Listen to Your Song: Easy Eye Sound Releases Posthumous Album from Tony Joe White

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Singer-songwriter Tony Joe White, a.k.a. "The Swamp Fox," was beloved for his evocative southern soul tunes including "Rainy Night in Georgia," "Polk Salad Annie," and "Willie and Laura Mae Jones." The Louisiana-born artist released sixteen studio albums in his lifetime between 1968's Black and White on Monument and 2018's Bad Mouthin' on Yep Roc. On May 7, that esteemed group will grow by one title when Easy Eye Sound releases Smoke from the Chimney, a nine-song LP of previously unreleased White compositions.

White took advantage of home recording in his later years, revisiting old songs and introducing new ones armed just with his voice and guitar. Following his death in October 2018 at the age of 75, his son Jody began the process of transferring the multitrack home recordings to digital audio. Within a year, he'd compiled the nine songs that comprise Smoke from the Chimney.

To complete the skeletal demos, White enlisted Easy Eye Sound founder and one-half of The Black Keys, producer Dan Auerbach. The multiple Grammy Award winner had long hoped to collaborate with White, but sessions never panned out. In the press release for Smoke from the Chimney, Jody White explains: "For one reason or another, my Dad would never just want to go into a studio and write with somebody, or go work with somebody. He liked to do it at his place, and his way, and it turned out how it turned out, you know what I mean? So, this album really all worked out perfectly. He was making these tracks for Dan all along, but we just didn't know it."

Auerbach concurs: "Jody and I had been talking about this record for so long, and it didn't happen for a reason. It's because it wasn't supposed to happen. I was in a nervous cast of characters until the last few years, and if you'd given it to me any earlier, it wouldn't have been right. I felt like all these people on the record were the right people and they laid in there behind Tony Joe. It felt really magical when we were making it happen."

Easy Eye Sound records often tap Nashville's musical royalty to conjure sounds that are very much of the present while tipping their hats at soul classics of the past. This album was no exception. To flesh out White's songs ranging from blues to ballads, Auerbach recruited keyboardist Bobby Wood of The Memphis Boys, Nashville pedal steel titan Paul Franklin, and Grammy-winning fiddler Stuart Duncan, as well as younger players such as guitar wunderkind Marcus King.

"I feel like [the new album is] validation that Tony Joe was one of the greatest of all time," Jody White states. "That he could make something so potent, even so late in life, is something that not many people can do. I think it's going to make people who loved him already love him even more." Smoke from the Chimney arrives May 7 from Easy Eye Sound on CD, LP, and digital platforms.

Tony Joe White, Smoke from the Chimney (Easy Eye Sound, 2021) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)

Smoke from the Chimney
Boot Money
Del Rio, You're Making Me Cry
Listen to Your Song
Over You
Scary Stories
Bubba Jones
Someone Is Crying
Billy

Joe Marchese

JOE MARCHESE (Editor) joined The Second Disc shortly after its launch in early 2010, and has since penned daily news and reviews about classic music of all genres. In 2015, Joe formed the Second Disc Records label. Celebrating the great songwriters, producers and artists who created the sound of American popular song, Second Disc Records, in conjunction with Real Gone Music, has released newly-curated collections produced by Joe from iconic artists such as Johnny Mathis, Bobby Darin, Laura Nyro, Melissa Manchester, Chet Atkins, and many others. He has contributed liner notes to reissues from a diverse array of artists, among them Nat "King" Cole, Paul Williams, Lesley Gore, Dusty Springfield, B.J. Thomas, The 5th Dimension, Burt Bacharach, The Mamas and the Papas, Carpenters, Perry Como, Rod McKuen, Doris Day, Jackie DeShannon, and Andy Williams, and has compiled releases for talents including Robert Goulet and Keith Allison of Paul Revere and the Raiders. Over the past two decades, Joe has also worked in a variety of capacities on and off Broadway as well as at some of the premier theatres in the U.S., including Lincoln Center Theater, George Street Playhouse, Paper Mill Playhouse, Long Wharf Theatre, and the York Theatre Company. He has felt privileged to work on productions alongside artists such as the late Jack Klugman, Eli Wallach, Arthur Laurents, Betty Comden and Adolph Green. In 2009, Joe began contributing theatre and music reviews to the print publication The Sondheim Review, and in 2012, he joined the staff of The Digital Bits as a regular contributor writing about film and television on DVD and Blu-ray. Joe currently resides in the suburbs of New York City.