New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ Missing Piece Group) After more than fifty years of playing music, chart topping singles, and collaborations with some of the most revered musicians of the century,
Tony Joe White is set to release a brand new album, Hoodoo, on
September 17th via Yep-Roc. In honor of his 70th birthday (July 23, 2013), White released a new track "
The Gift" from his forthcoming LP.
You can stream "
The Gift" via The Los Angeles Times here: https://lat.ms/13A3kEt
The track is available for purchase at iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-gift-single/id674684377?ls=1
"The gift is music and songs" White explains. "But it was just too powerful for this boy in the song, so he sat up in an old slave graveyard with a bottle of wine and a guitar." As the protagonist hangs his head in lamentation, figures walk out of the past and appear before him, led by a mysterious woman. "These figures were Robert Johnson, Lightnin' Hopkins, and guys from off the plantations, and she was protecting them, because they hadn't crossed over. They didn't know how to. But this strange white boy on a tombstone starts singing and playing and singing this tune and…you can hear how it ends in the song, but it gives me chillbumps when I think about it."
Randy Lewis of The Los Angeles Times said "the new song signals a continuation of the potently stripped-down, deep-groove work he's recorded in recent years."
The Louisiana born songwriter is best known for his hits "Polk Salad Annie" and "Rainy Night in Georgia." Throughout the years, his songs have been recorded by everyone from
Tina Turner to
Elvis Presley to Ray Charles.
Culled from an initial stack of roughly seventeen tunes, the nine songs that comprise Hoodoo come alive in the haunting atmosphere and intensity of the stripped-down recording process. Cut mostly live to tape—vocals and all—much of Hoodoo consists of first takes.
A European and U.S. tour will follow the release of the album.
Track List:
1) The Gift
2) Holed Up
3) Who You Gonna Hoodoo Now?
4) 9 Foot Sack
5) Alligator, Mississippi
6) The Flood
7)
Storm Comin'
8) Gypsy Epilogue
9) Sweet Tooth