Singer/songwriter Scott Sean White writes from real life experience, which often draws in the recognizable hopes and heartaches that occur unexpectedly for us all. That’s particularly true of his upcoming album, Even on the Bad Days, which arrives on February 9, 2024. It follows his debut album, Call It Even.
The new album was produced by Grammy nominee Dave Brainard, who was at the helm for Brandy Clark’s album 12 Stories as well as albums by Jamey Johnson, Sunny Sweeney, Jon Wolfe, Drew Kennedy, and many others.
White explains:
When I started planning this record, I felt like I needed to have more up-tempo songs and more full band songs… Just to kind of take the next step from the first record, to progress forward. The challenge with that was finding a sound that made sense with my voice and my songs, because a record with my name on it was not gonna be anything remotely resembling mainstream Nashville. It had to be me. That’s why I went and talked to my friend Dave Brainard to see if he would consider producing the project. He’s an outside-the-mainstream guy. He produces left-of-center songwriter records, so I felt like he could help me find that sound that would make sense for my stuff. And boy – did he ever.
His latest single from the album, “God Is Good” is an emotional offering with plenty of lived experience behind it.
White shares:
This song was born on April 2 of 2021. I don’t usually know the exact date, but I do on this one. My second oldest brother Daniel had passed away on March 21 of 2021. And April 2 was the day my sister called and said that my oldest, and last remaining brother, Kirk, wasn’t gonna make it. He had been in ICU for a few weeks, gotten better, and then took a sudden turn for the worse. Kirk held on for two more days until April 4 – his 72nd birthday. But when my sister called and told me about Kirk, that was 12 days into losing Daniel. When I hung up the phone — I don’t know any other way to say it other than to simply say, God gave me this chorus.
I picked up my guitar and I went out on the porch and sang this chorus over and over and over for an hour and a half. It was praise, it was grief, it was hard, and it was beautiful all at the same time. So early last summer when I started planning for this album, I thought it would be cool if I could write verses for that and make it into a whole song. It took me about five months to put it all together and in that process, I decided that this song should be the completely true song on the record – like “Call It Even” was on the first one.
