Bio
Imagination is the key to everything but it’s an extremely selfish and dictatorial taskmaster if one chooses the creative life. Ideas never stop and can ruin even the most pleasurable externalities. A notebook and recorder are constant companions. Most creative people I know live in an augmented reality. It’s like having a prehensile tail, useful in all sorts of ways but socially isolating. Friendships are few, acquaintances many. That’s why the theatre is so arresting. For a few moments each night you are, in public, declaring your love, hate, anger, mistrust, murderous intent, joy, elation, confusion, ecstasy as if they are of your own volition. It’s liberating to write the words, it’s even more liberating to don the character and act them out.
Doc White is a musician, songwriter, actor and playwright who grew up in Adelaide at a time when some of the most bizarre murders in the country were being committed. As a result of an unfortunate series of seemingly random events, a copy of Lightning Hopkins first Arhoolie record landed on his old HMV record player and the gloom was lifted. A lifelong and, some would say, unhealthy interest in blues and true crime evolved that has remained to this day.
Doc plays country blues like the devil (who was an early fan) and is one of the few modern blues artists to adopt the mandolin, despite it being an instrument that is nearly impossible to tune. Doc still holds the record for the Glenelg to Somerton ocean swim he set in 1971 due to the race being abandoned in 1972.
Doc has appeared at major festivals and tours Australia solo with his band Gentleman's Ruin. He also created the blues and burlesque show The Lowdown Hokum Orchestra and Burlesque Revue.
Doc's music has been played on ABC Radio and he has been featured on The Planet and in Rhythms Magazine.
Doc’s tune Cropduster Blues was voted Song of the Year at the 2004 Melbourne Blues Appreciation Society VicTas Blues Awards.
As an actor Doc has appeared in the TV shows House Husbands, Wentworth, Five Bedrooms, My Life Is Murder and the films Emily, The Arms of Venus de Milo, The Spirit of the Game, Judy and Punch and the plays That's Showbiz, The Deluxe Old Time Radio Hour, The Tin Woman and Gold Age.