TRIXIE WHITLEY INTERVIEW

RESTLESS SOUL

Trixie Whitley finds her footing as a singular solo artist

by Matt Ashare |  
Posted January 30. 2013

NATURAL BEAUTY: Trixie Whitley's blessed with a powerful voice,Smoldering with soul, burning with true blues.

"I've been dreaming of making my first album since I was twelve years old," admits a candid Trixie Whitley over the phone from her Brooklyn apartment. It may have taken the now 25-year-old Whitley more than a decade to realize that dream, which she managed earlier this month with the release of her full-length debut Four Corners. But she was busy doing other stuff. The daughter of the late Chris Whitley, a Texas-bred singer-songwriter who lived
    "In all honesty, I never wanted to," she admits. "As a kid, I never wanted to play the same thing as my dad. I didn't want to follow in his footsteps. Guitar was actually the last instrument I picked up — that was only just about four years ago. I just didn't want to play the same instrument as my dad. But the muse of music inside me was larger than my childhood need to rebel against my parents."
    Whitley was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to lend her voice to several album tracks her father recorded before his death from cancer in 2005. Then, in 2008, singer-bassist Meshell Ndegeocello co-produced an EP for Whitley. But it wasn't until a fateful brush with one of her father's old friends, producer Daniel Lanois, an erstwhile Brian Eno collaborator whose credits include working with Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, and U2, that Whitley got her first big break. Lanois had put together a band — Black Dub — with renowned jazz drummer Brian Blade and bassist Daryle Jones (a/k/a, the guy who took over Bill Wyman's job in the Rolling Stones). Whitley gave Lanois, who'd helped her father secure his first record deal, a copy of her EP, which was enough to secure her an invite to join Black Dub as the group's primary singer.
    "The story's gotten a little confusing," Whitley recounts, "because my dad and Daniel never actually worked together. But my dad recorded his first album in Daniel's New Orleans studio. I was there. I was three years old then. That was the first time that Dan and the Whitleys met. I didn't see Dan again until just a few years ago, when I went to one of his shows and gave him my EP."
    What Whitley brought to Black Dub was her resolutely powerful, natural beauty of a voice, sensual yet fierce, smoldering with soul, and burning with true blues. For all of Lanois' skillful guitar playing, the artful ambience of his production, and the seasoned support of Blade and Jones, it's Whitley's fiery presence that emerges as the focal point on Black Dub's self-titled 2010 debut. And it's her voice, rich with the glory of gospel and the gritty spirit of classic r&b, that remains front and center on Four Corners, a disc she recorded with a small circle of friends, including keyboardist/producer Thomas "Doveman" Bartlett, engineer Pat Dillett, and Bon Iver string arranger Rob Moose.
    If Whitley, like her father, is a neoclassicist at heart, she wisely brings her own personality to the party on Four Corners, offering a more unhinged take on the stately soul of Adele or, perhaps, a rockier casting of Alicia Keys' r&b stylings. Clattering programmed drums, ominous organ drones, and primal jabs of distorted guitar place Whitley in dark place on "Irene," as she works her way from a sinister whisper to a desperate scream, dropping loaded lines like, "Doctor got me on my knees/I'm beggin' you please to call me a remedy."
    The synthetic click of looped rhythms mix seamlessly with the organic grind of bluesy guitars, jazzy electric piano, and eastern-tinged string arrangements throughout "Four Corners," coalescing into something that is at once strange and familiar, unsettling and palliative. The mellow tones of a Fender-Rhodes piano lend "Pieces" something of a ’70s jazz-pop feel, akin to classic Rickie Lee Jones. "I'm leaving pieces behind everywhere I go," Whitley croons with strings welling up around her, "And every time I go, I'm leaving behind my soul."
    Elsewhere, the backing vocals on "Breath You In My Dreams" bring to mind the call-and-response of a Sunday church chorus, as piano arpeggios and a solid shuffling backbeat keep Whitley just barely grounded: "I could move mountains, sail away" she gently intones, "only ’cause, I got this much faith." And Whitley's rapid-fire spoken-word refrain in "Hotel No Name," with its guttural references to "constellations" and "priestesses," is reminiscent of Patti Smith at her gutsy, poetry slamming best.
    "I grew up on a lot of classic music, rooted in the blues," Whitley admits. "I got some of that from my dad, who grew up on Robert Johnson. But I actually more into African music like [the Malian guitarist] Ali Farke Toure — that was the blues I listened to. At the same time, I was into the underground electronic scene in Europe. I was a DJ when I was twelve. So I was definitely listening to a lot of music that other kids weren't. I mean, I was simultaneously listening to Squarepusher and Mahalia Jackson. I was really fascinated with obscure drum patterns. I'd collect weird records with titles like "Voodoo Drums." Drums were my first love, you know, like rhythm. And I notice that I play guitar and even piano with more of a rhythmic sensibility. Melody can't go without rhythm, and rhythm can't go without melody either. That's why a drummer like Brian Blade is such a master. He sings with his drums. That, to me, is what music is about."
    As she's begun to create a career for herself, playing out that dream she had when she was 12, Whitley's had to wrestle with her father's legacy. It may have provided her with certain advantages. But, it's also been difficult. "A lot of people respected my dad," she reflects. "But he burned a lot of bridges in the industry. So many true music lovers have this deep, deep respect for him. But he had a pretty crazy reputation. With him, there's this immediate association with a tormented restless soul. I am extremely proud to be his daughter. But there are times when I wish I could have a clean start, when I wonder what it would be like not to have any of those associations."