“Over the last couple of decades, East Nashville fixture Amelia White has built a folk-pop catalog that's as unfussy as it is consistent in quality, and full of insinuating hooks, slyly sleepy singing and lean, jangly backing. "Rhythm of the Rain," the title cut of the album she released in January, looks at the current political frenzy from a seasoned, bohemian remove.”
-Jewly Hight NPR MUSIC Aug. 19 2019
Amelia White, “Rhythm of the Rain”
Written in the midst of a European tour that kept her overseas during much of the 2016 U.S. presidential race, “Rhythm of the Rain” — the title track from Amelia White’s newest release — is the songwriter’s attempt to find a moment of zen in an increasingly maddening world. Driving home the song’s central image is the steady pitter-patter of a drum loop, which wouldn’t be out of place on an early Sheryl Crow record.
"Love I Swore illustrates White’s lyrical ingenuity and her ability to create an emotional soundscape in which every listener can find their own struggles or heartaches or joys.”
“From optimism and sheer bliss that graced the first few tracks and at least one along the way, the album grows incrementally despairing lyrically, yet the hook-filled and varied musical accompaniment keeps the listener engaged to White’s consistently potent and verbally direct songwriting. Only the best singer-songwriters have such a gift and White has proven again that she’s one of the few.”
Amelia talks to Joe Pug on his “Working Songwriter Podcast” about “LOVE I SWORE” and the mysteries of songwriting.
“An album that sounds as if it has been around forever, LOVE I SWORE showcases White’s flair for easy-to-access melodies alongside excursions into rugged rock and roll. It’s a fine listen from start to finish, and if there is any justice, it is one that should further promote White’s celebrity. “- Declan Culliton - The Lonesome Highway
“Taken in tandem Love I Swore is a testament to White’s powers of persuasion — that is, her ability to involve the listener and leave behind an emphatic impression. It’s everything a set of songs should be — personal, provocative and flush with earnest emotion. As a result, Amelia White has made a definitive statement and also the most defining album of her career. The love she swears to is clearly evident throughout. “
by Lee Zimmerman- Alternate Root
Trust us—if you ever need a ride anywhere, you want Amelia White behind the wheel. The beloved East Nashville fixture plays an insanely colorful Uber driver in the video for “Get To The Show,” the second single from her upcoming LP, Love I Swore (31 Tigers), due February 23.
“It’s quite literal,” says White about the song, an ornery, straightforward twang-rocker. “I started writing it while stuck in the Columbus, Ohio, airport trying to get to shows in New England. The line delivered by co-writer Gwil Owen—“Stuck on the ground when I oughta be flying”—is one of my favorites. I believe it sums up how so many artists feel.”
White certainly has been there … often. Integral to making East Nashville the indie-music hub it is today, White arrived from Boston in the early 2000s with a literate folk/rock template that’s now the foundation of what most people call Americana. She caught a break in 2019, when her album Rhythm Of The Rain garnered critical praise and gained some traction on the charts. For Love I Swore, White retained acclaimed singer/songwriter Kim Richey as producer. Richey also lends her signature vocals to an album that effortlessly blends rock, blues, pop, folk and country—like any great Americana record should.
For the video, White corralled cantankerous East Nashville upstart Molly Martin for the role of sullen, rebellious passenger. Videographer, songwriter and all-around entertainer Scot Sax directs.
“Making the video with Molly and Scot was such a blast and a total spur-of-the-moment endeavor,” says White. “Scot is good like that—I actually borrowed his coveralls. Molly ran off with the champagne at the end. I actually quit drinking years back, but I still get loaded on tunes.”
We’re proud to premiere the video for “Get To The Show.”
—Hobart Rowland
Amelia White + The Blue Souvenirs, 7 p.m., The 5 Spot:
“The Queen of the East Nashville Underground has seen and heard it all. To experience all that in her unadorned, regal splendor is a real treat.”
“One of the best songwriters at Americana was most certainly Amelia White who played a set at The 5 Spot. The sound was impeccable- it sounded as good as the record- and she had a band that was entirely simpatico with her songs…White is not your run-of-the-mill 3-chirds-and-a-capo songwriter which is refreshing because there’s an awful lot of that going on around here.”- Annie McCue
Read the article here on pages 14 & 15 or browse the full issue of Rhythms Magazine.
“While the kids were getting on down at TRNSMT a couple of miles down the road, the sensible folk headed to Glasgow’s south side Glad Café for an engaging night of music from Oklahoma and East Nashville as performed by Carter Sampson and Amelia White.”
