Singer/guitarist Jim White considers himself a reverse songwriter/engineer.
"There are people out there who do things differently. If you asked some to build a tree, they would start from the roots, stack on the trunk, tie on the branches and lace on the leaves. Me? I throw the leaves in the air and try to fasten everything together with branches, roots and trunk.
"That's how I write my songs. I throw things in the air and try to piece them together."
White will make a stop at the Zephyr Club, 301 S. West Temple, on Saturday. Doors open at 7 p.m.
Interviewed by telephone during a van ride 80 miles out of Seattle, Wash., White said his songwriting philosophy is evident in his two albums, "Wrong-Eyed Jesus" and "No Such Place."
"I've got sort of a 'Sgt. Pepper' psychedelic thing mixed with a touch of J.J. Cale," White explained about his most recent album, "No Such Place." "I like a lot of different styles of music. And I think it shows."
Before White became an underground country singer/songwriter, he drove cabs in New York. "There, I was exposed to a lot of different styles of music. I knew a lot of Indian and Muslim cab drivers, and they introduced me to the most beautiful music I had ever heard. So, when I write music, sometimes I inadvertently add those haunting melodies into my own songs."
"No Such Place" was a long time in the making, White said. "It took me four years to get it out. I started working on it in 1998, although there is a song — 'The Wound That Never Heals' — that I had written even before my first album was begun."
White said he was never analytical about his career in music. "I didn't have any goals. I still don't. I just write what I feel."
The musician's dreamy style came, literally, from an accident. His left hand got caught in a band saw a few years ago, and he had to reteach himself how to fret guitar chords. "My style just emerged from that."
But his first album was more of a tour inside his own head. "It was a 'getting-to-know-you' exercise," White said with a laugh. " 'No Such Place' is myself traveling outside my soul into the outer world.
"I used a lot of producers on this album. Marcheebo, Sohichiro Suzuki, Andrew Hole, me and Q-Burns Abstract Message were some of the producers I called in.
"The biggest challenge was communicating with them. But Andrew really helped me reach the points I was trying to get at. And no matter what is said, the songs are still being developed, even though they are on the album. The band, which are a great bunch of people, and I tweak them constantly because my philosophy is you always need to try to improve."
E-mail: scott@desnews.com