Smoke from the Chimney

Tony Joe White was an artist who knew he was good and didnt need a record company executive to tell him how to make music. This suited him just fine as an artist, but it didnt serve him so well in terms of selling records. His working methods and his lack of concern about fitting the comfortable boundaries of a genre didnt endear him to most label bosses, which is the main reason his recording career didnt fare especially well in the 1980s and 90s. White died on October 24, 2018, and after he passed, his son Jody White (who produced several latter-day albums for his dad) found a stash of tapes of home recordings documenting a number of songs that were never heard by the public. With help from Black Keys leader and outspoken fan Dan Auerbach, Jody took the rough tapes -- with just Tony Joes voice and electric guitar -- and added full-band backings using the crew of top-shelf Nashville session players whove become a frequent presence on Auerbachs projects. This doesnt sound like a good idea at all, especially given the idiosyncrasies of Whites writing and performing styles, but thankfully, Jody and Auerbach know and respect the Swamp Rock masters ways, and 2020s Smoke from the Chimney is an unexpected success. Whites credo in making music was generally less is more, reveling in the spare, deeply funky grooves of his country/soul fusion, but his voice was a shadow of its former self in his last years, and on Smoke from the Chimney, the arrangements do a lot of the heavy lifting that his vocals couldnt manage in terms of creating a mood and reinforcing his narratives. And while these arent great Tony Joe White songs, theyre more than good enough to merit the time and trouble Jody and Auerbach put into this project, especially the moody poor folks tales of Boot Money and Bubba Jones, the lovelorn Del Rio Youre Making Me Cry, Over You, and the powerfully atmospheric Scary Stories. This album is a project of love and admiration for Tony Joe White, and Smoke from the Chimney honors his legacy while reminding us that the tunes he left on the shelf are more effective and compelling than the emphasis cuts on most other songwriters albums. ~ Mark Deming