(08/02/05)
Sign up and add Jason as a friend to your MySpace account....and if you don't have an account...join! It's Free and will give you all kinds of other info on Jason.
Please note that the account is www.myspace.com/jasonswhite....make sure you add the S...there are other Jason White's out there.
(07/28/05)
Go show your support for Jason by voting for him in the Nashville Scene Music Festival Awards. Jason is nominated in the Best Singer-Songwriter Category. You can vote as often as you like....so vote early and vote often. Voting ends August 17th. Visit www.nashvillescene.com or the direct voting link at http://www.nashvillescene.com/NSMA_Ballot/index.shtml.
Thanks!
(01/18/05)
John Soeder put Jason's album Tonight's Top Story on his top 10 list for the year ending 2004 - check out this review.
"The tag singer-songwriter doesn't do justice to this ex-Clevelander, now a Nashville resident. On his second album, White proved to be a master storyteller whose tales of dreamers, schemers and star-crossed lovers just happened to be set to great music, too, from gritty rock 'n' roll to twangy balladry".
John Soeder - Cleveland PD
(09/30/04)
TONIGHT'S TOP STORY • Jason White
I give up, somebody tell me why this talented sonofabitch isn't famous. He's beautiful, he's a super dude, his music's fabulous. Tell you what, maybe he's not famous yet, but he will be. Oh, he will be.
I'm a little lathered up about it, I saw him play solo last night in front of the amazing Pat Buchanan (see our review of Pat's latest) and Jason knocked us all out, on every single tune, without ingratiating himself beyond sheer and relentless excellence.
Jason's 2001 debut, Shades of Gray, not only reaped outrageous acclaim from the press, but Tim McGraw picked up a great song called "Red Ragtop" and made it Country enough to take it all the way to #1. So why didn't a major label deal follow for the young chiseled author? Perhaps we'll cover this and other riddles in an interview with the artist in the next quarter.
Though the new CD, Tonight's Top Story, has a melodious, groovy and uplifting quality, there's plenty of tragedy, addiction, suicide, homicide, twisted love, and broken people to go around. To my ear he is equal parts Springsteen, Billy Joel, and Elvis Costello, though the acknowledged influences are Dylan, Neil Young, Elvis Costello, and Van Morrison.
Viktor Krauss produced both records masterfully, and along with electric and acoustic bass, tracked electric guitars and keyboards. Three of my favorite Music City killers appear throughout, Jack Silverman on electric guitars, Rick Lonow on drums, and Jim Hoke on saxophone, recorder, clarinet, and flute. The artist himself is a hot player, and on this disc played acoustic and electric guitars, harmonica and percussion.
The album opener "Slow News Day" is very AAA radio friendly and should propel our man to various national corners. But the bitch is that it's bigger than that, a lot bigger. This cat is a star, and if it doesn't happen, something or somebody screwed up. Listen to that song and the clips of "Fat City Saturday Night," and the beautiful "Woman of the World" which reminds this listener of the best of Gordon Lightfoot and Harry Chapin. But if you don't just buy this record, you are missing too many great songs. Fact of the matter is, you're missing too many great songs if you don't buy both of the Jason White records. As soon as possible, here. • FG
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(09/27/04) Performing Songwriter
Jason White
Tonight's Top Story
Produced by Viktor Krauss
On his debut Shades of Gray, Jason White proved he had a knack for gritty storytelling couched in fluent pop. He combined the two with such success that Tim McGraw picked up the record’s brooding “Red Ragtop” and made it into a controversial hit.
On Tonight’s Top Story, White’s story songs are even more grim and gripping. With doomed rich boy junkies, car crashes and suicidal heroines, the lyrics read like a Harry Crews novel. But the music and White’s fluid voice elevate the subject matter to where the characters are honored and celebrated as individuals on a level with the subjects of his striking love songs. “Blackberry Winter,” with its lost souls, is particularly disarming, and its mixture of naked lyrics with big rock production creates an engaging balance.
