JIM WHITE

Jim White gets around. When he’s not releasing his own critically acclaimed solo albums he splits time producing records for other artists, exhibiting his visual art in galleries and museums across the US and Europe and publishing award winning fiction.

Numerous songs from White’s back catalog have appeared in film and television, with his Primus-esque Word-Mule being featured in the Heisenberg Episode of Breaking Bad, while more recently Jim’s dreamy duet with Aimee Mann, Static on the Radio, graced the closing credits of the feature film El Camino. 

Americana music fans may recognize White as the narrator and defacto tour guide for the award winning BBC documentary, Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus, a road movie set in the rural South which the LA Times described as “Decidedly strange, delightfully demented.” Released in 2003, the film has attained cult status among southern gothic fans far and wide.

Prior to becoming a musician White led an aimless, diverse life, working countless menial labor jobs: dishwasher, landscaper, lifeguard, cook, surfboard laminator, and road builder, culminating with thirteen long years driving a taxi cab in New York City.  It was during a psychological spiral at the end of those thirteen years that White crossed paths with David Byrne, who promptly signed White to a record deal. 

Over the ensuing twenty years there followed a succession of critically acclaimed solo records, appearances on major network shows like Letterman and Conan, plus several off-beat side project releases (Hellwood, Mama Lucky, Sounds of the Americans).

White recently completed his first novel, Incidental Contact, a “Magical Realism memoir”, centering around a series of uncanny coincidences that befell him during his days driving the taxi in New York City. Two chapters of Incidental Contact, The Bottom and Superwhite, have previously been published in the literary music journal Radio Silence, with Superwhite being awarded the prestigious Pushcart Prize for short fiction.  

White was a pro surfer.  He served as literary commentator for the National Endowment of the Arts.  He was a European fashion model.  He once nearly got in a fist fight with Ellen Degeneres.  There’s lots more non linear information that doesn’t really fit the usual bio format. But that’s Jim—he gets around