Sarah White

Artist Information

Biography

Born and raised in the two Virginias, Sarah White grew up with a love for rock and roll radio, dusty LP records, and the country music her father played on guitar. Her strong roots rock and country music influences are grounded in punk instincts, inviting comparisons to a wide spectrum of artists from Hazel Dickens and Chan Marshall to Kathleen Edwards and Jeff Tweedy.

Her band the Pearls features Ted Pitney formerly of bluegrass stalwarts King Wilkie on guitar, punk rock legend Michael Bishop of GWAR and Kepone on bass, and Stuart Gunter of roots rock faves Wrinkle Neck Mules on drums. Together this unlikely lineup helps draw out the force of rock and soul of country in Sarah’s “gorgeous, catchy and ultimately moving songs (Richmond Times-Dispatch).”

Working the live music circuit of her native Charlottesville, Sarah’s unique songwriting eventually caught the ear of hometown hero Dave Matthews who offers this bit of praise:

“Sarah’s music kills me; beautifully from the ground up, no plastic.”

Sarah received national accolades at the 2007 Mountain Stage New Song Contest where she won Best Song for “Sweetheart”, from the EP of the same name. She has performed with a variety of acts such as Bonnie Prince Billy, Justin Townes Earle, Earl Scruggs, Merle Haggard, Jolie Holland, Mason Jennings, Lilys, Chuck Prophet, and Michael Hurley.

This summer Sarah White & the Pearls played the Dave Matthews Band Caravan in Atlantic City and at FloydFest X. This fall White will appear in an independent film MY FOOL HEART starring Jim Waive, Dr. Ralph Stanley, Merle Haggard, Elizabeth Cook, Jim Lauderdale and many more.

A new Sarah White & the Pearls record is underway for 2012.

Instrumentation

Sarah White - Guitar, Lead Vocals
Michael Bishop - Bass, Backing Vocals
Ted Pitney - Guitars/ Vocals
Stuart Gunter - Drums, Backing Vocals

Discography

Sweetheart EP (Self-released, 2008)
White Light (Antenna Farm, 2006)
You're It EP (Self-Released, 2004)
Bluebird (Jagjaguwar, 2000)
All My Skies Are Blue (Jagjaguwar, 1997)

**Albums available for download at:**

http://sarahwhite1.bandcamp.com/

COMPILATIONS:

Kid Pan Alley (Compass, 2008) WAMMIE WINNER!
Folk Music For The End Of The World (Yer Bird, 2007)
Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (Fargo, 2007)
Acuarela Vol. 1 (Acuarela Discos, 2001)

PRESS

Gorgeous, catchy and ultimately moving songs…
-- Richmond-Times Dispatch

It’s an album both spare and powerful, effortlessly and organically combining the forcefulness of rock and the soul of country. At the sonic center of the album is Sarah’s voice, the newly mature, edge-of-tears, catch-in-the-throat, flat-out heartbreaking voice.
-- C’VILLE Weekly

A delicately bare and pretty album that ensures the singer-songwriter a place in the company of Cat Power's Chan Marshall and Edith Frost. Yep, that good.
-- San Francisco Bay Guardian

Every now and then there’ll be a record that sounds like it dropped out of the sky with no accompanying context, no obvious influences or antecedents, no preconceived notions of what scene it’s supposed to fit into. That’s the situation with Bluebird, the excellent new album by Virginia singer/songwriter Sarah White…
-- New York Press

AREA VENUES/FESTIVALS:

The Fillmore, San Francisco CA
Flat Rock Music Festival, Flat Rock NC
Dave Matthews Band Caravan, Atlantic City NJ
Pete's Candy Store, Brooklyn NY
The Living Room, NY NY
Nelsonville Art & Music Festival, Nelsonville OH
2008 Folk Alliance, Memphis TN
The Basement, Nashville TN
SXSW Runt Records Showcase, Austin TX
IOTA, Arlington VA
Ashland Coffee & Tea, Ashland VA
Bristol Rhythm & Roots Festival, Bristol VA
Charlottesville Pavilion, Charlottesville VA
FloydFest, Floyd VA
The Jefferson Theater, Charlottesville VA
The Paramount Theater, Charlottesville VA
Jammin Java, Vienna VA

