Brooke White interview

interview by Bill Palmer

“I think I’ve been to eight airports since Monday,” Brooke White tells me as we chat over the phone on a Sunday evening that finds her in Utah the day after performing in New York. Our conversation covers everything from life after American Idol, to whether the sometimes surprising career choices she’s made since then have qualified as unconventional or merely natural, to her ongoing iPhone obsession…



You finished Idol, the tour, the obligations, you were on your own and you said now I can do anything I want in terms of launching my career my way. You had to have gotten offers from major labels. Did you consider going that direction?



Oh yeah. Let me tell you, as soon as I got off the tour I was so major label minded. I thought for sure that I’d go with a traditional deal. And there were talks and we did several meetings, and really what happened was I just felt like I was getting really far away from the actual record making process. Actually, getting into those talks I just felt like it was out really far away from me. And I was so ready to make a record. And not only that, I knew what kind of record I wanted to make, you know? That wasn’t even something that I felt like was a question to me. As time went on I realized that I’d found a producer that I wanted to work with, I’d already written quite a few songs and collaborated with some great people, and I felt like with the Idol timetable, there’s just not a lot of time to wait. And not only that, like I said I’d met my producer and I wanted to give it a go. And as I was working on the record, my management team, we started talking and it was like, “You know what? Why not put this record out on your own label? It’s 2009. The industry’s changing. And with the exposure that Idol gave you, there’s no reason why it couldn’t happen.”



They say you have to sell a million copies on a major label just to break even on your deal, and yet I’m told you’ve already turned a profit on this album. But is there more work doing it that way, stuff coming across your desk?



I’m kind of like doing the jack of all trades thing. I have outsourced a lot of help. I hired a marketing team, I have a publicist, I have business management. I have all that around me, but yet at the same time I’m the main decision maker. It’s like “Brooke, do you want to do this? Brooke, do you want to do that?”



With my team around me they give me great advice and help steer me in a positive direction. But at the end of the day, the ball is in my court.
It’s still indie in a sense. I still have to prove myself. After Idol, you’d think… it’s just not a done deal. It’s just not. There’s been enough seasons to show that there are those that are successful and there are plenty of those that are not. And I’m in that place where I’m still, you always feel like you’re auditioning.



Coming from me this is a compliment, but I listen to this record, and I know you’re in your mid-twenties, and I have trouble as I’m listening to it believing that you’re only twenty-six. Do you think that with all your kid siblings, maybe you grew up faster than you otherwise would have?



I think I did. I think there were certain things that happened in my life that did cause, I guess, a quicker acceleration of growing up. You know what it is too, I think, I’m very emotionally in tune with people. I’m very sensitive. I don’t know if you ever watched the show, but I’m really overly sensitive. It’s like a blessing and a curse at the same time because it’s really wonderful for writing music but it’s a pretty heavy thing to be always so sensitive.



However, though, that sensitivity has really worked for me musically. And not every song is about me, you know? Some of these songs I’m taking from other points of view of people that are very close to me. So I just try to be very in tune with emotion, with people’s life experiences, with reality. And it’s funny, I don’t try to write songs. Whenever I try, I fail. It’s like they just happen. They have to come to me and they have to be ready and they have to want to be written. I’ll be blow drying my hair or driving down the road or brushing my teeth, and boom it’s there. And it’s like just go and follow it down. And I don’t ask, and I just try to let it develop. And when it’s done, I can usually pinpoint where it’s coming from.



You had to do a lot of cover songs on TV, and a lot of times you were told what to sing or you had to pick from a list. I guess we would have all expected that once you were able to choose any cover song you wanted for your record, you might have chose something from the seventies. What led you to instead do a Kings Of Leon song?



Let me tell you this. For one, you don’t want to be completely entirely predictable, right? And two, let’s take a modern song now and make it sound like it’s from the seventies. I like that twist better. And so as soon as I heard the Kings Of Leon song the first time, I knew that it was going to make a perfect cover. I knew you could take the song and make it country. You could make it whatever. I could just tell it was a well written song, it had good bones, you know? And I love the guy’s voice. I just think I was really into the song. And when I brought it into the studio, I thought the idea of the juxtapose of having a male rock group, and me being a female singer songwriter in a more kind of old school classic vein. Taking the song and making it sound, you know, it was more of a challenge, it was more of something that was unpredictable, and I really loved the outcome.



Not only is it a modern song, it’s currently at the top of the charts. It’s on the radio every five minutes.



Yeah it’s funny that you say that, because when I chose it, it was not. It was just barely dropping, and it wasn’t on top of the charts. At the time it was their other single. And someone had shown me this song, and I was like “This song is incredible.” And it’s just kind of ironic that shortly after I released my record, this song is the top single.



It’s kind of risky to pick something so current, but again, I didn’t want to be completely predictable and pick, like, a Carole King song.



The title track High Hopes And Heartbreak is seventies influenced, but it’s a different kind of seventies influence than we might have expected, almost a disco influence.



