Tag: gus white

For Now, Anyway; Gus White’s Debut Album

Featured Image: Barbora Mrazkova

My apologies, for Marlborough’s singer-songwriter Gus White’s debut album For Now, Anyway has been sitting on the backburner, and it’s more than worth a quick mention…..

Gus White is a respected folk musician, record producer, festival organiser, and community maker with a deep love for the rooted and the heartfelt. His production credits are the string that ties together an emerging scene that refers to itself as Third Wave Folk, involving a collective of artists which record with Gus at his Wiltshire studio. This includes microtonal and genre-fluid rising-star Maddie Ashman, folk singer Minna, and UK folk-charting artist Ann Liu Cannon. The latter is our connection, fondly reviewing Ann Liu’s album Clever Rabbits back in July. 

Though, in the short wintery month this album has been simmering it’s made number twenty-six on the Official Folk Album Charts, making Gus rightfully charting too. An initial listen from yours truly and I can understand why. I do declare it as instant as Douwe Egberts’ Pure Gold, only in rapture rather than coffee! It’s chock full of cool vibes, that breezy feelgood Sunday morning acoustic which is too darn soothing it’s impossible to criticise. As for Gus’s barista skills, I’ve no confirmation, but going on his music, I could take a wild guess he’s a tea fellow. 

Eleven songs strong, put the kettle on yourself, and allow Gus to get on doing his sublime thing! There’s no rise and fall, the melodies flow like the Iguazu Falls. If I pick out individual elements into Gus’s melting pot, like the doo-wop-ish structure of middle-track Terrible Things, the bluesy guitar picking in the following song, Head Held High, or jazz drum percolate in Please, Forgive Me, they’re all so subtly placed. If Gus defines it Third Wave Folk, that’s what it is; a composition borrowing from Americana and English folk, but neither whole; a gorgeous cherrypick from both. It has the universal folk-rock feel of Goerge Harrison and Cat Stevens, and is equally as uplifting.

Though some themes are negative, the overall ambience is pessimistic; if you’ve a bad day, so what? Watch the rain trickle down the window outside with that lukewarm brew in a slightly stained chipped mug, listen to this and contemplate, life goes on, you’re rising above it.

If the penultimate song on For Now, Anyway, After So Long is rinsed in a dejected romantic memory, Gus carries it as skilled as Tom Petty, and the final song Still Learning lifts the spirit one final time like a contemporary Dr Hook, with that beguiling cheerful chorus. It departs your ears leaving you aching for more; a beautifully and skilled production from someone who comes across as a modest genius tea-drinker. Gus produced, mixed and mastered For Now, Anyway, a defining statement as a songwriter and a prime example of his meticulous production work. 

Image: Jeremey Prout

Authentic too; recorded in 2021, with a live band of friends and local musicians, Gus White approached this stunning album like any other project, stating he was “trying to capture the magic, and the essence, of the song in a single live performance, in the way real instruments and human voices blend when left to their own devices.”

Gus, also a member of folk band Dead Pages, is co-organiser of Late Spring Folk Festival, which celebrated its third iteration this summer at Dummer Down Brewery near Micheldever, since forming at a Wiltshire pub venue. This year’s is Saturday 23rd May. If he showcases this album there it’s worth the reasonable ticket stub alone.

For Now, Anyway is out now on Man Made Tigers. Available to buy on CD & vinyl exclusively from Sound Knowledge in Marlborough and is available across streaming platforms. Don’t procrastinate like me, as I’m sorry I did now I’ve heard it.

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Gus White Burbage’s Smithy Art Forgery with Ann Liu Cannon and Esmé White

Words by Ollie MacKenzie.

Featured Image by Barbora Mrazkova. 

The creative process can be a winding, long, and often confusing journey. Seeing a project come to fruition from scrappy origin to a packaged, marketable, and well-rounded piece of work can feel daunting – or even impossible. It took Gus White six years of honing his production skills, amassing an arsenal of musical machinery, and developing a community of talented musicians to bring his album ‘For Now, Anyway’ into existence….

At its core, it’s a breakup album, which could feel strange to complete and release so far after the original ‘break’, but speaking to Gus it appears the space has allowed him to finish the album at a much more present and content time in his life. He’s settled into a different existence – he’s in a new relationship, he’s a dog owner, and has played a large role in building a thriving music scene across the venues, pubs, and houses of Wiltshire.

This brings us to the Smithy Art Forgery in Burbage, a kooky yet loveable cultural venue operating out of a 375-year-old house that currently operates as a jeweller. Located on the side of a quiet village road, it’s adorned with nondescript street parking, burgers served off a BBQ, and vegetable curry to order made in the owner’s kitchen. 

It’s these types of places that are few and far between according to Gus – a true grassroots venue for musicians, a haven from playing dusty forgotten corners of pubs where the landlord and patrons don’t even really want you there anyway. It was why it was there on the 14th of September that Gus hosted his album release party.

Taking place in the back garden of the venue, attendees were seated under a marquee packed with various sofas, stools, and garden furniture that faced onto an embankment where the stage was set. Copious instruments lay there waiting, tucked underneath an array of tarpaulin and teepees to shield them and the musicians from the bipolar weather conditions of the changing season.

The atmosphere was intimate – maybe fewer than 100 in attendance – but one that felt lively and far from empty. Friends of friends of friends made happy introductions and chats to one another, waiting for the music to start. Two support acts opened the day. First, a solo and entrancing guitar performance from Grace Elizabeth Harvey, followed by a sort of double act from Ann Liu Cannon and Esmé White, the two swapping between lead vocal spots all the while backed by a mandolin player – the first of many off-kilter instruments to litter the performances. 

Then it was Gus’s turn to play. The performance brought about the live, interactive feel of the album, with a high range of instruments on display — trombones, sublime guitar passages, the double bass, a kazoo solo, and even a set of pots and pans, just to name a few. The music felt sonically based in the past, a careful homage to folk and rock formats from americana, country and indie, exhibiting a range of influence from the 50s all the way to the 70s. Despite its seemingly traditional backdrop, the performance was unmistakably modern, with the lyrics carrying the music firmly into the present. Packed with new-age irony and technological references, Gus’s dry, irreverent humour was centre stage throughout the performance, both in the songs and in his preambles — though this didn’t disguise the sincerity of the music or the performer. Balanced amongst the tongue-in-cheek lyrics were very straight to the point personal accounts of his former relationship, that through their intense and biographical nature revealed a relatability that would be shrouded behind overt poeticism. Though typically robust and amusing, Gus’s songwriting shows a capability of reaching into the elegiac also. The solo encore of ‘Josephine’ makes the case for Gus’s well-roundedness as a song smith; a poetry laden tribute to his partner that drew much of its effect from its earnestness and folk-style imagery.

Gus closed the concert with a rendition of ‘Please Forgive Me’, a rousing finish that allowed each band member their moment to show off, before the crowd sung the concert to a finish. It felt an appropriate end, where Gus, the producer, allowed others to have their moment through his handiwork, sitting back and revelling in the fun of it all. For a set of songs about breaking up, Gus seemed married to the moment, an artist revealing himself at a perfect time to a welcoming group of friends and strangers alike.

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