- Paul Kerr for Americana UK
"Rocket Rearview,” released Sept. 30th ’22, makes Jim Hyne’s ( Glide/Making A Scene) Top 25 Albums of 2022 world /roots/ Blues along with such greats as Calexico, Shemekia Copeland, and Mary Gauthier.
Hynes has this to say in his review of “Rocket”
“There’s nothing the least bit pretentious about White. Don’t expect to find any sugar coating in these eleven songs but she finds a balance that ranges from the ominous to the hopeful…she evokes the doomsday Dylan of “Desolation Row” with these lines – “Prophets and Saints have abandoned their posts/They’re down at the bar with the ghosts.” She paints vivid imagery of the Old South as she revisits where she grew up in an attempt to turn a new page in “My Way Home,” a standout track among these several gems such as “Hands Are Like Faces,” co-written with guitarist Johnny Duke. In closing White emerges from the rough edges with the sublime, tender “Beautiful Sun” that invites emotions ranging from strong love to bitter sorrow all in one tightly knit tune.
Through this myriad of Amelia White’s emotions she is gritty, tender, true, and unerringly on target.”
JIM HYNES ( Making a Scene/ Glide)
If any of this week’s featured artists are a “traditional” Americana performer, it’s Amelia White; but that only points to how far afield the others are because there’s nothing traditional about White. A fixture in the East Nashville music and poetry scene for years, White is one of the artists locals flock to when everyone else is at one of the other, more nationally known, shows across the river. Rocket Rearview was written in part during the pandemic lockdowns and in the politically fraught aftermath of seditious conspiracies and disastrous court rulings. Working with producer Dave Coleman, White has assembled an impressive list of collaborators including Erin Rae, Irakli Gabriel (David Olney & Anana Kaye), Chris Benelli (Kim Richey), and Paul Niehaus. The album is available for pre-order in digital and limited-edition CD formats. Other backer perks include a signed copy of White’s poetry book Home on the Strange, a songwriting mentoring session, and a monthly letter for a year.
On her 2017 full-length Rhythm of the Rain, Nashville singer-songwriter Amelia White shows her mastery of a social-realist mode that matches perfectly with her folk-country-pop music. I guess you could call White’s music the great mean of East Nashville country-pop-folk. (I have to hyphenate my genre designation because it’s the only way to express the synthetic nature of the fabled East Nashville sound.) White recently released a spiffy four-song EP, 11 AM, which she recorded with fellow songwriter Brett Ryan Stewart. 11 AM registers as pop, right down to the way the record’s most striking track, “Mr. Sunshine,” plays in the Nashville section of Brian Wilson’s sandbox. “Mr. Sunshine” is unabashedly romantic, with White and Stewart negotiating a lucent set of chord changes in a gorgeous song that carries just a hint of pain. White says she’s readying a new full-length for release in spring 2022. Another fine Nashville tunesmith, Kim Richey, handled the production duties. Friday’s show at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge will feature White with a full band — expect help from local luminaries like guitarist-producer Dave Coleman and pedal-steel whiz Paul Niehaus.
As the old commercial said: We will sell no wine before its time. Thus it is with “Somebody to Hold,” the new single from the winning tag team of Brett Ryan Stewart and Amelia White. They wrote the song seven years ago, in a day and age when, well, pretty much everybody had somebody to hold if they were in the market for that sort of thing; it wasn’t such a pressing issue. The song languished for years until there came the annus horribilus with its isolation, house arrest, and a genuine international jones for somebody to hold. It was time to sell the wine, dig that girl!
Stewart recalls coming across an old iPhone demo of the tune at the start of lockdown and being instantly transported back. “It was a different world. And yet, still, that hunger for human connection was lingering in our subconscious enough to summon these lyrics,” he says. “Who’d have known that, years later, that notion would be amplified tenfold by a global quarantine.”
It’s not just a single though. “Somebody to Hold” is from a four-tune EP called 11 A.M. (released June 4, 2021), and serves as the project’s first single and opening track. Certainly, in the sea of hollow commercialism that characterizes much of modern music, the raw transparency of this single is, no doubt, capable of catching one by surprise. That being said, this courageous exhibition of authenticity has come to be expected from these two seasoned artists who, over the years, have forged an indelible bond of friendship and creativity, largely founded on shared past struggles — such as addiction, Amelia’s having grown up gay in a Southern conservative household, and Brett’s lifelong battle with a type 1 diabetes.
The past few years — even the Year of the Mask — have been actually rather good for White. The reaction to her 2019 album Rhythm of the Rain turned out not too shabby, and she (by humble Americana standards), has kinda “made it.” She garnered acclaim from prestigious sources such as NPR, which described the album as “consistent in quality and full of insinuating hooks, slyly sleepy singing, and lean jangly backing … looks at the current political frenzy from a seasoned bohemian remove,“ and Rolling Stone, which named the title track one of their “10 Best Country and Americana Songs to Hear Now” in January 2019, noting “the steady pitter-patter of a drum loop which wouldn’t be out of place on an early Sheryl Crow Recording.”
