on there, that is what I've been searching for my whole career and I've spent my 10,000 hours of getting to where I am today. I've lived five lives since 2016 when ‘Spark' came out and that has to have had an effect on who I am right now, right? It's a good thing that I'm very grateful for.
Good luck out on tour getting this wonderful album out to as many people as you can. I hope our paths cross on this side of the Atlantic soon, too.
I've done too much work over there to just call it quits, don't you worry. We've been building something over there in Europe that is palpable and powerful. You guys are into it, man, and we will be back over with you as soon as we can be, rest assured.
Go check our Drake White's fabulous new album ‘Low Country High Road' out in all the usual places right now.
