Hailing from Iowa in the States, Whitmore has the sort of gravelly blues voice that sounds like it was bottled a hundred years ago in a saloon with Robert Johnson, and has only just been set free. He writes gritty roots music and yet has somehow forged a career playing alongside artists like Chris Cornell, The Pogues, The Low Anthem and Clutch. His country heritage seeps into his music and life – he’s a true woodsman – but he insists that all bone sculptures are from found objects. “I don’t hunt,” he says. “My father used to hunt in the purest way you can think of hunting – to put food on the table – but I never got into doing it. I just take what’s left and make sculptures out of it. My folks were both naturalists; we never had much formal religion and we would read books on Native American beliefs, so we were very much taught about respect for the land and our place within it. We’re really no more important than any deer or blade of grass or insect. I don’t look at bones or skulls as things to be ignored and buried.”
Whitmore is a storyteller, a narrative songwriter, drawing on life around him. “I like to tell a story and a lot of the stories are based on my life or someone close to me; I don’t have to go far to get that material,” he says. “Unfortunately, I’m not as good as some songwriters are at making that stuff up but fortunately, I don’t have to go far to hear interesting narratives. I feel lucky that I live in a landscape where all I have to do is sit back, observe, and try to write it down.”
He finds that stepping into the shoes of those around him is a grounding exercise that is a continuation of the ethos of his parents. “It’s a good way to gain perspective on the world,” he says. “I’ve got an old song called Lift My Jug and it’s from the perspective of this hobo Hub, who’s dead now, but when I was a kid he was a local character and a real life hobo. He had a shack, literally down by the river, and sometimes my dad would give him a ride into town. My dad would say: ‘Don’t judge old Hub by his looks, he’s a good man and he chooses this free life and that doesn’t make him a bad guy’. As I got to know Hub, I learned he was a good man, and he was probably the freest man I’ve ever met.”
The bands that Whitmore plays with are more often than not good friends, but no matter what, opening to Chris Cornell’s crowd with a swampy blues set is going to be a hefty task. “It’s always a challenge to get people to listen to you when they’re not there to listen to you,” he laughs. “It’s a challenge and I like it. It doesn’t always work but I’ve got a good sense of humour, so I try to make people feel at ease. I like to feel that the audience and I are in it together and people usually respond to that.”
So why has Whitmore chosen this genre to express his stories and melodies? “My parents again, I must go back to their guidance,” he says. “Living in the country we had a lot of country music around and they would always play records. My dad played guitar and my mum played the accordion while both my grandfathers played banjo. That was the music I knew. It was all country music and soul music. As a teenager I got into punk, hip hop and rock, but I realised early on that roots music is what I like to make. When I was 16 I would’ve loved to be in a punk band, but I decided to leave that to the experts and do what I do best.”
BY KRISSI WEISS
