Photos by Brinson + Banks | Art by Wayne White
Wayne White learned early on that art is a good magic trick to keep up his sleeve. He spoke with the host of the country-music-history podcast “Cocaine & Rhinestones” about growing up in Tennessee, tearing down icons, turning junk into treasure, and using music, books, and art as a way to escape or to find your way home.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Tyler Mahan Coe: First of all, I am hilariously unqualified to have a conversation about art with you. Also, your studio — I remember being blown away by your packed bookshelves. I would assume it’s mostly art and art history, as well as various interests, like music that you love. So I’m looking at your face, just thinking about those walls of books in your brain that are just looking back at me.
Wayne White: Yeah, I read all the time. We can start talking about books if you’d like.
TMC: Is it mostly nonfiction, or is it some fiction, too?
WW: I like literature and nonfiction. One of my big heroes in nonfiction is Robert Caro, who did the epic biography of LBJ. That’s been one of my obsessions over the last eight years or so. That’s why I made the LBJ mask. I like biographies. I like the classics. I love Mark Twain. I love the Southern guys. Walker Percy’s one of my favorite Southern writers. Not a huge fan of Faulkner; I find it kind of hard to read. I think his sentences are absurd.
TMC: (Laughs) I have gotten in trouble for expressing similar sentiments. Did you always read? You talked about growing up, kind of knowing, if not that you were going to be an artist, that you were different in the South. And the way that you talk about that I think a lot of people would find surprising. You liked knowing that you were different in a way that everyone around you didn’t understand, because you didn’t necessarily want them to understand you. Right?
WW: That’s right. And books were a huge part of that. I lived to go to the libraries, both our public library and our elementary, junior high, and high school libraries. I mean, books were definitely my first idea of escape.
I loved stories about dogs: Big Red, Where the Red Fern Grows, Old Yeller. I was also obsessed, of course, like most Southern kids from that era, with the Civil War, especially growing up in Chattanooga. That was one of my favorite things to play out in the woods with my friends, and it was a real kind of palpable thing.
I’m from a working-class family. My father worked at the DuPont nylon factory in Chattanooga, my mother was a housewife. So there was no idea of the arts. … But I drew naturally. Every kid just naturally wants to draw, but I really took to it because it was another way to escape. Not to create a beautiful object or to be a part of some kind of art history, but it was a fun game to play.
One of my favorite movies, when I was a kid, was “Mary Poppins.” And I loved the scenes when Bert would draw on the sidewalk and they would jump into the drawing — that blew my mind. That’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to jump into my drawings and escape. I didn’t even think of myself as an artist until I started school and everybody started calling me an artist. I had that identity from first grade on, and I still do. That was a handy thing to have in school, to have a label like that.
“One of my favorite movies, when I was a kid, was ‘Mary Poppins.’ And I loved the scenes when Bert would draw on the sidewalk and they would jump into the drawing — that blew my mind. That’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to jump into my drawings and escape.” — Wayne White
TMC: It’s almost surreal, I identify with so much of what you said. Being born in 1984, everything that you’re talking about is still so much of what my childhood was like in Tennessee. … Reading was huge for me, too. My grandmother taught me how to read before I started kindergarten, so I never thought of it as a school thing or a chore or something that an adult wanted me to do. I showed up fully reading books, and everyone else hated it. I don’t know that it was so much of an escape for me. My childhood was sort of transient in a lot of ways. My father’s a touring country artist and much of my childhood was spent on tour. So I think a book was sort of a constant place while being in all these cities and airplanes and buses. It’s just like, here’s this world I can take with me.
WW: Yeah, I wasn’t on tour, but my father was a huge bowler; he would go to the lanes sometimes four nights a week, and I would go with him [and] take a book. … My wife’s family was the same way. In fact, they would always say, “Take a book!” And her mother’s tombstone in Arkansas says, “I should have brought a book.”
And I think books were just as important to me as drawing, really. But drawing was my chance. People love to watch you draw. It’s one of the great human tricks that people are really impressed by. I always had this great little trick up my sleeve. Whenever I was about to be beat up or I was embarrassed or in any kind of fraught emotional situation, a drawing would kind of ease me out of it or put me in a position where I had some kind of power over people. It was a very potent talent to have.
TMC: I’m glad you said magic, because [drawing] really is one of those real forms of magic. ...
