Tony Joe White was an artist who knew he was good and didn't need a record company executive to tell him how to make music. This suited him just fine as an artist, but it didn't 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 didn't endear him to most label bosses, which is the main reason his recording career didn't 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 Joe's voice and electric guitar -- and added full-band backings using the crew of top-shelf Nashville session players who've become a frequent presence on
Auerbach's projects. This doesn't sound like a good idea at all, especially given the idiosyncrasies of
White's writing and performing styles, but thankfully,
Jody and
Auerbach know and respect the Swamp Rock master's ways, and 2020's
Smoke from the Chimney is an unexpected success.
White's 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 couldn't manage in terms of creating a mood and reinforcing his narratives. And while these aren't great
Tony Joe White songs, they're 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 You're 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