Blanco White Opens A Portal To a Mysterious Place 'On The Other Side'

On the Other Side, the first LP released by singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Josh Edwards as Blanco White, arrived in shops recently, capturing the momentum he had built up through the release of several EPs previously through Yucatan Records.

The word "unique" gets used too widely, but this LP does introduce what can only be described as a unique approach to music that continues to distinguish itself the more you listen to it, even within the field of tradition-influenced music with multicultural tones. The lyrics from On the Other Side feel very modern but also somewhat ancient, and the music itself, often infused with three Andean instruments, the Ronroco, the Charango, and the Quena, is haunting.

We spoke to Blanco White from his location in lockdown in Wales, and you can read the first part of that discussion right here. The culmination of that conversation appears below, ranging from the places that he intends to take audiences through his music, to the ways in which a multi-instrumental sound can be adapted to live performance, and to the possibility that certain universal sonic threads seem to appear in music world-wide.

Hannah Means-Shannon: In the continuum of studying first in Spain, and then in Latin America, when did you decide, ‘Oh, I’m going to be a musician now, alongside anything else I might want to do.’? Were you already a musician before you went to Spain, or did that happen because of the discovery of Flamenco there?

Josh Edwards aka Blanco White: It was the first time in my life that I dedicated myself to music, I would say. Where I was playing a lot. Especially in Spain, I must have been playing five hours a day. It was a time when I had written some songs as a teenager, but I hadn’t dedicated my time to trying to write songs. And of course, everything I wrote was terrible, which is something that happens when you try to write songs at first. It takes practice.

I was definitely searching to learn from places that weren’t familiar to me. And I was lucky that I found things that moved me so much, and affected me so much, and became such influences. It was more that it gave me the idea that I could go and try to dedicate myself in London. Trying to get a band together, and that sort of thing.

HMS: When you’re writing the music and laying down the tracks, how does that then become something that can happen live? Is the live performance aspect something you keep in mind when doing studio work? It seems like for Folk music, live performance must be very important.

Blanco White: Yes. Last time we toured, we toured as a six piece. So, it’s a big set up, and we have quite an unusual set up. For me, for the expansive aspect of the sound, live performance is important. Sometimes the arrangements and sounds will change live. Inevitably, we adapt to that. But on this album as well, we were doing some prep for summer festivals last year, and I was very keen to test the arrangements I had written in a room before charging into the studio and committing to them.

That felt like a lesson from previous albums, trying to find a live arrangement after the whole studio process has been finished. I wanted there to be more of a live performance aspect and we also toured a few of these songs last autumn and winter, and when we got back, I said, “We need to get straight into the studio and get these things down.” So, a lot of the players have really left their mark on the record. They are great friends and they are very much part of this journey with me.

[Photo credit to Sequoia Ziff]

HMS: How did you all find each other and come to work together? It can’t be that easy to find people who have abilities on specialized instruments and who have the same interests. Has this been a process of discovering the right people to work with?

Blanco White: Yes, definitely. I’ve been very lucky in discovering them. For a few of the guys, we’ve been playing together for quite a long time now. A few of the guys have joined the band later, and Charlie Schnurr, who plays violin and keys, as well as being a phenomenal vocalist, has been super-instrumental to the whole thing for the past few years.

Fred Claridge, as well, is our drummer, who has a crazy set up. We try to avoid using a snare drum on stage, and try to avoid using a traditional kit, and he’s been part of building the more percussion-like set up, with a big bass drum, creating wooden sounds. Using cymbals and shells, things that fit in better with the Ronroco and Charango that I’m playing. We’ve started easing in a little bit of snare drum. It’s just never sounded right to me, a combination of these Andean instruments with a snare drum. Especially in that live sense, we’ve been trying to grow something naturally and collaboratively.

HMS: I’ve definitely heard from musicians who try to compose for the studio thinking ahead of the difficulties they might face with live performance. I think everyone just finds what works for them. It’s not as is fans are going to say, “No, I won’t listen to that because it sounds a bit different.”

Blanco White: For me, thinking back, when working in support slots, or with less resources for touring, I’ve had to have fewer players. Now we’re doing this six piece tour, and with a phenomenal sound engineer, which is so important. They are part of the band, I think. To me, having all that was first time I was truly able to communicate a live show that felt close enough to the studio stuff, and the first time I was really proud of that live sound. With fans, I think you have to respect the fact that people do fall in love with the studio versions of things. It’s fun to experiment with things, but you have to give the fans the experience they are looking for as well. It’s important.