It is also unsurprising that Stewart, a five-star producer of countless acclaimed projects through his WireBird Productions in Nashville, and who has had his music placed in high-profile shows like Netflix’s Queer Eye, along with co-producer Irakli Gabriel, were able to create such a rich sonic landscape — especially considering the formidable cast of musicians and engineers “Somebody to Hold” employs. The ensemble includes a who’s who list of Nashville’s burgeoning Americana scene, notably Gabriel and his wife Anana Kaye, who recently released a Stewart-produced album with the late David Olney; and Paul Niehaus, who has played pedal steel with the likes of Calexico, Yo La Tengo, Iron & Wine, and, of course, Jon Byrd. “Somebody to Hold” was mixed by Joe Costa, whose engineering credits include projects by Ben Folds and Kesha, and was mastered by Tommy Wiggins.
All in all, by putting to music the type of wordless longing that has characterized so much of our recent collective experience, “Somebody to Hold” acts as a sort of salve for the very wounds it lays bare. Just as the tune yearns for the sort of home that can only come from love and companionship, so too does it find a perfect home in the unique and shared trials of our modern day. Truly, in the courageous expressiveness of both Stewart and White, one cannot help but feel that a pain shared is, indeed, a pain halved. If my math is right, halved pain from four songs — and factoring in Tennessee sales tax — comes out to be an EP, which cuts your pain level to one-sixteenth of its former self. What’s better than that?
The new EP, 11 A.M. — which includes the song “Somebody to Hold” — from Brett Ryan Stewart & Amelia White, is available here and is released domestically through WireBird Records, internationally via The Orchard.
Amelia White performs a beautiful live acoustic version of her song 'Madeleine' for Under The Apple Tree sessions.
Americana UK
Another uplifting trip then to this much-lauded Camden venue where even the chocolate brownie and the rickety wooden chair may be close to assuming a place in North London roots music folklore. We’re here to hear Amelia White, a seasoned East Nashville performer. Lucinda Williams’ comparisons are, admittedly, obvious and facile for a reviewer to throw out, but they are not far off the mark either. Perhaps a little less downcast and focused on the grimmer side of life than some of Ms Williams’ more recent work, the voice and rhythms are of that ilk. With a swathe of albums over her last 20 years since relocating from her Boston roots, Ms. White has no shortage of material and has several UK tours on her resume.
Tonight White sports a regal gold jacket and her musical offerings are as striking as her sartorial choice. She chose, in this set, to focus on more of her slower- paced cuts and in particular several from her latest album ‘Rhythm Of The Rain’. Opener ‘Let The Wind Blow’ was a wonderfully sparse and haunting song with Scott Warman’s silky double bass support underpinning her electric guitar (traded for an acoustic at various points). Musically it is in similar territory to a later highlight, ‘Dangerous Angel’, where she sang of, “Finding a crack that I can snake through,” with some shared sonic ground with Mary Gauthier while some numbers majored on a bluesier country style a la Rolling Stones Muscle Shoals period. White has a ‘lived in’ voice which wraps itself around her carefully wrought lyrics and the stealthy pace is compelling. ‘Madeline’ is in this vein – “Lonely is the only place I know.”
Some of White’s words are informed by her life as a touring female musician. ‘Free Advice’ lambasts male industry insiders who try to steer her into an uncomfortable girly demeanour with remarks such as, “You look good for your age.” ‘Get To The Show’ actually finds her pondering on retirement after a stopover at a less than enthralling city in the USA only to get all fired up again when she finds that she has garnered a glowing review in Rolling Stone. On tonight’s showing, one can see why the esteemed Rolling Stone rates her highly.
Jamie Freeman has an impressive set of recording and song-writing alliances on his CV, having been based for some while in Nashville although his Britishness comes through in his delivery and style. The opening song, ‘Hasia Dreams’, was the tale of a Syrian refugee as she makes a troubled boat journey and showed his crystal clear voice and great way with a melody to good effect. A murder ballad, ‘Hey Hey Indiana’, delivered largely acapella, was set in the harsh winter of an Indiana farming community. But most of his songs tonight were about tight social or domestic situations – indeed one details the hanging of a picture on the wall as the trigger for analysing a couple’s tribulations. With a new album poised for release he played the radio friendly single plucked from it, ‘All In The Name’, and, maybe paradoxically, its more straightforward accessible pop-folk approach is the lesser example of his lyrical and melodic strengths.
