In late February of 2020, shortly before the pandemic shut down just about every avenue for an independent country singer to make a living, Angel White was already living in a vacant hotel, playing underground shows with theme nights. One of those themes, “ghosts of the West,” stuck with him. The fifth-generation Texan knew it would matter at some point.
“I didn’t know what I wanted it for,” White tells Rolling Stone, “but I knew I wanted to call something ‘Ghost of the West.’ It’s an ode to the Spanish cowboy, the Black cowboy, the Native cowboy, and just being the face of a lot of men who aren’t seen — whether that be in the music world or at a rodeo, whatever the case may be. That’s the goal.”
More than five years later, White’s vision became a reality when the cowboy-turned-cowboy-singer released his debut album, Ghost of the West: Volume I, in early March. The 15-track record is more than just a landmark in the decade-long career of White, a native of Cleburne, Texas — once a cattlemen’s stop on the Chisholm Trail and now home to a museum for the landmark of the Wild West. The LP is also a showcase of potential for a Black country singer who went from busking in the Deep Ellum district of Dallas in 2016 to opening major tours for Shane Smith and the Saints, Old 97’s, and Kaitlin Butts in the past 18 months.
White also landed a pair of showcase slots on the Post Malone Travelin’ Tailgate — a pre-party ahead of Malone’s Big Ass Stadium Tour with Jelly Roll — in May in Arlington, Texas, and this past week in Ridgedale, Missouri.
Ghost of the West — produced by Dwight Baker (Pat Green, Bob Schneider) — may have only been out a short time, but it’s responsible for just about all of White’s career rise.
“We’ve been playing the record for the last two-and-a-half years,” White says. “We finished it in February of 2022, and right after that, I was just like, ‘Might as well play the new music.’ We had no date for it to come out, but we were shopping it around, doing the whole back-end stuff. It was always a goal of mine to tour a record that wasn’t out yet. There’s this John Mayer documentary — for Room for Squares — and he toured that record for, like, a year, before it actually came out. I always thought that was cool, because you get people ready for the songs. We were like a year and a half into shows, and people were asking, ‘Where is it?’ It feels really good, and it’s nice for it to be in one place all together.”
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In an era when Black artists are rising in prominence in country music and detractors are eager to nitpick their country credentials — evidenced by debates surrounding both a superstar like Beyoncé and a sudden flash on the scene like Shaboozey — White comes ready-made with a background far more country than any critic could hope to boast.
“Part of my family has been raising horses for the last 50 years,” White says. “Quarter horses. Breaking, breeding. Right in Fort Worth. Our family ranch is in Mexia, a little outside of Waco. We have horses out there, and I take care of horses with my grandpa in Fort Worth.”
After high school, White moved to Oklahoma for college, where he spent a year playing football at Southern Nazarene University in suburban Oklahoma City. He didn’t care for the sport anymore, it turned out, and he dropped out to start a short-lived punk band (“Super angsty” is how White describes it). That lasted eight months, and when the band broke up, White picked up a guitar and learned to play. He realized quickly that he was a fit with the bluesy, country sounds that had permeated Fort Worth in the late 2010s when artists like Charley Crockett and Leon Bridges built massive followings.
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White absorbed all he saw and heard, and Ghost of the West showcases what he has become. There are certainly elements of Bridges’ soul and Crockett’s storytelling to White’s music, but his heavy Texas accent and introspective lyrics combine to give him his own distinct sound.
On “House of Cards,” White croons over a string-heavy waltz melody, “Don’t be fooled by the smile that you see/‘cause it’s painted on me like a clown/and if she came breezing in, you’d figure it out/I’m just a house of cards about to fall down,” making it impossible to think he’s speaking from anything other than angsty experience.
He drives that point home on “Running in Place,” which he calls the darkest part of the record. The line, “If I don’t know where I’m from/it don’t mean nothing when you say my name,” backs up that assessment.
“I grew up thinking someone was my father, and when I turned 21, I was told it was someone else,” White recalls. “I recorded it six years later, and it felt like I had finally processed that whole situation.”
White says Baker pushed him to explore his angst on Ghost of the West. His raw honesty caught the ear of Kaitlin Butts, whose own music seems to be an ongoing processing of angst and trauma, and Butts realized she had happened upon a kindred spirit. She asked White to open a long stretch of her Roadrunner! tour earlier this year.
“Angel White is the Black cowboy and Western angel that everyone needs in their lives,” Butts tells Rolling Stone. “He’s the guy they cast in the movie to play as himself. He’s just that cool. He’s got looks, talent, kindness, genius, swagger, and vision. On stage, he presents as a star. Off stage, he is one of the most genuine souls I have been lucky enough to share a stage and a late night smoke with.
“When it came to picking who I wanted to come along with me for my first headlining tour, I wanted to bring along folks that I needed my audience to know about,” she continues. “Folks that share the same values as I do, and folks that I look up to myself. He embodies what it looks like to be a country star.”
When Butts played the main stage of the inaugural Lone Star Smokeout in early May, in the parking lot of AT&T Stadium — where White played the first of his Post Malone Traveling Tailgate stops a few days later — White was in the front row, singing and dancing along. He wasn’t on the bill. He just came to see Butts’ set.
It was a shining example of what White wants from his own music. He may have gone all-in on making a career out of writing and singing, but what he really wants is for his voice to be heard.
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“I just really want the music to travel to as many people as possible,” White says. “I want it to reach as many people as possible, and I want them to be able to hear it live later. I want people to experience me live. I just want it to expand.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose fourth book, Never Say Never: Cross Canadian Ragweed, Boys From Oklahoma, and a Red Dirt Comeback Story for the Ages, was released in April via Back Lounge Publishing.