Back in 1980, the beloved Louisiana singer-songwriter and guitarist Tony Joe White recorded an album called The Real Thang. Only released on vinyl and met with mixed reviews, the eight-song collection flew under the radar in its time, but listening to it today, White’s beautifully distilled brand of swampy, funky country music was just on the cusp of blossoming on The Real Thang, a sound that’s come full circle, emanating from young artists’ burgeoning catalogs and filling dancehalls and festival grounds nearly five decades later. Eventually, the groovy outlaw country vibe became a staple of the rest of White’s career, both on stage and in the studio, until he died in 2018. Legendary performances, such as his Austin City Limits television appearance in 1982, set the benchmark for incorporating even the most left-field influences into country music.
White’s estate, helmed by his son, Jody White, has just announced a grand unearthing of The Real Thang, with a deeper dive into what made the era so intriguing. “The original album included 8 songs from this wildly experimental time in Tony Joe’s career,” says Jody. “As I began to explore a re-release of this lost album, I discovered that TJW had written and recorded many more songs during this period of exploration, but most of them had never seen the light of day. They were kept locked away in his large stash of studio reel-to-reels, and nobody was able to listen…..until now.”
The new version of The Real Thang is a tale of two albums. The first half is a showcase of White’s singing and songwriting as a country artist and includes several songs he wrote and sang with Waylon Jennings during their time together in the ’70s. The back half finds White moving into more of the “swamp funk” jam sessions, which became instrumental in his live shows. “The result,” says Jody, “is eighteen songs that take the listener on a ride from the Texas countryside into the swamps of Louisiana, and a journey through a forgotten time of ‘The Swamp Fox.'”
Yesterday, Holler. premiered the first single from the upcoming re-release, “Cowboy Singer.” Co-written with Jennings, “Cowboy Singer” depicts the life of a touring country music superstar, or in Jody’s words, “traveling the country in private jets, meeting new women, and living a country singer’s life on the road that ‘can make you rich…or make you poor,'” alluding to the song’s foreboding chorus. Bouncing along the more country side of White’s disposition, “Cowboy Singer” isn’t without a bluesy guitar interjection or lonesome harmonica fill.