WW: But the process itself, if somebody doesn’t know how to do it, appears to be magic. Sleight of hand. People are constantly saying, “Well, I can’t draw a straight line!” And that’s true, most people can’t; they completely have no idea how to draw. So suddenly, when they see that sleight of hand, that is magic.
And music is definitely a form of magic. As a visual artist, it’s one of the things I envy the most, because there’s nothing more potent than live music. … I think it’s one of the quickest ways to pierce somebody’s heart. It’s very, very effective.
Dolly Parton by Wayne White, 2020
TMC: I find it practically miraculous that human beings are capable of arranging sounds in a way that affects the emotions of other people. It doesn’t necessarily even have to have words or language of any kind attached to it. Different people have different reactions to the sound of a train whistle passing by. Some people think it’s sad; to other people it represents the idea of freedom.
It really is a form of magic. It’s a form of taking something that exists in the real world. There are sounds all around us: birds singing, trees falling over in the woods — trying to go pre-society, pre-industry sounds, here, where music may have come from.
WW: Yeah, and it’s primal. It’s been with us since we first stood upright. It’s just this deep, deep human thing.
And that’s why your podcast [“Cocaine & Rhinestones”] was like a revelation. … It’s exactly what I wanted to hear about the country music that I love so much. Especially coming from you, an insider who grew up with it.
I lived in Nashville in the ’80s and knew a lot of musicians and was on the [periphery] of the music scene. I loved learning and experiencing that world through those musicians, and the few stories I heard reminded me a lot of all of your great stories, too. It was right up my alley.
I love the way you take down all these idols of my youth. It’s kind of painful to listen to, but at the same time, I love it. Because it’s about time somebody approached it that way. I was force-fed all that stuff. I never really went along with the whole rock ’n’ roll historical thing. Early on, in junior high school, I discovered Sun Records. And from there on, I was always just the retro guy. I’d go to the $1.99 bin and buy the Sun Records greatest hits, rockabilly from the beginning. And then rockabilly led me to country, which, as a little kid, I hated because it represented all the rednecks that I was trying to escape. In the ’70s of country music, I dropped all of my prejudices against it.
“People love to watch you draw. It’s one of the great human tricks that people are really impressed by. I always had this great little trick up my sleeve. Whenever I was about to be beat up or I was embarrassed or in any kind of fraught emotional situation, a drawing would kind of ease me out of it or put me in a position where I had some kind of power over people. It was a very potent talent to have.” — Wayne White
TMC: There’s a lot of practical reasons to always be pushing over the statues of the past in all artistic mediums. I think you said something that really stuck with me before. You’ve talked about how every visual artist at a certain point has to get past Picasso. Could you say more about that?
WW: Picasso is definitely The Beatles of art. I know that’s a lame metaphor, but some people just lay it down and everybody copies them. Their influence is just like a virus, and some people are happy just to do riffs on that person.
My ego always drove me to be original. I was always hoping to find something, to discover something, not just be a devotee. That’s the artist’s ego, and the artist’s ego is very important, because it does make you keep striving for something original. For me, it’s the romanticism of finding treasure, finding something nobody’s found before. … It’s nothing noble, it’s just me trying to be important. It’s a thrill when you think you’ve discovered something new.
TMC: Oh, man, I feel exactly the same way. My entire philosophy of history is: Even if it’s something that someone has seen 500 times, even if it’s a song that you heard every day for a year, if I could find a way to make you hear it as if it’s the first time you’ve ever heard it, then that’s something worth doing. But even more than that, I’m trying to dig up the truth of all this half-heard, half-understood long game of telephone that has been happening with the history of country music. …
WW: Yeah, that’s what’s exciting about your work. Especially coming from your generation — it’s fresh eyes. It’s not a bunch of half-remembered mythological bullshit from people who lived through it. … You’re digging for the truth without the prejudices or the misconceptions, or the bad memory, but just coming at it with a clear, cold, hard eye, but with a certain amount of poetry, too.
Hank williams by Wayne White, 2019
TMC: The best American music comes from the South. I mean, I realize that’s a contentious statement but …
WW: I agree with you. The thing that blew my mind was when I found out my grandmother knew the Louvin Brothers. She grew up next door to them in Henagar, [Alabama]. I didn’t even find that out until I was in college, because they never talked about it … and that’s just so country. “Oh, them always out here. No big deal.” There’s no idealization about them. Finally, I started asking, and sure enough, she knew them. She knew their father [Colonel Loudermilk] used to play at their parties and stuff. She’s claimed she remembers him playing banjo and fiddle for ’em. And I started contemplating that. Like, first of all, there would probably never have been any Everly Brothers without the Louvin Brothers, and there would definitely have never been any Beatles without the Everly Brothers. … That would have blown my mind if I’d known as a little kid when I was listening to The Beatles and The Monkees, that my grandmother was in on this origin story.