Links

• Facebook
• MySpace
• Twitter

Audio

• Sweetheart
  Listen   Download
• Apple In B Major
  Listen   Download
• Married Life
  Listen   Download
• ILY
  Listen   Download
• Sarah Arizona LIVE at the Paramount
  Listen   Download

Lyrics

• Sweetheart
• We Have A Song
• I Can't Wait
• Annie Was Our Angel
• Edgar

Video

Photo Gallery

Press

• The Festy Experience 2011 Review [+ Show ]
  

  Sarah White and the Pearls came onto the Southern Stage next, and put on a great alt-country rock sh...Sarah White and the Pearls came onto the Southern Stage next, and put on a great alt-country rock show. Wearing a white 60s shift dress, White et al. blazed through songs like "Apple in B Major" and "My Brother." The Pearls consist of musicians well-known around Virginia, including Ted "Righteous Handlebar Moustache" Pitney on guitar, under-the-radar King Wilkie, punk legend Michael Bishop from Gwar on bass, and drummer Stuart Gunter from Wrinkle Neck Mules. During "Sarah Arizona" the harmonies were on point, and White's vocals channeled Pat Benatar. Due to the excellent musicianship of each member, the band was able to jam gigantically for a single controlled minute. It left the audience wanting more. The name "Sarah" sung in the refrain is still very hard to stop humming (and not just because it happens to be this reviewer's name!). There was something very strange and haunting about watching a woman named Sarah sing the name herself.

• Sarah White and the Pearls are followed by Jeff Coffin on stage [+ Show ]
  

  Virginian Sarah White and her three-piece band the Pearls opened the Dave Matthews Band Caravan with...Virginian Sarah White and her three-piece band the Pearls opened the Dave Matthews Band Caravan with the words, “Welcome to Atlantic City” at 1:20 p.m. Friday to brilliant sunshine, temperatures in the 80s and a warm breeze.
  
  White was the only live music for the first half hour of the festival, and she came on stage appropriately dressed in a silver, sleeveless dress and mirror sunglasses.
  
  The festival is leaning heavily on singer-songwriter types. White kicked off the day with a strong eight-song set of her original tunes that closed with one of her best songs, “Fightin’ Words,” a composition about relationship discord.
  
  Earlier, it wasn’t very crowded at the Boardwalk stage where she performed. People had enough room to put blankets down and sit instead of stand.
  
  Some concertgoers were taking full advantage of the sun early, men already had their shirts off and women were in bikini tops while others were in full sun protection mode with hats and sunglasses.
  
  After Sarah White, Dave Matthews Band touring saxophonist Jeff Coffin got to show his solo side as his band Mu'Tet was the second band to take the stage.

• Sarah White and the Pearls; The Jefferson Theater; Saturday, August 21 [+ Show ]
  

  Shine on you crazy pearls BY ANDREW CEDERMARK At Saturday night’s concert by Sarah White and ...Shine on you crazy pearls
  
  BY ANDREW CEDERMARK
  
  At Saturday night’s concert by Sarah White and the Pearls at the Jefferson Theater, Sarah White herself referred to the show as the “Neko Case Pity Party.” She was speaking, of course, about the redheaded alt-country singer who postponed her gig there because of an “overextended work schedule,” prompting White and her band to step in for a gig that was probably just as good, and, as the Daily Progress noted, $28 cheaper to attend.
  
  Sarah White’s band the Pearls, with bassist Michael Bishop, has been turning heads with a much louder sound—and matching outfits.
  
  While White’s choked-up, wistful vocals pack more of an emotional punch than that of most songwriters—Case included—White distinguishes herself by serving a heap of good humor along with everything you could want from the singer-songwriter persona, usually a far more somber business. The joyous mood onstage made the band’s roaring cover of Pavement’s “Gold Soundz” an easier pill to swallow. Sian Richards—who performs in a country duo with White called the (All New) Acorn Sisters—went onstage for a rendition of Travis Tritt’s “Here’s a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares).”
  