The search for identity is a preoccupation on this record and songs like “Fat City Saturday Night” and the title track explore the fight for self in a faceless, callous world. —CS
(09/27/04) Stephen Haag
JASON WHITE
Tonight's Top Story
(Hanging Vines)
US release date: 11 July 2004
UK release date: Available as import
by Stephen Haag
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Nashville singer-songwriter Jason White is not a household name. A few years back, though, in 2001, Tim McGraw's cover of one of his tunes, "Red Ragtop", riled a few households with a verse about abortion ("We were young and wild / We decided not to have a child / So we did what we did / And we tried to forget"), and the song was banned on some country radio stations. Maybe you remember this brouhaha and maybe you don't. Either way, I don't quote the above lyrics to fan the flames (well, embers at this point) of controversy; rather, it's done as a means of showing that White is a storyteller willing to tackle difficult and unconventional subjects. He showed great facility on his debut album, 2001's Shades of Gray, and on his sophomore release, Tonight's Top Story, (an apropos title for a storyteller, no?) he proves that his keen storyteller's eye and ear are no fluke.
Tonight's Top Story is brimming with interesting, vivid characters. There's the gun-toting disgruntled employee of the opener "Slow News Day", the doped-out sad sack of "Trust Fund Junkie" ("Hey mom and dad / Please don't cut me off now / ... I swear I'll get clean somehow") who ends up dead in a botched robbery attempt, the suicidal lesbian redeemed by love and the dog who saves its owner's life following a harrowing car wreck (both in "Blackberry Winter"). Granted, these examples make Tonight's Top Story sound gruesome and bleak, but White, with the help of his backing band –- guitarist Jack Silverman, drummer Rick Lonow and multi-horn-instrumentalist Jim Hoke -– and producer Viktor Krauss (Alison's bro, he also plays bass and keyboards on the album) keep the album from being a mopefest. "Slow News Day" is almost adult-contemporary-hip-hop (whatever the hell that might be) and is so slick and clean-sounding you could practically eat off it. A funky bassline pins down the dark "Fat City Saturday Night", while White lets loose with a fuzzed out, bluesy guitar solo. It makes you wish the album was a little more scuffed-up sounding -– after all, shouldn't gritty topics be paired with a gritty sound? More often than not, though, White keeps his tunes firmly ensconced in the inoffensive pop-rock continuum. A hint of twang colors the otherwise-bland ode to his daughter "For Melissa" (though, speaking as a non-father, who am I to say? The jaunty lyrics of "Highwayman" -– the title character kidnaps the queen at knifepoint for his own -– are paired with a lullaby. To these ears, it's a shame that White's razor-sharp lyrics are hamstrung by (comparatively) toothless music.
It's no surprise, then, that Tonight's Top Story's top story is the track that strikes the best balance between word and music. "Woman of the World" doesn't involve guns, violence or suicide, but tells of a young man's infatuation with a woman who's got a severe case of wanderlust; it's your typical boy-meets-girl-loses-girl-gets-girl-back-loses-her-yet-again story. (White sings with a Dylan-esque world-weary resignation (recognition?) that "I got a postcard in the mail today / The fifth one since she flew away / A picture of some hotel in Japan / I think I finally understand / ...She was never mine / She was a woman of the world"; it will just about break your heart.) There's some horns echoing the song's sentiments, but it's not as overproduced as some of the other cuts; the tune unfolds at a charming, natural pace.
Jason White, with Tonight's Top Story proves he's got songwriting down cold; the next step is to find the right sound to match his literate, albeit often dark, lyrics. This guy's words deserve better than run-of-the-mill.
— 9 August 2004
(08/18/04)
Congratulations to Jason who has been nominated in the Best Singer-Songwriter category for the Nashville Scene Music Awards.
This is the most heavily contested category so we need everyone's vote. Tell you friends, tell your neighbors, tell the guy who bags your groceries. Every vote counts.
Please visit the following link and show your support.
Thanks!
http://www.nashvillescene.com/NSMA_Ballot/
(07/29/04) Don Rhodes
Musician discovers that a good song is a good song, no matter its style
Web posted Wednesday, July 28, 2004
By Don Rhodes | Columnist
Unwanted pregnancies are hot topics with both adults and teens, but they rarely become the subject of Top 5 country songs.
Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw, however, have recently scored with hit songs about that very topic: Mr. Chesney with There Goes My Life, co-written by Wendell Mobley and Neil Thrasher, and Mr. McGraw with Red Ragtop, by Jason White.
There Goes My Life is about a young unmarried couple who end up appreciative and happy for their unwanted child, while Red Ragtop is about a young unmarried couple who decide they would have a better future by terminating the pregnancy.
Mr. White will perform at 9:30 p.m. Friday at The Blind Pig, 1251 Broad St. He will join a new MCA Records artist, Australian-born Jedd Hughes, and singer/songwriters Patrick Davis and Clay Cook for a show. Cover charge is $5.
"Red ragtop" refers to the car in which the couple in Mr. White's song conceive their child. Some lines that tell of their decision to have an abortion go:
"We were young and wild, we decided not to have a child
So we did what we did and we tried to forget
And we swore up and down there would be no regrets ..."
Mr. White, who has lived in Nashville since 1998, recorded the song on his widely praised debut rock album, Shades of Gray, on the independent Hanging Vines label.
It was rerecorded by Mr. McGraw in 2002 for his 3 million-selling album Tim McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors and released as a single.
"The story I heard was that my version was being played on a rock station in Nashville," Mr. White said in a recent telephone interview. "An independent song-plugger heard it. He went out and bought a copy of my album at Tower Records and immediately took it to Tim and told him to listen to it.
"I never thought of it as a country song. I played a resonator guitar on my recording, which gave it more of a country vibe, but I thought of it as more of a Bruce Springsteen kind of ballad thing."
Mr. White, who toured the nation for eight years with his Cleveland, Ohio-based rock-jazz band The Janglers, barely knew who Tim McGraw was when told that Mr. McGraw was recording his song.
"I said, 'He's the one with the hat, isn't he?' I did know that he was married to Faith Hill, but that's about all," Mr. White said.
Mr. White is of the opinion that "good music is good music," no matter what style a song is originally recorded in.
"Ray Charles was a prime American example that a good song is a good song no matter how it is done," Mr. White said. "If it is given an R&B treatment, it will come out R&B. If it is given a country treatment, it will come out country.
"I personally thought (the Seattle grunge band) Nirvana was just a bunch of noise until I heard them do their unplugged thing. Then it struck me: 'These melodies are so nice.'"
Don Rhodes has been writing about country music for 33 years. He can be reached at (706) 823-3214 or don.rhodes@morris.com.
(07/28/04) Austin City Limits Festival
Jason White
Honest, literate, and incisive lyrics, a gift for melody and a sturdy grasp on songcraft: This is what sets Nashville-based singer-songwriter Jason White apart from the pack. Both his standout debut Shades of Gray and his latest effort, a fiery blend of power pop, rock and intense balladry titled Tonight’s Top Story, are blessed with a level of songcraft too rarely heard in today’s up-and- coming artists. Concerned with neither easy fame nor slick production, White writes songs from the gut — songs that ask questions, that explore, that raise debate. To wit: one of White’s songs from Shades of Gray, “Red Ragtop,” was covered by country superstar Tim McGraw in 2002 and subsequently gained notoriety as one of the most controversial songs of the year, thanks to its honest reflection on the topic of abortion — not exactly the kind of thing you hear too much about on mainstream country radio. “His songs indict, mourn, celebrate and snicker,” notes Performing Songwriter. “White has secured a place in the relatively small and very exclusive club of young, gutsy, seriously good Nashville songwriters.”
www.jasonwhite.org
(07/16/04) The Cleveland Plain Dealer
Ex-Clevelander rides 'Red Ragtop' to songwriter Valhalla
Friday, July 16, 2004
John Soeder
Plain Dealer Pop Music Critic
The tag "singer-songwriter" doesn't do justice to Jason White.
This ex-Clevelander is more of a storyteller whose riveting tales of dreamers, schemers and star-crossed lovers happen to be set to great music, too.
