A City of Thousands Can’t Hold The White Bitch Back
Interview by Dan Fox
Since arriving in New Orleans a little over seven years ago, Michael Patrick Welch and his host of personas have overtaken New Orleans like so much kudzu racing through virgin Southern soil. His first appearance, largely metaphysical, was in The Donkey Show, Welch’s semi-autobiographical novel about his initiation into the city by way of two of its most entrenched institutions: the cutthroat underbelly of a fine dining establishment and the Orleans Parish Public School System, where as a teacher he earned his stage name, the White Bitch. The loudest and most urgent of Welch’s alter egos, the White Bitch has slowly become a staple of the New Orleans music scene. What started out as a sampler-enhanced solo performance has expanded over the years, with the White Bitch incorporating live musicians into his act as well as early noise pioneer and all-around fun-time guy Ray Bong (of the Bongoloids). It might come as a surprise that his first album The White Bitch’s Prey Drive, released this month, is mostly guitar-oriented, like Santana over a beat machine. Another surprise is how polished Welch’s voice sounds as he expertly wails over pop tunes that infect and echo in your brain long after the song has ended. ANTIGRAVITY caught up with Welch and accomplice Ray Bong one sweltering July night to discuss, among so many of the possibilities, his new album, helming the late Keith Moore’s Noizefest and what exactly it means to be called “The White Bitch.” Special thanks to Chauncey, Welch’s pygmy goat, who head-butted me towards the end of the interview.
ANTIGRAVITY: This is the White Bitch’s first album?
Michael Patrick Welch: Of my whole life.
AG: What took so long?
MW: Well, actually Ray loaned me a thousand dollars! Maybe at two other points in my life I would’ve put out an album but I didn’t have the money at the time.
Ray Bong: You had done up a series of songs about three years ago, which were almost good enough.
MW: I’ve been playing shows almost once a month since I was fifteen, since my dad was driving me to the club with my equipment. One time, somebody in the crowd had to get on stage and tune my guitar. It was in Florida in this little town where there’d never been a local band.
AG: What did you bill yourself as? (more…)