  Travis Tritt and Pavement never sounded so much the same. And so loud, for which we had to thank drummer Stewart Gunther, who didn’t skip a single opportunity to pummel his deep snare drum and enormous cymbals. It had the effect of blowing out “White Light,” the title track from her 2006 album, into something less understated than its recorded version, and more emotional, to be sure.
  
  Michael Bishop, on bass guitar, sports a bass face that could make Beefcake the Mighty—the costumed character he once played in the band GWAR—flinch in a staring contest. With guitarist Jason “Swiss” Butler, Bishop completes the trio that forms the Pearls, which have been reinventing White’s songs with balls-to-the-walls playing, arena-sized showmanship, and, yes, matching outfits.
  
  It’s been two years since White issued her Sweetheart EP, so we’re about due for a new record—which White nodded at with one new song, a lilting ballad that exploded into a grunge jam worthy of Nirvana. Recordings recently posted to her website expand upon these themes, covering the skeleton of her country songs in a suit of armor. The departure marks at least the third phase in her career, first raw and threadbare on her debut record, All My Skies Are Blue, and increasingly lush through her catalogue. In phase three, the band plays it upbeat, no matter how sad, and downright loud.
  
  It was a shame that the crowd didn’t reach Neko Case-sized levels, as a performer’s energy has a way of dissipating in the Jefferson when the room is far from capacity. But looking at the dramatically lit fixtures around the theater, and at White, who wore a white sequined dress with charm and panache, it was clear that White is tired of being quiet. So pay attention.
  

• Checking in with Sarah White
  

  Q&A with Sarah White in the Cville's Best Of issue

• Sarah White's hard-hitting new band plans to "hit it hard" [+ Show ]
  

  The search for Pearls wanes BY ANDREW CEDERMARK Sarah White has served as a sort of de facto f...The search for Pearls wanes
  
  BY ANDREW CEDERMARK
  
  Sarah White has served as a sort of de facto first lady of Charlottesville rock & roll since her first record, 1997’s All My Skies Are Blue. It sometimes feels like there’s not much around town that doesn’t in some way, shape or form, draw on White’s contributions since. But over the past few years White’s local appearances have slowed to a trickle. The rare sighting of White onstage came in the form of the (All New) Acorn Sisters, a duo she formed with Sian Richards, a local actress and founding member of the Performers Exchange Project.
  
  Sarah White and Michael Bishop’s respective musical backgrounds make them an unlikely pair, but White’s new band is headed in a direction her earlier stuff only hints at: punk.
  
  Through 2008’s Sweetheart EP, White has waited for perfection while being the first to admit that it’s the imperfections—the rasp to her voice, the punk gallop beneath her songs—that make her music so…perfect.
  
  It begs the question: What is Sarah White waiting for?
  
  The answer, as it turns out, may have something to do with GWAR. Or, rather, Michael Bishop, who spent six years playing bass as Beefcake the Mighty in the Richmond-based band, and another half-decade in Kepone. The unlikely duo joined forces last summer, along with a whole new cast (more on that later), when “I loaned you my nail clippers,” White said to Bishop when we met last week.
  
  “That’s right,” says Bishop, straight-faced.
  
  “And we started hitting it off, chatting and stuff. That’s how it started really.”
  
  As it was with GWAR, you have to fight to get the real story: White picked up Bishop and new drummer Stuart Gunter (also of Richmond’s Wrinkle-Neck Mules) as a sort of package deal. The pair played together in Tom Peloso’s band the Virginia Sheiks, who shared a stage with the Pearls on a few occasions. But The Sheiks isn’t an all-or-nothing deal—Peloso is busy playing guitar for Modest Mouse—so White invited Bishop and Gunter to join her band.
  
  Bishop agreed, saying, “I liked her stuff a lot.”
  
  “My aura,” White corrects him.
  
  The occasion? Peter Agalesto, founder of Nelson County’s Monkeyclaus music hub, and bride-to-be Sarah Pope invited the Pearls to play at their wedding party. White’s recent guitarist Ted Pitney was out of town, so she asked Swiss Butler (also of Vevlo Eel) to fill in. There was some magic. “I never really thought of the Pearls as wedding party music,” she says. “But they loved it. From 9-year-old girls to 90-year-old women, they were all screaming ‘Fightin’ Words,’” a song from 2006’s White Light. “I was in heaven.”
  
