Ralph White, Down Along the Waterline

Ralph White opened his last set in Austin with Syd Barrett cover. Okay, plenty of people have played Syd Barrett covers before. But on an African thumb piano called a kalimba? Using a bucket propped between his knees to amplify the sound? That's pretty rare.

Usually performing with various banjos (which he often plays more like a sitar than a bluegrass twanging stick), accordions, and his fiddle, White tends to cover whatever song he's into at that moment, rendering it practically unrecognizable to most listeners and turning it into something more of a Middle Eastern meditation much of the time. He played Neil Young's "After the Goldrush" at his last show and none of my friends seemed to recognize it as a cover. And that's the one about the silver spaceship, man!

Listen to Ralph White on our compilation.

Ralph's voice is very unusual and cool; it has a way of bending up into the notes that makes him sound extremely laid back, like a Saturday afternoon. On his self-released Down Along the Waterline, you can hear this trademark bending on most of the tracks, but it is especially present in numbers like the title track, "Down Along the Waterline." My favorite banjo of all the ones he plays is on this track, its effect is a cross between a pashtun instrument and a sitar. He sings, "Tell me a story and I'll listen for awhile and sleep with a shit-eatin' smile." On track four, he plays the kalimba, it rattles and hammers along with his far out singing style, "Love me like a river that don't know where it's going." On track eight the kalima resurfaces and returns you to that field-recording world where the imagination can stroll around uninhibited.

Ralph White's music makes you want to travel When he sings, "While we while away the hours in our ivory towers," it's as if he's doing it to remind you to get up and go see the world, take a walk, meditate, write a song, do something. He is one of those eternally active, creative spirits that walks the Earth, and if you're in Austin you can catch him playing just about everywhere now and then. More music and info at his website.

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