“Titles never come easy to me, but this one did. Long before I recorded a single note I knew that’s what I’d call it. That name, it was just in the air”. That is the back story for Jim White’s fifth album release, ‘Where It Hits You’, as told by the man himself. That reasoning could easily carry over into Jim’s music. I can picture the ‘what do you call it” question with the “well, people call it” following right behind. What “people” call the music of Jim White can range through Folk, Alt Country and Lo-Fi Indie/Americana, the reality being what a lot of musicians know but find it hard to state, or maybe feel a little pompous, by saying “it’s just music”.  You can give a song a color or an emotion as much as you can stamp it with a genre but when you take it home with you, it is the feeling that the color, emotion or musical style give that you keep in your pocket.

Jim White has a great, big pocketful of feelings ready to hand out in ‘Where It Hits You’. A recording career that reaches back to 1997 grants Jim elder statesman, survivor or true believer status dependent upon your view. He remembers that the American Roots landscape had a smaller playing field for his first album pitch, “Back then (1997) there were maybe twenty of us doing it….Wilco, 16 Horsepower, of course Lucinda, Steve Earle and The Jayhawks. Now, hell, there’s a million lonesome geniuses out there, each one singing their heart out and sadder than the next”. Fair or not, hearing the beat of your heart put into words makes folks think that  American Roots music is one big pile of hurt. For a world that likes to watch reality they sure don’t seem to want to hear it all that much.

Real is the world that Jim White sings about on ‘Where It Hits You’. He takes you on a journey that shows backstage passes from every stage of life, challenges, heartbreak and transcendence over the hurdles. Jim shares experience and makes some good suggestions about how to manover around the obstacles or plow right through them. His stories do not judge as much as witness, no finger pointing. Any missteps are a human condition and good and bad do not apply, ‘cause the path of humankind clearly sees us rising from ape and learning to walk erect. The picture never shows what we step in along the way.

As a teacher, Jim White knows that the mind cannot absorb what the ass cannot endure, so the lessons are set to a beat that makes schooling the latest dance step. “Infinite Mind” cake walks in high stepping and proud. The amount of sounds crammed into the song could overwhelm if they weren’t all so damn friendly. Kazoos tap their toes as a guitar noodles and snakes across the surface of the song with the message formed into a sing along about the committee in your head, “if your weapon of choice is that weird inner voice”, and Jim suggestion that rather than drowning them out with distractions, give a listen.  Music is just one of the vehicles that Jim White uses to display his art. With a home base in Athens, Georgia, Jim White channels through mediums as a visual artist, photographer, essayist, music producer and composer for film and theater. The true art of Jim White is how all of his muses interact. On paper, ‘Where It Hits You’ is an audio experience, for Jim White it is a blank disc where emotion and feeling can hit every sense. The music flickers and flashes with note patterns, swoops and swirls of sound move like fireflies throughout the arrangements. “The Way of Alone” looks out the windows as airy soundscapes drift by like fog as carefully plucked banjo notes cut through the dense swirls, notes bend and bow “What Rocks Will Never Know” and follow a whistling pied piper as he leads a front porch sing-along and tonal echoes surround “My Brother’s Keeper” as a narrator speaks/sings the thoughts that go through his head on the way down the rabbit hole over a guitar chord and drum funeral percussion.  Jim White lets swashes of sound color the canvas of the album. Horns are pulled from the instrumental palette and used as well placed accents throughout ‘Where It Hits You’. “Sunday’s Refrain” adds horn parts fill the spaces between Jim’s words and float along in his wake and ‘Here We Go’ dips into a funky groove that uses horn parts as cheerleaders shouting the team of voices towards the finish line. 

Jim White not only makes music, he wrangles, corrals, coaxes and coerces sound into a common mind with one goal in each song.  ‘Where It Hits You’ give s hint of its use. The album can act as a confidant or a confessor as you admit you see yourself in the songs and can glimpse a future in the advice.  The release is Jim’s first dance with Yep Roc Records. For more on Jim White, you can check out the label’s website or head into his internet cave on his website. 

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