He just released his second solo album, "Tonight's Top Story."
"I'm really happy with the way it came out," White said by phone last week from his home in Nashville.
He'll headline a gig tonight at Wilbert's.
White, 37, got a big break two years ago, when his song "Red Ragtop" was covered by Tim McGraw. It was a hit for the country superstar, although lyrics about the emotional toll of an abortion made the tune too hot to handle for some radio stations.
"Part of the problem with country music is radio controls the whole market," White says. "Songwriters are terrified of taking chances. They don't want their songs to be viewed as too controversial, so they tend to write very safe, unoriginal stuff.
"If I'm viewed as controversial in the country genre, well, it's not really saying much. I enjoy it, actually."
Besides, White doesn't limit himself to country music. Alongside the twangy ballads on "Tonight's Top Story" are plenty of gritty rock 'n' roll tunes, including "Slow News Day" and "Young American Dreamer."
White's own version of "Red Ragtop" appeared on his 2000 debut CD, "Shades of Gray."
"Tonight's Top Story" is "a more experimental album," he said. Its grandiose sweep is reminiscent of one of the first records White owned, "The Beatles," aka "The White Album."
"It was a huge influence on me," White said. "The Beatles played rock, R&B, country - all different styles. . . . I've always wanted to make albums with a lot of different kinds of music."
Some of his other major influences are literary.
"I'm a huge fan of Edgar Allan Poe and Ernest Hemingway," White said. "And I stole the title 'Blackberry Winter' [the last song on 'Tonight's Top Story'] from Robert Penn Warren."
His personal favorite on the new album is "Woman of the World."
"I was hoping Tim McGraw would have a go at it," White said. "He actually had it on hold for quite some time, but he passed at the last minute."
Another standout track, "For Melissa," is a moving tribute to White's sister, who drowned at the age of 11.
"Kiss your little brother now / Time for you to go to sleep and dream away the hours," he sings.
White was raised in Cleveland Heights. He graduated from University School in 1985. After a year at Middlebury College in Vermont, he returned to Cleveland and hooked up with some high school pals to form the Janglers, a popular draw in the Midwest in the late '80s and early '90s.
White moved to Nashville in 1997.
After "Red Ragtop" became a smash for McGraw, White got offers to sign with major record companies and indie labels.
He ended up releasing "Tonight's Top Story" on his own, however. He said he wanted creative freedom and complete ownership of the master recordings.
His touring band includes another ex-Clevelander and Janglers alumnus, Jack Silverman, on guitar, as well as keyboardist John Deaderick, bassist Viktor Krauss (who produced both of White's albums) and drummer Steve Ebe.
"I'm at a place right now where I'm making the music I want to make," White said. "I'm having a lot of fun."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
jsoeder@plaind.com, 216-999-4562
(07/10/04) Michael McCall - The Nashville Scene
Jason White: The familiar media phrase "Tonight's Top Story" is a fitting title for White's second album. Rocking up his descriptive lyrics with modern, atmospheric touches, the local songwriter has a reportorial eye for details, whether he's depicting social or romantic situations. He tends to tell his stories like a documentation, singing in a dispassionate tenor that lets the emotion emerge from the details rather than from his tone or arrangements. There are plenty of sly ideas in his presentation, and aside from the mean-spirited "Trust Fund Junkie," which belittles a troubled rich kid's real problems, White offers an incisive look at the human stories beyond the sound bites.
(04/26/04)
Freedom Sings is a critically acclaimed multi-media experience featuring an all-star cast of musicians and an “only-in-America” story line. The presentation tells the story of almost three centuries of banned or censored music in America and invites audiences to take a fresh look at the First Amendment.
(01/30/04) Mike Farley
A singer/songwriter with roots in Cleveland, Jason White moved to Nashville a few years back and his songwriting career recently blossomed when country superstar Tim McGraw cut one of his songs. What people tend to overlook is the fact that White is a master storyteller with a unique style that tends to veer off course yet remain interesting. Tonight’s Top Story is the latest from Jason White and his fans surely won’t be disappointed with it.