  When Pitney came back, Butler already knew the songs. There was no reason not to have two guitarists, so the new Pearls started the long process of honing their three-guitar attack, which is the hallmark of the new lineup; Bishop says the electric guitar overkill helps to foreground Sarah’s punk influence. That punk influence belied the formal attire the full band wore at its first proper gig, at Birdlips’ farewell show at The Southern last month. Sources say that Bishop looked as nice in a suit as he did in the colossal legionnaire costume he wore in GWAR. With two electric guitars to contend with, Gunter, at the drums, hammers out the soft strokes that characterized the Pearls of the past.
  
  Encouraged, they packed up a couple days later and brought their act to Richmond, the second with a full lineup. It was “a tough gig.” “Partly because we are who we are now,” Bishop says, talking about feeling old—not having been in a famous band. “It’s a little bit hard to go do shows where you provide the P.A., and you’re playing at a restaurant,” he says.
  
  White agrees. “I hope we make a record and we hit it, but I’m not going to do it in a stinky, disgusting way.”
  
  “We’re kind of—I don’t know if I would use the word ‘spoiled,’” says Bishop. “Let me put it like this. If we do it, we’re going to have some style, and we’re going to be comfortable.”
  
  So that’s in a sense what we’ve been waiting for. “We’re just trying to get our mechanisms in place, for one thing,” says Bishop. “First you have to kind of articulate what you are.” White and Bishop both seem reinvigorated by the process of polishing the new Pearls. “Everyone’s caught up on all the old songs, and we’ve got some new ones in the hopper,” White says. “Which is exciting, and a long time coming.” They’ve also been recording. Bishop points his finger at an electrical outlet and says the early stages have been like “taking your finger out of the plug.”
  
  While White’s songs don’t at first listen have much to do with the kind of music Bishop made with GWAR and Kepone, he says that he’s got plenty of space to “stretch out his legs” in the Pearls. “This is the first thing I’ve done in six years with any momentum, where I feel like I’m putting my foot back into this pool that involves talking to people, and conceiving of myself as a musician.”
  
  Whatever the finished product sounds like, there’s fresh confidence in White’s voice. “I change from record to record, and it might be some quiet, creepy solo stuff, or it might be some total pop jewel nuggets with this great band,” White says. “I think that when people are fans they like it all. Maybe because of the heart it’s coming from.”

• Sweetheart EP Review 2/08 [+ Show ]
  

  “Sweetheart” has become Sarah White’s signature song. Written in 2004 and first pressed into digital...“Sweetheart” has become Sarah White’s signature song. Written in 2004 and first pressed into digital wax that same year on the You’re It EP, “Sweetheart” was recently named Best Song in the 2007 Mountain Stage NewSong Contest. To capitalize on this success, it has been recorded again on a new, self-released EP called, you guessed it, Sweetheart.
  
  Gone is the hokey double-tracked vocal and Johnny Cash-like country bass line of the original version. Given here a sunlight-on-winter-ice kind of gleam by producer Roderick Coles, “Sweetheart” is all slowburn, like an OxyContin-addled, hillbilly Rimbaud saying goodbye to the love of his life. It’s a hell of a song, a real killer, one that will hopefully succeed in giving Sarah White the larger audience she deserves.
  
  One of the roadblocks towards that success has been the absence of a stable band. The Sweetheart EP sees White playing with a new musical partner, Ted Pitney, formerly of Charlottesville’s own rodeo sweethearts, King Wilkie. This is, based on the evidence within this album, a positive development, as Pitney’s guitar and backing vocals add sinewy muscle to the naked bones of five very strong songs, four of them recorded here for the first time.
  
  Sarah White’s music is often called country, and there is more than a touch of country in her guitar playing and song writing, and in the plaintive lilt of her voice, the way it curls in at the end of her words like a deep forest fern. This is country in the manner of Townes Van Zandt and Gillian Welch, country that’s more about the dark hills of Appalachia than the plastic, McCowboy fantasy of Nash-Vegas.
  