Just the one song, just the title track. And it’s hilarious because at the time, I had chosen the title of the record long before that song ever came to be. I knew that the album was going to be High Hopes And Heartbreak, and it’s funny because I was nearly halfway, three quarters of the way done with the record, and I didn’t have any song that mentioned “high hopes and heartbreak” – not that it had to have a song that did, but I had written all these songs that were a little bit more emotional, ballad or mid tempo, the more predictable sound of me. And as I was in the studio with my producer Dave Cobb, who collaborated with me on a great deal of those tracks, we were thinking you know what? We need something to pick up the pace. Let’s try to write something fun, just try it, just an experiment.



And honestly, we didn’t take it very seriously. It came together really quickly, and I was sitting there at the piano and all the sudden I thought, oh my gosh, High high hopes and heartbreak baby, and I just thought why not do this? An when we recorded it, I couldn’t believe that we had done a disco song. I thought this is way out in left field, people are not gonna get this at all, I don’t know if we can put this on the record. But as I started listening to it more I was like, you know what, I’m gonna do it. Let’s put it on there. I never would have anticipated that the title track would have been a disco song. It is a departure, but I think it’s a good one.



The word “unconventional” keeps coming to mind, whether it’s doing a song like that or covering a current song, or even just signing with an indie when you had the clout to have gotten a good deal with a major. Do you think of yourself as being unconventional? Is it stubbornness, or does that just feel natural?



I don’t know if it’s stubbornness or it just felt like the natural course for me. It wasn’t like it was a hard decision. That’s what’s amazing about it. You know what, even on American Idol, I was probably the more unconventional, unlikely type of contestant. I’m not a big singer, I don’t have a big voice. It was the first year that they let us play instruments. My approach to Idol might have been different than those in the past, and it wasn’t that I was trying to be different, I was trying to be myself. I don’t know if it was trying to be anything, just being, just doing what I felt was the right thing, the most organic thing.



And it’s funny, I don’t ever look at it this way, but when you put it in that perspective and you see all the different things line up, yeah, I guess unconventional. It wasn’t on purpose I guess, it just happened.



I was looking at your Twitter page and the one thing that really stood out to me was just in the past few days you’ve had conversations on Twitter with Jason Castro, something about shoes with Carly Smithson, you nominated David Archuleta for “Follow Friday,” you’re following Syesha. And it occurred to me that these people you went through this process with seem to still be right there, part of your life. How important is it to still have these people a part of your life like that?



There’s something about this group of people that can relate to each other. We went through this experience together, and we’re still going through this experience, you know? It’s such an obscure thing to happen to a person, to be on American Idol. It’s hard to explain what it’s like, and to have other people out there that understand what that process is like. The truth is, we had a very tight-knit group, I think even maybe abnormally tight. You know, like a family, I guess in a way.



Not that it was always perfect, but I think we got along pretty well and supported each other. Everybody was different from one another, so it never felt like a big competition. I don’t know why.



You’re heading out on tour with Michael Johns and you’ve got ten shows coming up in thirteen nights. Is that something that you enjoy, getting to see new cities and new people?



Let me say yes and no. I love being at home. I do. And I’m not in the right business to be a homebody, because you have to be gone more than you’re at home, and there are certain parts about that that are really hard. I have some days where I’m just ready to call it a day and go home. I’m actually in the car right now with my cousins that live in Utah, going to my aunt and uncle’s house to have a home cooked meal, and I can’t tell you how incredibly, incredibly happy I feel right now. It’s almost like blissful, and it’s just strange how normal things feel amazing when you’re out on the road. At the same time, there are those moments where you feel like oh my gosh, this is amazing that I get to experience this and see different places and connect with people this way, and get to sing. There’s something very magical and adventurous about it, and that part is great.



From your Twitter page it also looks like you’re an iPhone user.



Hardcore. I’m pretty hardcore about the iPhone. I’m obsessed. And whenever people ask me, if you could have one thing on a desert island what would you take with you, it’s easy, I would take my iPhone, it has everything on it. Pictures, music, texting, the internet, my email, Tetris. Pretty easy. Twitter. It’s everything I need.



Do you have any favorite apps for when you’re out on the road?



I’ve got a couple apps that I’m really obsessed with. For awhile I was really into Word Warp. I was really into that game. And obviously I have Tetris. TwitterFon is a big one, to keep in touch with the fans and the friends. And then my newest favorite, which I think is incredible, is the Pano app where you can do the panoramic pictures, and literally you can place yourself in three different settings and it looks like it’s three of you in a picture and you can do some pretty fun things with it.



I’m looking at my iPhone right now. I need to get some new ones. My guitar tuner is on here, which comes in handy on the road, obviously, cause I have my guitar on my back every day. Word Squares. I have Grocery IQ for when I go to the grocery store. Nice practical one. Tap Tap Revenge. Pandora. Facebook. Camera Bag. Flashlight.



The Voice Memos and the recorder I use daily. That’s for those moments when you’re stuck in the car and you’ve got a great song idea, that comes in handy.



So it’s helping you professionally then.



My whole profession is on my phone. It’s pretty bad. It’s pretty much I’m obsessed. If it dies I don’t know what to do with myself. If I lose it, I lose it.

Brooke White’s tour kicks off on September 17th in Pomona, California.

High Hopes And Heartbreak is available in iTunes now. Learn more at RealBrookeWhite.com