HMS: When I see people talking about your music, and the different influences and elements, it seems like very few of them address the vocal content of your recordings, and this new album has a lot of vocal content. Do you think that the vocal elements on the new album derives from Spanish and Andean traditional elements as strongly as the instrumentals, or is it, as you’ve mentioned before, more from the Anglo-American Folk tradition?

Blanco White: I actually think you’ve probably hit the nail on the head there. I hadn’t thought about it in that way. I just try to do what feels natural to me. But I grew up with Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, who are the greatest lyricists, I think. And I really love that lyrical style. I’ve gotten much more into literature and poetry, and stuff like that, since I started writing songs. There are definitely influences from the Spanish-speaking world, especially when it comes to themes in the lyrics, since I’m really into the Surreal and Magical Realism, which are more Latin American in origin. But the foundation is built on a love for artists like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and those lyricists who we may be more familiar with in the UK and the States.

HMS: Well, there are things that they do that are very Folk. Their music didn’t come out of nowhere either. Something I noticed in common between your work and theirs would be talking about locations, places, as the focus of a song. The bigger Folk tradition definitely has a tendency to talk about places and locales, creating a longing if you’re not there, or a sense of nostalgia in an almost archetypal way.

Blanco White: With places, I hadn’t thought about it so much in terms of Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen, but I think you’re right. Another hero of mine is also Zach Condon from the band Beirut. He uses place a lot in his music, and often his albums are named after places. I think that’s really interesting when it’s done in a subtle way.

HMS: I’d like to ask you about a couple of specific songs. There’s the title song, “On the Other Side” which the album is named for. In your album notes, you’ve said this was a kind of precursor song that helped you figure out what you wanted from the album. Hearing that reminds me a little of the idea in storytelling of the “call to adventure” or the artistic “quest”. Was this a kind of discovery for you that you then had to pursue and figure out?

Blanco White: Yes, definitely. I think that’s an interesting way of putting it. In part, that was sonic. The rhythmic elements in the song, trying to find a bit more swing, trying to find sounds that would blend with the Ronroco and the Charango. So that was the more practical side of it, trying to find the paint brushes for the rest of the record, that would give the rest of the record the right tone and sound.

I think in the middle and later part of that song is meant to be quite transportive, and take you to another place, and make you think of another world, and what is on the other side. It’s an invitation to that place. That was important to me, since that’s what I’m looking for, often, in the songs, is to try and build a world of some kind and use the music to be a portal of some kind to a mysterious place. To try to invite the listener there with you and create a sonic space around the listener. That’s often the aim, and in that song, I felt transported by it, and I was trying to tap into that for the rest of the album.

HMS: A lot of people who still build albums more traditionally are creating a kind of single world for that album. One with internal consistency. I work with a lot of Metal bands, and they often have very painted cover art that has to do with the world of that album. There’s a certain narrative quality there. But for you, it sounds more like the music is creating that world and you’re trying to draw the audience in. Is there a narrative arc for this album for you? Or are they more individual pieces, making statements about that world that’s been created?

Blanco White: I think it’s the latter. There’s not a grand, master concept. In a way, I wanted there to be a sense of unification between the songs, that you can step into the world and for there to be some kind of consistency. It’s really important to me that the songs don’t sound too similar, either.

There are certain threads that remain consistent, but other threads are meant to subvert that balance a bit and mess with things a little bit, to keep things fresh and introduce new colors and tones. I guess the way I write songs and the way I tend to arrange them is that there’s a real focus on detail. I’m a bit of a control freak and perfectionist. So, the focus on detail means they are isolated. But hopefully they come together in a meaningful whole.

HMS: It’s interesting that you mention having elements that are disruptive and subversive within that world, because that’s a typical second or third act trait in storytelling, that you need to have a little bit of a wobble in there to keep everyone’s attention and also to produce some new outcomes. There are some interesting ideas about music having archetypes. Storytelling, of course, is known to have archetypes, as defined by Carl Jung, like the wise old man, the young hero, etc.

Toward the very end of Carl Jung’s life, he started working with one of his daughters, who was a musician, I think a pianist, and she convinced after many fraught arguments about it, that music might have archetypes. He admitted that were some elements there, but it was very hard to pin down, very hard to describe and isolate, but it might be there somewhere.

Blanco White: This sounds fascinating. I’ll have to read more about that.

[Photo credit to Sequoia Ziff]

HMS: I think there’s not a lot more about it to know, unfortunately, there’s just this story from his life. It really surprised me to learn about it. But one thing that did happen was that music therapy has developed since then, using music for therapy and psychotherapy, and that’s along the same lines.

Another song on this album, “All that Matters”, is one that you worked on while touring in Ireland, and you mentioned in your notes that you realized it could be taken for having an Irish sound, but actually that was a coincidence, since the same sound was also Andean.

