By Nance Ebert
Contributing Writer
LYNN – Rarely has a musician gotten as much mileage out of poking fun at his hometown as singer-songwriter Don White, a Lynn native. His song “I’m From Lynn, What Can I Say?” has been cracking up audiences since the 1990s, whether they heard it at one of his frequent live performances, on one of his albums, or on a local radio station.
And while White good-naturedly lampoons various aspects of Lynn, rhapsodizing about its plethora of sub shops and juvenile delinquents running amok, the more upscale North Shore towns of Nahant, Swampscott, and Marblehead don’t escape his razor wit either.
But White is much more than a one-hit folk singing wonder. Also known as a teacher, author, comedian, humorist, and storyteller, he has been winning over crowds far and wide for more than five decades.
Early interest in language
“Growing up in Lynn, Massachusetts, in a working-class city, the career path I chose was unlikely as far as my bloodline was concerned,” said White, whose father was a 30-year employee at the Lynn General Electric aircraft engine plant. “As a kid, I enjoyed being alone and liked to read and write. I didn’t really have a path to follow that I could see. I was very interested in language and later music, comedy and storytelling.”
One of his first gigs was in Lynn at a small coffeehouse in the mid-1970s where he was asked back several times. He soon got married and he and his wife hitchhiked over 60,000 miles in three years around North America, starting around 1975. They got hopelessly addicted to hitchhiking and traveled as far away as California, Alaska and Newfoundland. He emphasized how this trip was a true adventure that had a profound impact on him.
“We truly embraced the experience and the kindness of strangers. When we returned after three years, we weren’t the same people we were when we left,” he noted. “During the COVID pandemic, I wrote a book titled, ‘The Hitchhiking Years and 4 Other Stories’ about our experience and how it shaped us into being something completely different.”
White began spending time in Cambridge, going to see music and comedy shows at Club Passim and other venues. He started developing a vast understanding of people who were creating interesting music. Some of them from the 1940s and 1950s were still alive and performing so he would go and see them when they passed through the Boston area.
“Some of the people that Woodie Guthrie hung around with were still touring, so I went everywhere to see them and learn. I started playing at the Old Vienna Kaffeehaus in Westborough and began to build a fan base,” he explained. “I first went to the open mics and Tim Mason, who ran the place, let me open for other performers. I built my audience from that.”
Transition to more comedy
More gigs followed and White found himself at the Catch a Rising Star nightclub in Cambridge doing more comedy. He played a host role and went from performing as a folk singer to comedy and transitioned seamlessly between the two. It was not uncommon to perform nine shows in five days. He would watch the headliner do all nine shows and took away a new skill set and implemented it into his own folk music. He said he recognized then that he possessed comedic talent.
“Everyone that stands on a stage and is looking out to an audience suffers from the same disease and that is ‘I have something to say,’” said White.
He also became interested in poets and was truly fascinated by how untethered they were. These people weren’t funny and didn’t have music. With a comedian you must get laughs and with music you have to sing, he explained.
“With poetry, you can sing if you want to, rhyme if you felt like it or you could run through the crowd,” White explained. “Each week, I would work my day job and then go into Cambridge and go to any show I wanted to at Catch a Rising Star for comedy or I would go to the Old Vienna Kaffeehaus in Westborough for music. I just learned and absorbed as much as I could from all three art forms.”
White created a show where he included equal parts of comedy, poetry and singing. This is when his career truly took off and he never looked back. The only negative thing he said is that he doesn’t know what to call it. The positive thing is that if the audience likes it, they have to come to him to see it done as he said he is one of the only local artists who does this.
Storytelling as an art form
“I never realized there was a whole world with adult storytelling. I fell into it organically and I ended up traveling down to Tennessee for The National Storytelling Festival in 2015,” he recalled. “My agent, David Tamulevich, who was also Peter Yarrow’s agent (from Peter, Paul and Mary) got me this gig. There were upwards of 20,000 people converging on this town to participate. I got eleven other festivals out of this one and, for me, this was life changing,” said White.
Photo/Submitted
He says he didn’t pursue the business. He pursued the art form and generated a brand-new audience in his fifties. He credits Tim Mason, from the Old Vienna Kaffeehaus, to starting his career. He continues to teach and perform. In addition to his two published books, he has eleven CDs and three DVDs.
“What guy from Lynn, Massachusetts can say that they’ve had such a rich, interesting, weird and blessed life?” said White.
Listen to a live performance of Don White singing “I’m From Lynn, What Can I Say”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D8_F-_2mmk.
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