That’s when I realized how important the South was to music. That’s where it all came from. All these rock bands wouldn’t have existed if some Black guy hadn’t picked up a guitar, you know, if some poor hillbilly hadn’t picked up a fiddle … that’s where it all came from.
Buck Owens and The Buckaroos by Wayne White
TMC: I want to talk about your word paintings.
WW: Yeah, I’ve been doing these things since about 2000. I find thrift store landscapes, always reproductions … that all Americans grew up with, whether in their granny’s house or at the dentist’s office. It’s just a classic piece of interior decoration that everybody’s familiar with. No matter what class you’re from, you came across it somewhere. It’s almost like this collective unconscious of America, these pretty scenes. It’s something that everybody shares.
I was always fascinated by typography and words, just the design of letters themselves. … One day, I thought, what about if I just experimented and put the words right into this ready-made thrift store landscape? It was just a spur-of-the-moment experiment. And lo and behold, something kind of clicked. Some new kind of thing happened. People noticed them and I started doing more, even though I thought it was still kind of dumb. I had a higher image of myself. It’s like, “I don’t want to wind up painting on these crappy things. You know, I’m a fine artist. I paint on canvas,” and I do. But people just went nuts for them. It’s like, they’re seeing something I don’t see.
It also came out of a desire to do something that was funny. The art world has such a stick up its ass. It’s such a humorless place. And humor is incredible. If you can make somebody laugh, that’s the hardest thing to do in the world, way harder than anything else. Humor is very difficult. So I thought, well, that’s a great challenge. I don’t care what they say, I’m going to try to be funny, and I’m going to use stuff that people don’t think is art: these discarded pieces of shit that are one step away from the trash can. I like that, because that’s kind of defiant, too.
We live in a world of giant letters everywhere we look; there are giant signs and letters in the landscape. They look like a movie title, they look like a book title. It just resonates and reminds you of several different things. At the same time, I’m also a frustrated writer, and I wanted to write something like the world’s shortest short stories sometimes or poems, if I dare say so.
TMC: A lot of people, even if they use the same background and the same idea, would use more serious words like “death” or “futility” or “trauma” in this otherwise idyllic landscape. And you do “fanfuckintastic”!
I think the techniques that you’re applying, the way that you’re embedding it, behind the preexisting elements of the art … it’s maybe not so magical to you because you see it happen, but it’s still the same old magic trick that we were talking about at the beginning of the conversation.
WW: Yeah, it is a magic trick. And they do look deceptively simple. It’s like, oh, what’s the big deal of putting some letters in there? But it’s not easy to do at all. There’s 30 years of experience there — if I do say so — of skills and stuff. I like that they look deceptively simple. … I take pride in the fact that I’m the only person who really does it, although I’ve gotten some pretty good imitators, but I like the fact that I found a little niche.
I am an anomaly. You know, I’m this working-class kid from the South who made it as an artist, and that just doesn’t happen very much.
TMC: Not while you’re still alive! (Laughs)
WW: No. I mean, knock on wood, I’m a lucky guy. But at the same time, I’m ambitious as hell and always have been. I’m always hustling, and I think what most artists don’t want to admit to is that they are hustlers. They’re all looking for that angle. They’re all looking to be remembered. They’re all looking to be paid attention to. That’s one of the things I also skewer and talk about in my art is the artist’s ego and hubris. The ego, in general, is sort of my theme about how ridiculous people are — myself included. Also, they’re about the banality of everyday life. I just describe stupid situations, like, “Leave the awards on the kitchen table, I’m back here, paintin’ a fucking masterpiece.” You know, stupid things like that that are all of a sudden monumental. I think that’s hilarious. I think it’s true to life, because most of life is banal. I think to pay service to that and make an art out of the endless boringness of life is something.
TMC: Yeah, I don’t have a lot of patience for the self-importance of a lot of creative types. And even less with the sort of tortured artist mentality, the self-inflicted. Especially when someone is, quote unquote, “blocked.” So just go in your chair, or your workshop or your closet, or whatever you’re doing, sit the fuck down and don’t come out until something happens. That’s how I’ve always looked at it.