That’s fascinating, based on what we were just talking about, because it does make you wonder about musical elements that cross cultures in an archetypal way. And those elements still make it possible for us to recognize sounds and feelings across cultures when it comes to music. Have you come across many coincidences like that?

Blanco White: Yes. I had a chat with a friend with a who’s a fabulous Blues guitarist, George Elliot. He plays a lot on the Blues scene in London. We had this conversation about how the Pentatonic Scale seems to be so universal and to come up in so many places. But also, in such different ways.

There’s something about the Ronroco and Charango, for example, that has this very open Pentatonic feel, and I think it’s that which links it a more Celtic and Irish sound, but it can also sound Bluesy as well if you use those kinds of scales with it. It’s got this mysterious appeal, and seems to have resonated with so many people, universally, that openness in the chords. I think there is something there. Whether it’s biological, I don’t know. But there’s something pleasing to humans about that scale and that sound. It’s fascinating.

Maybe with what you’re saying about these kinds of archetypes, when artists are trying to do different things, for lots of artists it’s very real, and it’s about real life, about communicating feelings and emotions that are everyday and real for lots of people.

I think, Bob Dylan, for example, was maybe more interested that stream of consciousness, talking about real events, whereas Leonard Cohen is a bit more into mystery, and stuff that’s a bit more weird. Maybe there’s a bit more mythology in there. It’s kind of hard to put your finger on, but I guess it’s the same with sound as well. A lot of bands feel like they are searching for transcendence, awe, and wonder, and that sort of thing.

That’s definitely, for me, something I’m trying to explore and find in music. That can sometimes be in the lyrics, but it’s often in the music as well. Maybe that’s another thing that music is for. It’s a way that we are able to try to communicate those feelings. I think maybe that’s got some depth in mythology, as well.

HMS: What we’ve been talking about regarding “On the Other Side” sounds similar, that the goal is to transcend something like mundane experience. Is that what you mean by creating a sense of awe that’s in some way different from daily experience?

Blanco White: Yes. I think music is able to express those feelings. It’s very hard to contain them or write them down, but you can try and allow music to take you take that place. For me, it’s often sad music, or minor chords, that tend to take me to that place. I don’t know why. But often my songs feel quite sad, I think. To me, even though the chords might sound sad, or there’s a melancholy feel to them, it’s still coming from a place of joy or awe, and trying to find those feelings through the music. And to celebrate those things, since that’s what makes it such a joy to be alive.

HMS: Thank you. You’ve been very patient with my complicated questions. It’s fascinating for me to hear from someone like you, because in some ways, Folk music may be the most ancient music that has survived, and some of it is very, very old, but you’re not afraid to update it and make it very modern, a part of modern life.

Blanco White: There’s so much to learn from the past as well, and so much we are probably unaware that we’ve inherited. In some ways, Flamenco music, and the Andean music that has influenced me so much, are both examples of Folk music. And they are traditions that have so much depth, and you feel the weight of the past in them. That’s maybe what I’m drawn to as well.

HMS: As a side question, for the Andean music, is that strongly Indigenous in origin, or did it develop with more European influences?

Blanco White: It’s an Indigenous development in Latin America, really. Charango has an amazing story, which I’d urge you to look up. It’s a very sad story, as well. It’s the descendant of the European lute but it’s a development of the Indigenous idiom. It was born in Potosi in Bolivia, and that city was built around a mountain which is supposedly the biggest silver deposit ever discovered by humans. And millions of slaves died on that mountain.

That’s the context of that instrument. It was born in that time of hardship. For me, that instrument has so much weight. It carries so much emotion. It can be a very eerie and melancholy. There’s something about the tuning that needs minor chords. Even major chords can sound minor on that instrument. Just the emotion in that instrument is deeply inspiring to me.

It’s the same with an instrument called the Quena, which is also from that part of the world, which just has this depth of sound that is very haunting. And that instrument makes some appearances on the record as well. The song “So Certain” is really all about the Quena as an instrument.

HMS: Thank you for explaining all that. What you’re saying about the suffering behind the Charango, of course reminds me of the origins of Blues music.

Before I let you go, I still need to ask you our Tower Records question, about our motto, “No Music, No Life” or “Know Music, Know Life”. What do either of those phrases mean to you in tour life?

Blanco White: The way someone has put it to me before is that saying, “Do you like music?” isn’t really a question. Because we should say, “What type of music do you like?” It seems impossible, I think, for humans not to like some type of music. For me, it’s a bit like football (soccer/football), which is a universal language. It doesn’t matter what language you’re singing in, or where you’re from, you can always connect with someone through music, and it’s the same if you kick a ball around. I guess that’s what it means for me.