Interview: Sarah White finally flies free on new album, ‘High Flyer’

Light bounces off each note she sings. The pools of her eyes radiate a world-weary optimism. And she makes each flutter of guitar and weepy wail of steel really count for something. A native of West Virginia, amongst the frosty-tipped Appalachians on a Christmas tree farm out in Sinks Grove, Sarah White was destined for this moment. Her new album, High Flyer (out today), her first in over a decade and one that fully captures the sweet splendor of her storytelling, is as indebted to her personal, one-track narrative as it is to the swelling hills that bestowed upon her such an inheritance.

Even the soil underneath her boots has a story to tell. But that’s for another time and place.

Producer Stewart Myers, who curated a lineup of accomplished players that includes Charles Arthur (Slaid Cleaves) on guitars and Daniel Clarke (k.d. lang, Ryan Adams) on piano/keys, feeds that natural progression, stoking the flames of White’s wild and unruly heart in a way that allows the complete breadth of her craft to be witnessed in stunning layers. Opening number “Carry Me Over” waxes sweet and succulent, a rosy out-of-body existence where both the mental and physical are not exclusive to one another, whereas “Sweetheart,” melting together the harmony work of Dave Matthews into a tragically poetic exorcism, is among the album’s most gnarled and scarred, her voice particularly eerie in the way it folds over the lyrics and melody. “You think I’m giving up / I think I’m waking up right on on time,” she sings in downcast whispers, shedding a past life that already seems like years ago. She bites off the chains that bind, not sacrificially but out of mercy.

Heart-torn and left to scavenge, White worked out various lo-fi, low-budget smaller projects through the years. But when she crossed paths with Myers “at some point,” she mulls, the stars sealed a fate that would soon be revealed to her. “I’d wanted to make a new album for years, but didn’t have the funds to make it happen. Stewart convinced me to do a Kickstarter, so I did and got funded,” she recalls to B-Sides & Badlands over email. “I was definitely scrambling for some years there. There was a lot of disorganization: bands coming together and breaking apart, changing line-ups, styles. Finally, everything fell apart, I raised the money, and then it happened.”

While such early releases as 1997’s All My Skies are Blue and 2000’s Bluebird are very identifiably White, High Flyer culls the cream into a delicious porridge, thick and pasty and hanging on the bones. “It’s the best recording of me that’s been done. It really sounds like the mixture of influences and styles that are me,” she reflects “The vocals and the singing, which are the heart of my music, my band, my sound, are present and clear and strong.”

“All the Reasons” plasters on the album’s title, grafted from the things she long knew and buried within her of a former lover who’s memory is all that’s left. “Life for you is a hill upon a skyline / With a view of the cars as they slide across the mountain / High flyer, a chance to take, a chance of a lifetime,” she sings, setting herself free to roam, to play, to soar, to find her truth. Within the halls of Montrose Studio in Richmond, Virginia, where White now calls home, the singer and songwriter crafted a story she was finally willing and capable of telling, which then flourishes in the ebb and flow of recording with such prolific instrumentalists, including Myers himself on bass. “It was fun, relaxed, and I feel like creative input from all players was allowed,” she says. “Stewart had his firm ideas, as did I. We battled where we needed to, and the end result I feel was a collaboration.”

White is undoubtedly granted to get a few things off her chest, too, through the album’s lush curves and vibrancy. Most of all, she claims her role as “a real songwriter with a real voice,” she says, pointedly, “and I want to be counted.”

High Flyer confirms her assertions beyond a shadow of a doubt. “Apple in B Major” nudges along the dusty trail at twilight, and “Already Down,” the closing piano ballad, tears through the body with a kind of electricity that’s clearly been nurtured through decades of great earnestness. “I want to hang on / Why’s it so hard…” she unleashes all the pain and misery long encased behind her ribcage. And with that, the listener is free, too, in some way. We’ve accompanied White on this hard-boiled adventure, and now we understand…everything.

Below, White discusses her parents, how West Virginia guided her musical path and feeling the open road weighing heavy on her mind.

In press materials, it lists your parents as the “hippie” variety. Did they have a pretty relaxed style of parenting when you were growing up?

They were actually more like hippies morphed into “back to the landers” who retreated to West Virginia in the early ‘70s after Vietnam, Watergate, Kent State. There were a lot of hippies that settled down there, and quite a community took hold. My parents were more traditional than many of the hippie parents; I felt safe, fed and warm most of the time.

Was your father the one to introduce you to songwriting?

Absolutely. He wrote songs from the first I remember. He wrote songs about my mom and my sister and I, about the farm, about the mountain. He has a pretty famous song called “The Bird Song” that he’s been adding to for years; it’s full of verses with bird puns, up to 17 verses or so by now. I really need to get that recorded.

How much of Appalachian music tradition played into your work? Do you continue to find new layers of it as you’re writing?

It definitely shows up in a lot of my covers and especially in the Country Christmas show setlist. Traditional songs are in the deepest part of me, and the Christmas Show I do with a bunch of pickers in Charlottesville (hopefully taking it on the road this year) really pulls all that out.

“All the Reasons” is one of those truly undeniable moments, a little soft-rock rollick going on. Lyrically, it seems to deal with binding emotions and feeling trapped by them. What is the story?

It’s a love song. That’s one where actually the music came first, and then I started mumbling words into some sort of lyric, and then I got my heart broken, and then the words came into being a little bit more clearly. It definitely developed in parts, first with a drum beat, and then with the first line, and then later the other parts. My favorite line is the “Life for you is a hill up on the skyline,” about someone who didn’t want to be a part of my busy life, that I couldn’t slow down for, and I was sad, but also lifted in some way.

“Sarah Arizona” is pretty magical, almost feels like a campfire anthem, especially with how the backing vocals are layered along with the marching of the drums. How did you approach the instrumentation and how to best serve the story?

I’d recorded it before, with the layered backing vocals, so that wasn’t exactly new for this recording. The waltz time works to give it sway; it really is a bar anthem, or a campfire anthem, as you say. Definitely a sing along. What I love the most about this version is the accordion which gives it all such a nice fluid motion.

In the chorus, you sing “won’t you come back home.” Are you the Sarah in the song? Is this a coming of age story? Or just a reflection of the open road?

I am absolutely the Sarah in the song. It’s a song I wrote many years ago after driving through the Grand Canyon and the Southwest in a car full of Italian friends. It was inspired by a small town called Sarah, or Sera, or Serena, I don’t recall; but for the purposes of telling a story, let’s say the town was called Sara. And I was miserable, and the motel was a dusty, tired, waterless bucket, and I was tired and dusty and thirsty, and so far from home, and so lost and out of love, that it turned into a song. So, yes, it’s a road song, and it is a coming of age story. Stop running, come back home.

“Blue Skies, Exciting Days” blends sizzling guitar solos with a pretty heavy, somber melody. The lyrics, about holding onto someone, is even grimmer. What is the backstory here?

It is a dark song, with a shimmering release at the end, where the bird flies free, and life is long and happy. I would say it’s letting go of darkness, and darkness could be a person, a habit, depression, a drug. It’s about the dark side. And holding onto the light, to hope, to ultimately fly free.

Follow White on her socials: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Website