(10/30/02) Atlanta Journal Constitution
Nashville singer-songwriter and Atlanta fave Jason White rang us to discuss the naked honesty in his song "Red Ragtop." The song, which raises the topic of abortion and was recently recorded by Tim McGraw, is generating controversy as it climbs the country charts.
"Other people have actually recorded it but not released it," White said. "It really took someone of Tim McGraw's stature to get the song played."
As for readers inquiring about when White would return to his adopted city, he said he's finishing a follow-up album to his critically acclaimed debut, "Shades of Gray." He's hoping to have the record out and an Atlanta booking secured before the end of the year.
(10/29/02) Atlanta Journal Constitution
Controversial country song a hit at Smith's Country singer Tim McGraw's latest single isn't new to the folks who routinely consume longneck beers and second-hand smoke at Smith's Olde Bar in Midtown. Jason White, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter who wrote "Red Ragtop," is a favorite booking at the club. The lyrics detail the relationship of a young couple facing down an unplanned pregnancy, a resulting abortion and its emotion-fueled aftermath.
"I personally have just had one phone call about it," Eagle 106.7 Program Director Steve Mitchell told Buzz on Tuesday. "It does contain the line, 'We decided not to have the child,' but there's resolution later in the song. The great thing about country music is that it addresses real life." The abortion references in the song have even been known to evade some listeners.
When White performs "Red Ragtop" in concert, some cigarette-lighter-wielding Smith's Olde Bar regulars scream and yell like he's playing "Freebird."
(09/25/02)
"This is a great, powerful story song. It gives you a view into somebody's life as he looks back on the choices he made. I love it that songs can do that- conjure up a memory or a place, or a sense of what you were feeling at a particular time. In the times that we live in today, a song like this can make you reflect on your own life, where you've been, and where you're going."
(09/20/02) Robert K. Oermann - Music Row Magazine
TIM McGRAW - Red Ragtop
Writer: Jason White; Producer: Byron Gallimore/ Tim McGraw/ Darran Smith;
Publisher: Acuff-Rose, BMI; Curb
-A recollection of teenage romance that's tinged with regret and resignation. Tim's delivery of the storyline is strikingly believable: You get the distinct sensation that he could have lived this. The restraint in the production is admirable, too.
Stephen H. Segal, In Pittsburgh Weekly
"Jason White's debut album is the best disc I've heard so far this year - the best as in nothing else has even come close...When we sigh about the sort of music they never play on pop radio anymore, Jason White is what we're wishing for."
Performing Songwriter Magazine
"...his songs indict, mourn celebrate, and snicker - if the fact that White's publishing company is Acuff-Rose isn't assurance enough of his writing ability, then one listen to the record will be - White has secured a place in the relatively small and very exclusive club of young, gutsy, seriously good Nashville songwriters"
Harrison, Atlanta Journal Constitution
"White alone is worth the price of admission. Shades Of Gray, his debut album, is as poetically populist as Springsteen, as clever as Elvis Costello and as catchy as Squeeze. You can hear traces of each in the brilliant slices of life White concocts. His hook-filled, heartfelt tunes would sound terrific pumping from the car radio, every hour on the hour. A world where "Ghost of Thoreau" or "Red Ragtop" is Top 40 material would be a beautiful place."
John Hood, Music Row Magazine
"He fearlessly tackles difficult subject matter (rape, murder, drug addiction) and still writes catchy-as-hell pop tunes without losing the poignancy such subjects demand. He's a magnetic live performer and a writer with a wry wit and a social conscious. Simply put, he writes memorable songs with hooks that go on for miles."
Charles Earle, In Review, Nashville
"With the release of this indie album, this White guy has vaulted himself into the lofty territory of being among the best writers in town, and I don't say that lightly. This man is absolutely fearless. He can write a song about anything...if this all sounds interesting, head down to Tower Records and pick this record up. In fact, crawl on your knees over gravel if you have to..."
Shades of Gray was chosen as one of the Top 10 Rock Albums by: THE TENNESSEAN, MUSIC ROW MAGAZINE, IN REVIEW & SENSORED MAGAZINE