Rap star Everlast (a.k.a., Whitey Ford) to play The Paramount

The Island Now

You can call him Everlast, Whitey Ford or even Erik Francis Schrody, but by any name, this singer-songwriter-rap legend’s remarkable music career has seen him reinvent himself several times over. 

From his first solo album, Forever Everlasting, when he was barely out of his teens, to the “Jump Around” success with House of Pain, the multi-platinum Whitey Ford Sings the Blues and its genre-bending hit single, “What It’s Like,” and his Grammy-winning contribution to Carlos Santana’s Supernatural album (“Put Your Lights On”), Everlast has defied the naysayers. 

Along the way, he has forged a groundbreaking merger of hip-hop, rock, folk, funk and R&B, influencing everyone from Kid Rock and Colt Ford to acolytes like Yelawolf, JellyRoll and Lil Wyte.

Everlast’s newest album, Whitey Ford’s House of Pain, is his first since 2011’s Songs of the Ungrateful Living.  The 12-track release offers an eclectic stylistic sampling from throughout Everlast’s nearly three-decades-long career.

The doomy, apocalyptic rap of the first single, “The Culling,” which Everlast describes as one of his “chain-of-thought songs like ‘Black Jesus’,” offers a chilling dystopian vision that blasts “lying politicians,” while warning about threats to our freedom.

There’s the self-analytical “The Climb,” a song which, in part, references his own defenses as well as his 8-year-old’s ongoing battle with cystic fibrosis, one of the chief reasons behind the long gap between records.

Watching her suffer fuels his anger and challenging of God’s existence in “One of Us,” while the dirty delta blues of “Show Your Roll” suggests a dark glimpse of a world with the chilling Boyz N’ The Hood refrain, “You wanna see a dead body?” and a growling vocal hook provided by Aloe Blacc, taking us back to his underground hip-hop roots.

The album’s centerpiece, “Summer Rain,” is a sprawling, cinematic, Beatles-meets-Tom Waits-meets-Neil Young glimpse into the horrors of drug addiction, with “Dream State,” featuring Alchemist, a sly stab at the back-stabbing treachery and Faustian pacts of the music business. 

There’s even a pair of tributes to the late Tom Petty. In “It Ain’t Easy,” Everlast sings, “Sometimes waiting is the hardest part,” and in the familiar bridge in “Break It Down,” as well as a “Jump Around”-style party song in the rousing “Smokin’ & Drinkin.”

“I just used everything in the tool box,” Everlast says about Whitey Ford’s House of Pain, adding that his family’s ordeal managing his daughter’s illness has given him “a whole different license to learn how to live.”

Born on Long Island, Everlast moved to Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley when he was still just a baby. His early listening included heavy metal groups like Led Zeppelin and KISS before he discovered rap-rock fusion in Run-DMC’s “Rock Box.” Divine Styler, a member of Ice-T’s original Rhyme Syndicate, who works with Everlast to this day, encouraged him to cut a rap demo, which resulted in his debut album, Forever Everlasting (1998).

“I never expected to make another album,” admits Everlast, and it wouldn’t be the first time he’d voice that doubt.

Two years later, he joined with high school classmates, DJ Lethal and Danny Boy, to front House of Pain, a rowdy, rap-rock hybrid that produced one of the all-time, hip-hop classics in “Jump Around,” which received a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group.

House of Pain soon splintered after just two more albums, leaving Everlast disillusioned with life in the fast lane and wondering — again — if he’d ever record another album. “I didn’t see a future in it,” he says of the band. “I was personally very unhappy.  And the others were struggling with their own problems, both personal and chemical.”

With his New York producer friend Dante Ross, Everlast began work on what was to become Whitey Ford Sings the Blues, a solo album that started as a rap record, but quickly mutated when he picked up his acoustic guitar and played the opening chords to the song “What It’s Like.” The Top 40 smash was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Performance.

“The record label kept telling me it wasn’t going to work,” says Everlast of the direction that turned out to be a game-changer. “That was just one of those happy accidents that happen… It opened up a whole new world of songwriting for me.”

A song he wrote, “Put Your Lights On,” landed with Carlos Santana, who cornered Everlast when he was on “Saturday Night Live,” practically begging to let him do the song. In his liner notes for Supernatural, Santana praised the song as the centerpiece of the album, which ended up winning eight Grammy awards. 

Throughout his career, Everlast has defied labels and musical categories, and continues to do so on Whitey Ford’s House of Pain. “I’ve been fighting radio over fitting into a genre forever, but it seems like the market’s catching up.  Look at someone like Drake, who combines singing and rapping. Things are changing,” he says.

On the new album, the song “HeartBeat” begins and ends with the sound of Everlast’s own pumping heart, and that’s what makes his music so personal… what draws you inexorably in.

“I’m happy right now,” he insists about his own level of fame, relaxing in his home Woodland Hills studio, not far from where he grew up, surrounded by artifacts and a collection of graffiti artists and street writers for whom he serves as patron.

Everlast’s next goal is taking things on the road, with a performance scheduled at The Paramount on Thursday, March 14 at 8 p.m.

“I make records, I tour them and I take care of my family,” he states. “I don’t need mansions or private jets. My lifestyle is sustainable. I live within my means. That’s how I can take eight years to make a record.  I have an extreme attraction to both hard work and hardship. I find them both beautiful.”

For tickets to the show, go to www.paramountny.com. The Paramount is at 370 New York Ave. in Huntington.

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