“As far as I’m concerned, anyone over the age of 70 should get what they want.” “Alzheimer’s, schmalzheimers,” he told a reporter back then. Back in the early ’90s, for example, he played charity concerts for the North Coast Alzheimer’s Center in Solana Beach. Musicians in San Diego and as far away as Europe, where he has a loyal following, have rallied to stage benefit concerts for White, a troubadour who plenty of times has given his music away for free. Ultimately, he qualified for assistance, but cancer surgery and treatment don’t come cheap. “He was having a great time,” said Jim Hornung, the owner of the gallery who, along with wife Linda, talked White into selling some of his oil pastels to make some much-needed money.Īs you might have guessed, White didn’t have health insurance when he returned from a tour in Iceland late last August, barely able to breathe. And the gravelly voice, wrapping around his original songs, is seasoned by heartache and, sad to say, almost 50 years of cigarette smoking.Ī recent diagnosis says the throat cancer has spread to his spine, which means chemo and Lord knows what else.Īnd yet on May 1, the day after he received the knee-buckling report, he was playing guitar at his one-man art show at the First Street Gallery in downtown Encinitas. The harmonica horns in like a bossy, brassy child. Leaning into his guitar, he stomps and slaps in raucous time. He lives with Alda Leal, an upbeat companion with a throaty laugh.įor two weeks, I’ve been listening to “Brand New World,” one of White’s solo CDs.
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It is rooted in reality with simple, clever stories and great humor, so I pursued it as a medium as a sculptor pursues clay.”Īfter college, he embarked on a lifelong journey of gigs - and tons of manual labor - that led him to Toronto, Boston, L.A. “The blues,” White e-mailed me, “was the first music to make my feet move, my body groove and excite my spirit outside of classical Indian ragas and flamenco. But White had a disreputable uncle, a jazz player, who proved a leading role model. His parents supported a career in painting but disapproved of a life in music.
All told, White attended a dozen schools.Īfter high school, he studied at Philadelphia College of the Arts and Halifax Art College. His father worked in the State Department. He spent his major kid years in Southeast Asia as the Vietnam War was building to a boil beyond the horizon. White’s a “misfit,” always has been, he says. Painting, the solitary yin to the electronic twang of his music, is a struggle now.įor nine months, the one-man band with the signature hat has been living, not performing, the blues.īut if you’re looking for a doleful ballad, a depressing dirge, find somebody else.ĭown deep, there’s always a sardonic bright side to the blues.Īwhile back, White’s surgeon dropped by for a chat and White told him, “I was a painter, and I got glaucoma.
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