RALPH E. WHITE III
ARTIST Biography
Ralph E White was a member of well-loved punk bluegrass outfit Bad Livers but his solo work is possessed of a much more lonesome spark, exaggerating the implied drone at the heart of the music of Dock Boggs and The Stanley Brothers. “Navasota River Devil Squirrel” was originally released as a CD-R in 2007, but this limited vinyl version comes courtesy of fellow musical loner Joshua Burkett’s new imprint. White plays wooden six-string banjo, violin, accordion and kalimba and his voice has a high, eerie quality to it that allows it to blend with the various primitive strategies that the music employs to reanimate traditional and original material alike. The use of kalimba situates aspects of the sound in some avant hillbilly fourth world, while the combination of dense matrices of string and White’s transporting vocal is extremely psychedelic.
Bio source – David Keenan – THE WIRE, December 03, 2008.Ralph is a professional musician and multi-instrumentalist that plays banjo, fiddle, accordion, guitar, kalimba and mbira. Ralph was a founding member of Austin trio the Bad Livers, formed in 1990 with banjoist Danny Barnes and bass and tuba player Mark Rubin.