Do you take days off? You’ve got a fantastic studio in your house. It seems like you’d probably just go in there every day. But I was curious what your average day is like.
WW: My studio is downstairs, here in my house. I work every day. Maybe I’ll take Sundays off, but just one day. Most days, six days a week, I work. I’ll make myself work. Anybody who makes things has that philosophy. Put your ass in the chair and try! There’s no waiting, there’s no such thing as inspiration. You make it. You make your own inspiration. It just doesn’t doesn’t hit you.
Another thing about the art world that I always found frustrating was the class consciousness of it all, especially coming from a lower-middle-class background as myself. That’s the dirty little secret of the art world that nobody ever wants to talk about. Most artists come from upper-middle-class or rich houses. They afforded an art education their whole life … usually at Ivy League schools. It’s an insider country club in a lot of ways. When my movie came out, “Beauty Is Embarrassing,” in 2012, I had shit tons of interviews. And I would always bring that up, and man, you should have seen people’s faces every time I brought that class-consciousness thing up about art, because nobody ever talked about it. … They didn’t want to admit that they’re in this wealthy bubble.
TMC: I, too, have noticed this resistance to the idea of class mattering is applicable in music. And what it really comes down to is, that thing of artists are humans, they’re not gods walking among us. They are the people who had or made enough time to get good at this. And it’s simple economics at that point. Who has enough time? Rich people who don’t have to have a job, or people who could never hold down a job if they were forced to. It’s people who didn’t have a backup plan, people who didn’t have a safety net, or people who had the biggest safety net imaginable and people telling them everything they did was great and building them up. And here are all the art supplies that you need. And here is a tutor. And here’s, you know, all of the time that you need to go get amazing at this thing. And there’s a lot of resistance in rock music, particularly, of not wanting to admit the posh background that a lot of famous musicians and singers came from. Because it’s not cool. People don’t think it’s cool to be rich, you know?
“I relate to the older generation of George [Jones] and Merle [Haggard], Webb Pierce, and Ernest Tubb. I know those guys. I grew up with ’em. My father plowed with a mule, for God’s sake, you know, he didn’t even have a tractor! I call him the last of the old-time country boys. So I’m really grateful that I have a link to that almost vanished world, really.” — Wayne White
WW: I don’t want to harp on my resentment of money and stuff but … it’s tough. It’s tough for a lower-class kid to make it in the arts. It just is. But everybody loves a rags-to-riches story. That’s Americans’ favorite top story.
TMC: It really is. … And especially in country music, a lot of people don’t want to talk about it. There are a lot of conversations around country music where people will try to divorce politics from everything or ignore the political implications of things. But it’s in the music itself, you know. You can’t have people singing about being poor without talking about why or thinking about why. It doesn’t happen out of nowhere.
I think the same thing is true of you and your entire career. Like you were saying earlier, you don’t turn yourself into a cartoon about it. You’re not out here smoking a corncob pipe and wearing overalls every day. But you are from the South. I think people who may not even know that you are from the South, or Southerners with an interest in art, may feel just a certain kinship with your attitude and approach to everything because of that. I think it really is in everything you do that I’ve seen.
Lightnin’ Hopkins by Wayne White
WW: I feel it gives me a certain angle on things that a lot of people don’t have, especially in the arts. And that’s what I love about country music. I relate to the older generation of George [Jones] and Merle [Haggard], Webb Pierce, and Ernest Tubb. I know those guys. I grew up with ’em. My father plowed with a mule, for God’s sake, you know, he didn’t even have a tractor! I call him the last of the old-time country boys. So I’m really grateful that I have a link to that almost vanished world, really. I’m 63, and I’m starting to realize, you know, I need to start getting some shit out in the world, too. I need to wring every last story I can out of my old man, who’s now 87, you know? It’s stories. We all crave them and need them.
And I like the fact that you talk about that world in an insightful way, too. You’re one of a kind, man.
TMC: You’re also one of a kind. (Both laugh.) All right, I’ll let you get back to your day.
Tyler Mahan Coe, son of country music legend David Allan Coe, is creator and host of the acclaimed podcast “Cocaine & Rhinestones,” which The Washington Post says “stands out for its host’s devotion to setting the record straight through a show that could be filed under educational if it wasn’t so entertaining.”
Header: Bill Monroe and The Bluegrass Boys by Wayne White
