Awash in danger, spiritual uncertainty, and environmental fury, Hoodoo’s lyrical concerns are matched by a particularly intense strain of White’s trademark swamp funk. Hence the title’s double-edged meaning: “hoodoo” referring both to the songs’ ominous tone and the palpable vibe that filled the studio as the songs were cut. “Our studio is an old antebellum house,” White says, describing his Church Street Studio in Franklin, Tennessee. “I hear it was used early in the Civil War days as a doctor’s office. Wood floor, lotta wood everywhere—good for the acoustics.”

Cut mostly live to tape—vocals and all—much of Hoodoo consists of first takes. “There’s some actual magic that came over all of us when we were doing this,” White recalls. “I would sit down with my drummer Cadillac [Bryan Owings] and my bass player the Troll [Steve Forrest], play twenty seconds of the tune, and then say ‘We’re gonna hit record, and you just play what comes into your heart.’ It’s like everyone is getting the hoodoo sensation. Spontaneity is beautiful. And,” he adds, “since it’s our studio, there’s no hurry: no one is over our shoulder saying when we gotta get in and when we gotta get out…we were the record company.”

Review:

There's no mistaking Tony Joe White's signature swamp boogie. Patented in the late ‘60s, White has been working that same low-down blues grind ever since, taking a long sojourn from recording in the '80s before settling into a regular groove sometime around the time of the new millennium. Usually, these collections of new songs were on tiny labels – including his aptly named Swamp imprint – but 2013's Hoodoo appeared on Yep Roc and received an appropriately larger push than its recent predecessors. Apart from that publicity, not much has changed in White's world. He favors thick, laid-back Bayou blues heavy on atmosphere even when the production is bright and clean. He's there, supported by a lanky, languid rhythm section and colored by another guitar and organ or harmonica, sometimes working up a head of boogie but usually settling so far back into the groove it feels like they can't be rousted. Some dread creeps at the edges of Hoodoo – it surfaces on “The Flood” and “Storm Comin’,” references to the storm that washed away large portions of Nashville in 2010, also damaging White's own home – but White's fondness for spontaneous takes dilutes these ominous undertones and, sometimes, his own groove. As appealing as the lived-in, swampy jams are, there's a laziness that drifts throughout Hoodoo, apparent in the sauntering rhythms and Tony Joe's mush-mouthed vocals. If he were issuing warnings, they'd be hard to hear through his grumble, and the band doesn't work for your attention – they expect you to either be on board or not. And while they do their voodoo well on Hoodoo, that nonchalant attitude keeps the record from being compelling.
All Music Guide – Stephen Thomas Erlewine