When Rick White steps onto a stage, the first thing you
notice is his guitar. It’s a well-worn acoustic with a cosmic scene
adorning its body—acrylic paint swirls from the sound hole, spreading
brilliantly outward. As White and his guitar settle into a chair at the
main tent before his suppertime set at this year’s SappyFest in
Sackville, New Brunswick, two boys begin to murmur. “That’s trippy as
shit,” one says.
Like the guitar, the music is pretty and heavy and strange. White
plays quick and hard, his voice a near-whisper. He leans into the mic
and strands of his long straight hair keep sticking to his lips. He
launches into a cover of “One” and behind him Julie Doiron props her
sandalled feet on a riser and smiles a little bit to herself. And all
the while people stand quietly, listening.
“When you go to a Rick White show, there’s a particular attention
that people pay,” says Simone Schmidt a few days earlier. “The room
gets a particular vibe. People don’t talk.” About a year ago, White
invited Schmidt’s band One Hundred Dollars to record its album
Forest of Tears at the converted schoolhouse that serves as
White’s home-slash-studio in Elder, Ontario. Generally he only records
albums for friends (he’s worked with The Sadies, Joel Plaskett and
Doiron). One Hundred Dollars was one exception to this rule.
One Hundred Dollars, live at Elder Schoolhouse.
Dog Day was another. The Halifax group went out there this past
winter to record a seven-inch (due out this fall, it includes a song
White wrote specifically for the band. He also shot a 3D anaglyph video
for their song “You Won’t See Me On Sunday”). Bassist Nancy Urich
remembers driving deep “into the middle of nowhere.”
“We drove down this dirt road for ages,” she says. “We saw fields of
dairy cows. Then suddenly the GPS was like, ‘You have arrived!’ and
there it was. A classy place you’d like to live in, with a giant
backyard, and a big wood stove in the center of the living room. Neat
paintings everywhere. Racks and racks and racks of music.”
Dog Day’s 3D anaglyph video for “You Won’t See Me on Sunday, shot by Rick White.
The day after his performance at Sappy, White and I walk to the park
across from the main tent. As the sounds of Shotgun Jimmie echo around
us, we find a spot in the shade. White is wearing the exact same outfit
he wore in Eric’s Trip’s video for “ViewFinder” more than 10 years
ago—a green t-shirt, jeans and black Chuck Taylors. He chain-smokes
Matinees and sometimes he yanks blades of grass from the earth. By the
end of the conversation, we are surrounded by little green piles.
“I always feel like a bigger brother to some people in bands I make
friends with,” he says. “It seems so long ago that I did what they’re
in the middle of right now—not just musically, but emotionally. I try
to [record] them the way they sound to me.”
“We know what we’re like to work with—we can be picky,” Dog
Day’s Urich says. “But with Rick, it was not stressful at all. We’d
record a song, and then he would be like, ‘Let’s make a video.’ We’d do
the video, and then he’d say, ‘Let’s go for a walk.’ He trusted it
would get done. And it did.”
“He’s not hard or critical,” Schmidt says. “But he makes you want to
be the best that you can.”
White refuses to view his interest in producing bands as a business
gesture. He doesn’t charge for his services. For him, it’s just another
hobby. He has a similar philosophy when it comes to songwriting.
“I try not to think about it too much,” he says. “If you think about
it and analyze it before you write it, it’s not the truth anymore. It’s
what you want the truth to be.”
White wrote with painful candor about his love life during the
tempestuous days of Eric’s Trip. Later, with Elevator and his solo
albums, he retreated deeper into his psyche. He admits that drugs
helped.
“I’ve always been a dope smoker, but when I did a lot of acid for
years, it was not in a party way,” he says. “I felt like I was
experimenting with it intelligently. I hate coming across as a drug
abuser. When you say someone’s ‘on drugs’ I think of heroin, or crack.
Mushrooms and LSD are these little fun psychedelic drugs. They can fuck
you up, sure, but it was really good for my creativity.”
There aren’t many artists who can expose their internal meanderings
into worlds of despair, longing and druggy introspection as nakedly as
White and escape ridicule. Yet, somehow, he has. It could be that
people revere White so much that he can now do whatever he likes. It
could also be that he has little to lose living deep in the Ontario
woods.
“Being able to make a living off of what I do is surreal,” he says.
“I just don’t have to do it now. I take care of a house and cats and
stuff. I don’t worry about bills. Any money I make, I give to
Brian.”
Rick White’s video for “Over the Loneliest World,” recorded “live in the yard.”
Brian Taylor runs Blue Fog, the label that releases White’s albums.
He owns Elder Schoolhouse and lives with White there. He is an imposing
man with a soot-coloured beard who used to front the early ’80s
hardcore band Youth Youth Youth. White says he’s always had a knack for
befriending the tough guys; to avoid getting beaten up in high school,
he used to talk Moncton bullies into letting him stencil Iron Maiden
logos on their jackets.
“I always had a survival instinct like that,” he says with a laugh.
“I kind of like having a big bulldog with me if I ever need any
protection.”
One wonders what Rick White could possibly need protecting from.
Then again, there is something fragile about him. He sleeps at strange
hours and rarely goes out. He wonders what it will do to his health,
but the nocturnal life seems to suit him.
“Every day is different,” he says. “The weird ones are when you
sleep at three in the afternoon and wake up at midnight. I find it’s a
really long wait for the sun, and you see the day in a whole new way.
It’s inspirational.”
Before I leave for Sappy, Schmidt shows me a photo she’s editing to
use on the sleeve of One Hundred Dollars’ forthcoming seven-inch. It is
a black-and-white photo of her band at Elder Schoolhouse, spread out in
that straight line that bands always pose in, some people smiling, some
not. In the corner, barely visible, is White, so blurred that he almost
looks spectral. Perhaps it’s an accurate metaphor for how White affects
those around him. He gives the best parts of himself, to be absorbed,
and somehow in a tiny, weird, ineffable way, you are changed.
“He doesn’t have a typical warmth,” Schmidt says. “Some people are
conventional. He’s different. You never met anyone like Rick.”
More Rick White-related vids
Julie Doiron, live at Elder Schoolhouse.
Elevator, live in Toronto, 2002.
Eric’s Trip, “Viewmaster”
Related Stories
Live review: Rick White, Julie Doiron and friends at the North Street Church
This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2009.
excellent article, alison. i have always admired Rick White and the way, since his youth, his life and art revolved around documenting the music he and his friends were making in Moncton and now in toronto/elsewhere. his dedication to his art – music, film, photography, recording – is truly awesome and inspiring. he is a master. and someday Rick (and his equally brilliant Eric’s Trip bandmates) should be given the Order of Canada.
A true artist.
Really well done article Alison; I’m sure the show at North End Church tonight will be fantastic.
Very good article. I wish he was able to make the trip to Newfoundland with everyone else playing the Halifax show.