INTERVIEW: Drake White on ‘Hurts the Healing’

Drake White is one of the most resilient artists in Nashville to emerge in recent years. This year, he has released two new tracks inspired by his near-death experience – ‘Hurts the Healing’ – and it is one of his strongest to date. Here, we interview White about the recent release and his past few years. 

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Hello! Congratulations on the most recent singles – ‘Hurts the Healing’ is probably at the pinnacle of one of my favourite Drake White songs ever.

Oh, I appreciate that. I think I’ve got the same opinion, I had to live through hell to get to that song. It was just such an accident and the cards were definitely stacked against us in writing. We wrote that on a Zoom call and it was just one of those things that it fell out on the page. I met one of my best girlfriends now – Allison Veltz Cruz, an incredible write – and Aaron Chafin just on the computer screen and we started pinning that song and when we started singing it, we were almost emotional, like ‘yeah this is different.’ My hope is that it just helps people as much as it helped me. I mean, it literally helped me get through the pandemic, it helped me get through a crazy injury.

I think that resonates in the song, when you have that something that means so much to you, your fans hear it, they do pick up on things and they notice when you’re being really raw and real in your music I think.

That means the world to me, that’s what what people are saying and that’s what you’re saying now – vulnerable is the way to go. I mean, it’s something that through the 50s and 60s – I watch things like Mad Men on Netflix – and it was like ‘hey, paint your face, hide your emotions. Real men don’t cry,’ that kind of stuff. They’re still like banned from Alabama, I still act tough but to go out there musically. Us as artists are emotional, that’s why we’re artists, we know how to convey those emotions through music. I think being able to share that with people there is some strength in that. I can’t tell you how fulfilled it makes me feel when people just come up and say ‘hey, you helped me through this time or this music helped me through this time;. It’s not necessarily me, it’s this music. I’ve realised through the injury and through the pandemic that it is not me, it is the sum of all the people around me, my God, it’s my spirit, it’s everything. I think it’s working towards a bigger thing working towards a bigger power and if it helps people that’s the most fulfilling thing ever.

Obviously you’ve had this crazy year with your health scare and the pandemic. Do you think that’s shaped the way that you view music and the way that you write songs? Has it altered your perspective? 

No doubt, you can’t go through a near death experience without altering your mindset. I’m very in tune with myself and my feelings and what I’m going through, but now it’s literally like hyper-magnetized, I’ve grown that ability to tap into the way I feel and I really don’t give a s**t necessarily about what people think. I just write what I’m feeling, and then sing it and let it be heard. I don’t know why I had to go through this, I don’t know what the complete purpose was, but it’s starting to make sense. When you have to teach yourself to walk at 36 years old, that’s kind of confusing and to go through and have the wife and the family and the people that I’ve got – it’s just ripped my ego apart, it’s just not existing anymore to the point where, like, I just want to go out there and live and get on stage and perform these songs, you know?

I feel that everyone’s perspective has kind of shifted during the pandemic, but yours is on another level. Have you found that your writing has changed just by going through the changes of the pandemic, doing it over Zoom rather than in a room and feeding on people’s energies?

I mean it’s crazy, when it was first started it was odd writing over Zoom. Back to that vulnerability, I think as many bad things as you hear about on social media, it has cut through the viewer and the listener is very educated at being able to notice authenticity and realness. I think the second that you’re not real, or doing something that is not ultimately you, I think that they can see it, they can smell it really quick. So, I mean, writing on Zoom for me was just adaptive. It shows the human spirit, it shows the world what the human spirit is capable of. I mean, I believe we’re living in the best times – we’re very resilient. As long as you keep going, you keep treating people the way you want to be treated and as long as you keep loving folks, there’s nothing that can stop you.

It’s pretty cool, I think this pandemic has definitely made me a better man. I have more empathy, I’m gonna be honest with you, when I used to see people on the corner, I’d give them $1 or something like that, but I would, think ‘yeah, that guy or that girl probably needs to get a job.’ Now, with this brain injury, I’ve realised it’s just made me more empathetic – I don’t know what they’re going through. We don’t know what a man is going through – you never know what a man is going through, so be careful. The way you act towards others – that’s scripture and I think that if we learned that out of the pandemic, this world got a little better.

We have to believe something good came out of it.

I have to believe it. My grandmother is 87 and I think the saddest part about all of the pandemic were the elderly that were in nursing homes. I wasn’t able to talk to my grandmother for nearly two years or see or touch her. I think the power of human touch, of hugging somebody and saying that you love them, is insane. I mean, she’s lived her whole life as this phenomenal woman of God who loves people. I watched her from 85 to 87 and  she looks completely different – that’s the saddest part about it. The world keeps spinning and it keeps going. As many sad stories as there are, there’s just as many good stories.

I’m gonna focus on the good ones. One thing that you kept on going with is the Wednesday Night Therapy sessions. Where did the idea come from and how did you keep going? I know a lot of a lot of people did start things at the beginning, but lost momentum, or lost focus, but you really kept going.

Yeah, well, I think to use the word again. resiliency, it was built from the injury. I’d already been on my back for nine months, so I was jonesing to get back on stage. I basically looked up at God and was like, ‘I’m gonna play, I’m gonna figure it out, show me.’

It was literally just a conversation with Michael Hobby – one of the Thousand Horses’s wife’s had a baby shower in the barn and my wife was sitting there – it was right at the beginning of the pandemic and we didn’t know how it was going to be. Mike said, ‘Well, you should just play in this barn.’ I used to have Wednesday night therapy, when I was just out of high school with my uncle, who I wrote legends about, I used to just hang out and it was basically people picking guitars around a fire and telling stories. That’s where all of this thing was born around a fire telling stories, having a drink and and being vulnerable in front of people, saying, ‘Man, I’m having a tough time’. So, it was built back in 2004 or 5, but then that conversation with Michael Hobby started it.  We just started playing with a cell phone on Instagram and that first time 1000s of people tuned in. 

I decided, I’m going to need to do this every week. We need to do this every week and be persistent in going and it was hard some weeks. It was very hard to keep it going because it financially didn’t really make sense – that’s one of the hardest things to get over is money and finances. We were doing it because it gave us laugh, it gave us something to look forward to. It gave the band reasons too. I was writing and then being able to sing the songs that I was writing as I’d finished.

That’s a really powerful thing to have and thank you it really did keep us going. Thank you for taking the time to chat today Drake.

Thank you.