Scott Sean White Debuts With Intriguing Story Songs on ‘Call It Even’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

When one lives in town with the name of Poetry, TX he/she needs to live up to that name, not that it is reserved for poets, writers, and songwriters but it would be fitting. Singer-songwriter Scott Sean White does just that on his debut, Call It Even. It’s not that White is new to songwriting either, having already garnered praise from fellow Texan Jack Ingram and several members of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. White is a natural-born storyteller as he reveals in these eleven tunes, but he didn’t come to them overnight. He claims to have been building the raw materials for over 30 years, noting that all the major adult figures in his childhood were either alcoholics or addicts or both. 

One might not expect the songwriter streak from White who managed, booked, and played keyboards in a corporate cover band that played funk, disco, and hip-hop for 29 years until 2018. During this same period, however, he wrote a handful of country songs and eventually moved to Nashville where he became a staff writer for the past decade-plus. He started playing in writers’ rounds at the Bluebird Café in Nashville and became part of a close-knit writers’ night called the Music Row Freakshow. His time has been at a premium until the pandemic gave him time to make this years-in-the-planning album.

On “Call It Even” the sparse instrumental backdrop provides the needed space for White to directly express the wrenching lyrics of a young man trying to reconcile the division tearing his family and his own self-worth apart and the forgiveness that might heal it. It’s White’s way of saying we’re not all perfect and that life forces us into compromises in order to move forward. “Crazy But True,” simply with guitars and harmony vocals lifts away the darkness, intended to allow us to freely feel the warmth of a loving relationship. “Crazy ‘Til It Works,” featuring Susan Gibson on harmony vocals, has bright guitar lines and illustrates White’s way with words, such as the closing line about a couple who gets “married by Elvis in a drive-thru chapel in Vegas.” The song is packed with cool phrases about how a supposedly doomed crazy couple manages to make things work.

The spacious “Humankind,” was written with Helene Cronin, who got the idea for the song from seeing a hashtag—#Humankind—on the internet. It tells the stories of two people for whom human kindness provided a balm for their pain. In other words, nothing cures human pain like human kindness.  As good as that song is, the tender ballad “Dad’s Garage and Mama’s Kitchen,” also written with Cronin, is the clear album standout. Rendered tenderly in keeping with the bulk of the album, it portrays the ways that each parent provides love to their children with lines such as “between carburetors and casseroles, broken hearts and fishin’ poles/ there was always something needed fixin’/in dad’s garage and mama’s kitchen.” “This is one that will have listeners reflecting on parental roles and likely certain anecdotal experiences associated with each one.

More touching fare is found in “The Broken Part,” another song about healing, born from family experience as it was written while grieving for his brother. “Famous” is about the fleeting nature of those that follow your name (‘Would you tell everyone about that game?”) for the rodeo rider or the high school athlete. White’s themes are universal with hope and resilience underpinned by a spiritual faith revealed in “God’s Not Me,” meaning that we do not control our own destinies but instead need to place trust in a higher power. These thoughts are further punctuated in the upbeat closer “When I Go.” Scott’s songs, both provocative and evocative, are uniquely comforting.

 

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