Amelia White photo by Jon Karr Lorena Lopez
Americana Highways’ Key to the Highway series
Fans always clamor to learn more about their favorite, most beloved musicians and those who travel with them. There’s such an allure to the road, with its serendipity, inevitable surprises, and sometimes unexpected discomforts. This interview series is a set of questions we are asking some of our favorite roots rock Americana artists to get to know more about them and what they’ve learned and experienced on the road for music. We are sure they have key insights to share and stories to tell. Here’s one from Amelia White.
Americana Highways: How do you like your coffee or other morning wake-up beverage?
Amelia White: Strong and stronger.
AH: What’s the most interesting or strangest motel/hotel or place you have stayed (while on the road for music?)
AW: While touring the UK I stayed in what must have been a sex trafficking den… At first I was taken aback by the gnarly dirtiness of it, ( found a ball of pubic hair in my bed) but then I noticed so many young women in mismatched pajamas, and when checking out I mistakenly opened a door to the very dominating man who had checked me in laying out rules for what was probably 3 dozen of these young women. To this day I’m mad at myself for doing nothing about it… I found that I was in shock and denial for probably a few weeks, and the rigors of daily shows and travel kind of numbed me from taking any action. It haunts me to this day.
AH: If one CD is stuck in the player in the van for the entire tour, what do you hope it is? And why?
AW: This changes for me, but this past 3 months I’ve been on a Laura Cantrell binge. I’d say it’s her essential apple playlist and also Just Like A Rose, her latest album. There is something genre-busting, magical, and innocent about Laura’s music to me. Also she has this otherworldly female wisdom and wit. Her voice is so distinct and at the same time pure. I am such a fan.
AH: What’s one personal item you must have with you on your road trip?
AW: My “Sleep Helmet” as my tour-mate Carter Sampson and I call it… it’s a noise cancelling headband I desperately strap on each night to get my winks in strange beds and to drown out strange snores.
AH: What is your relationship with food? How do you handle this on the road, and what’s your favorite dish on the road, (or restaurant, and what do you order there)?
AW: If I’m solo I’m a bit of a squirrel, eating nuts, fruits, carrots and snacky shit like popcorn. With another human I’m fairly flexible but no fast food is a boundary I like to hold.
AH: If you could pause your life for a few weeks and spend some time living in a place you only have passed through, which would you choose, and why?
AW: I have a romantic crush on Staunton Va. I used to pass through all the time on the way to see my folks in Va. I’d love to hole up there write and paint. Maybe it’s the native Virginian in me that feels the pull. Who knows, maybe some long lost relative made an imprint there.
AH: What quote or piece of advice have you gotten from someone on the road that has really stuck with you?
AW: “What happens on the road stays on the road” – and not in the way you would think. I’m a pretty tame human at this point, but the road has it’s own life and world, and whoever I’m with is my family. I’ve learned there’s really no sharing the experience when I get home. It’s like it never happened, and while it’s happening it’s like the other life never happened.
Find more information about her new album and tour dates for Amelia White here: http://www.ameliawhite.com
See other Key to the Highway interviews here: https://americanahighways.org/category/interviews/key-to-the-highway-series/ (click here for: Vince Herman Jimmy Smith Ben Nichols Bruce Cockburn Charlie Musselwhite Nicki Bluhm Jim White Danny Barnes Patterson Hood Jerry Joseph BJ Barham Rodney Crowell Todd Snider Elizabeth Cook Tommy Womack Eric Ambel, Dan Baird, Robbie Fulks, Malcolm Holcombe Jon Langford Steve Poltz, Lilly Hiatt Sarah Shook & the Disarmers Sadler Vaden )
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