  White’s songs often make a transition about halfway through, sliding from folk/country to rock/pop, as in the “Ba ba ba!” chorus that ends “Ply Me,” and in the subtle distorted guitar on “Apple in B Major,” a song that comes in like a lullaby, but goes out like a dirge.
  
  There’s something very Cormac McCarthy-esque about White’s songs on this EP, something stark and beautiful despite an underlying sorrow. “Sweetheart,” she sings in the title song, “if you knew the pace/ at which you fall from grace/ you’d slow down.” White’s career seems to be moving fast (she heads to Memphis at the end of February to play at the 2008 Folk Alliance Conference) but her music is never hurried.
  
  

• Unforgettable Sound of Sarah White [+ Show ]
  

  Thursday, Nov 15, 2007 - 12:04 AM BY RYAN MULDOON SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT As Thanksgiving appro...Thursday, Nov 15, 2007 - 12:04 AM
  
  BY RYAN MULDOON
  SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
  As Thanksgiving approaches, it seems remarkably clear that music fans in central Virginia have plenty to appreciate.
  
  That's especially true for fans of a certain strain of vibrant, personal and catchy songs, often as equally imbued with country and folk as with rock and pop.
  
  Notable artists such as Palominos, Emily Easterly and Horsehead dot our landscape. And just up the road in Charlottesville, we find some of the very best music in the genre or indeed the country -- being created by Sarah White and The Pearls.
  
  It was hard not to be thankful when, late last year, White released "White Light," her third full-length album, and her first in nearly seven years. But the wait was worth it. "White Light" is an unassailable collection of absolutely unforgettable songs, the product of White's talent and tenacity.
  
  "'White Light' has been very well received. I think people are excited when they hear it," White said from her home in Charlottesville. "I still really like the record, so I'm happy I spent so much time on it, obsessing over details."
  
  Those details are apparent but never overwhelming -- on songs such as "Inside a Room" and the title track, a slow-burning, lovelorn end to the album that finds White's gorgeous voice crestfallen but ultimately undefeated.
  
  "I think that songs are for the listener, so it's not really mine to say or interpret what it means to someone else," White says when pressed on the song's meaning. "But I guess I can say that 'White Light' is a love-lost song, and a laundry list of distractions to stave off emptiness: television, noise, going out, staying busy, never stopping. Of course, these things never really work."
  
  What does work is White's interaction with The Pearls, the two-man band that provides White's singing and guitar playing with vivid backbeats and backing vocals.
  
  The combination has led to a good deal of recent success, both of the circumstantial variety (fellow Charlottesville musician Dave Matthews has been quoted as saying, "Sarah's music kills me") and the substantial (her song "Sweetheart" was named best song at this year's Mountain Stage NewSong Contest in New York).
  
  It's the sort of success that allows for White's further definition of her sound with each passing day, the way she has done for years. As she explains:
  
  "My earliest influence is a record collection -- my dad's, full of bluegrass and traditional music, my mother's more rock'n' roll and'60s folk. I loved listening to records. I loved radio when I was a kid, too. [But] I may have too many influences to say that one thing won out over the other. I think I'm a combination."
  
  And those years of definition have led White to a position where she is revered not just for her performance but also for her inspiration.
  
  "I know of a couple of musicians who have covered my songs, and that's very flattering, especially when they are people I don't know," White says.
  
  "If I ever influence someone to pick up a guitar and a pen and see what they can do with it, enjoy making something for the sake of making it, not trying to fit a mold that's already been created and marketed to them as worthy, then that's good. Molds are boring."
  
  

• Cover Story: Woman on the verge? [+ Show ]
  

  The sky is dark, wrapped around the UVA Chapel, and the wind feels fit to bring down trees. Well bel...The sky is dark, wrapped around the UVA Chapel, and the wind feels fit to bring down trees. Well below the deep brown, barrel-vaulted ceiling, Sarah White and the Pearls are setting up to play a gig. It’s a Sunday night in November....
  
  

Setlist

Inside A Room
Where You're Going
Apple in B Major
My Brother
I Can't Wait
Blue Skies, Exciting Days
Sails
Married Life
I LOVE YOU
California
Sweetheart (winner Mountain Stage NewSong contest 2008)
Summer Drinks
Solace

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