Biography

                    Few rap artists can match the accomplishments of Erik
                    Schrody, a.k.a. Everlast. From his days as the leader of the
                    multi-platinum Tommy Boy Records crew House Of Pain
                    and beyond, Everlast's roughneck sound and style helped
                    pave the way for the current generation of hip hop
                    hooligans. He came out as part of Ice T's L.A.-based
                    Rhyme Syndicate Cartel, made 1990's Forever Everlasting
                    album, then left to form House Of Pain with his pals Danny
                    "Danny Boy" O'Connor and Leor "DJ Lethal" Dimant.
                    Three albums and five years later, Everlast steps out on
                    his own again with Whitey Ford Sings The Blues, fifteen
                    honest, artistic tracks, replete with introspective lyrics,
                    soulful guitar playing -and of course, state-of-the-art hip
                    hop beats.

                    "What I'm trying to do is 'if Neil Young or Willie Nelson was
                    a b-boy.' Attitude wise, Johnny Cash is a b-boy. Some of
                    the ideas on the records were like, 'What would happen if
                    Ritchie Blackmore met Timbaland?' Seeing Wyclef do his
                    thing with the guitar I was like, 'That's cool, but what about
                    writing something original?' We've seen the rap karaoke
                    thing one too many times. Now cats take an entire old
                    song, put a few updated slang words in it and it's the hip
                    thing. Too many fifteen year old kids think Puffy and Mase
                    rhyming over 'The Message' is the hottest shit they ever
                    heard, and they ain't never even heard the real 'Message.'"

                    Whitey Ford was put together by Dante Ross and John
                    Gamble - the Stimulated Dummies - E-Swift produced one
                    track and so did Divine Styler. Guest appearances include
                    Sadat X of Brand Nubian and Prince Paul, with some fresh
                    bass lines courtesy of Norwood Fisher from Fishbone.
                    Everlast played all the guitars on the record, and wrote
                    most of the album with the exception of samples. Hip Hop
                    purists may wonder what the hell's going on here, but
                    Everlast deserves props for coming up with some deep
                    material that's guaranteed to stand the test of time. "I'm a
                    little older and the music is more mature," he reflects. "It's
                    different from House Of Pain - which was drinking beers
                    and slamdancing."

                    Needless to say, Whitey Ford was thrown into disarray a
                    few months ago when Everlast needed emergency
                    open-heart surgery. He was born with a heart defect, and
                    during the last day of making the record, tore a muscle in
                    his heart and was rushed to the hospital, where he got a
                    heart valve replacement. "It was ill," he explains. " One
                    minute I'm in my house and then I wake up in the hospital
                    four days later." That near-death experience was a huge
                    wake-up call.

                    Everlast reflects on the eerie coincidences found
                    throughout the album: "After the heart attack, I listened to
                    the record and there's a lot of death on it. 'Death Comes
                    Callin' is a song about watching what you do and what
                    you say because you never know when death's gonna
                    knock on your door. The song 'Painkillers' is all about
                    winding up in the hospital. The funny thing about
                    'Painkillers' is that it's a fabricated story but there's a part
                    of it that is so near-to-life as far as me getting wheeled into
                    the hospital.

                    One of my buddies said, 'You should die at the end of that
                    story.' I said, 'Nah man, that's tempting fate.' It makes you
                    wonder how much your mind knows that you don't know
                    consciously. I listen to the record - and my mind and my
                    spirit obviously knew something was coming.

                    Everlast's tasty guitar work and deep blues-flavored
                    linguistics are most evident on the album's first single
                    'What It's Like,' an acoustic/electronic blue-collar jam of
                    hard-livin' in real-life Americana. "It's three little stories
                    based on experiences I've had in my life. The first verse is
                    about this guy shitting on this bum, telling him to a get job.
                    That was me one day back when," explains Everlast.
                    There are two songs back-to back at the album's onset
                    called 'Dollar Bill' and 'Ends.' "They're both about money,
                    but they're two different attitudes towards money. 'Dollar
                    Bill' is about 'I gotta have it. I need it' and 'Ends' is about
                    the dark side of it, what happens if you get too much of it."
                    Other highlights include the slammin' spirituality of 'Praise
                    The Lord' and a Roy Ayres-flavored groove called 'Today.'

                    "The fucked up thing about blowing up with a band is that
                    you can only do it once," Everlast reflects. "Even if you
                    stay huge forever, you only go through that process once
                    - and I'm looking for that feeling again. You know, that
                    thing that puts butterflies in your gut before you go
                    onstage. It got to the point with House Of Pain where it
                    was a machine. Get on stage. Do the show. Get off. Go to
                    the hotel. It was too routine. The only reason I was going
                    on the road was to make money. Once I stopped getting
                    butterflies, that's when I knew things where going to get
                    boring. I just got to a point where I wasn't having much fun
                    and I needed to quit." These House Of Pain tours were
                    incredibly influential, through which Rage Against The
                    Machine and Korn first came to national attention.

                    "I can't wait to make another record," Everlast offers. "I'm
                    just finding a style now. Everything that I thought was
                    limited before weren't limitations, they were just fears. I'm
                    not scared to try shit or act like a fool. That's what this
                    record is about, shedding any fears. People are either
                    going to love this record or think I've lost my mind. Either
                    one of those is okay with me."

                    "This time I wanted to do that scary thing - that if you don't
                    do it you're gonna be like, 'Damn, I wonder what would've
                    happened if I tried that.' I got sick of hearing 'rapper
                    Everlast.' You never hear the word 'musician' and I
                    thought that was bugged out because a lot of hip hop cats
                    are true musicians. To me, what I'm doing is no different
                    than hip hop. I hate to sound too artsy-fartsy about it, but
                    there's emotion on this record. People who like what I've
                    done and know what I've been about in this game will dig
                    it."
 
                    Everlast explains his alter-ego as represented in the album
                    title: "In rap music, all these guys have aliases. 'So And So
                    a.k.a. This Is That.' Half the guys in the rap game wanna be
                    Italian mafiosos and that struck me as funny. If I had an
                    alias, what would it be? I was trying to be really
                    outrageous, and 'Whitey Ford' is real peckerwood. It
                    evokes an imagery right away. I love the bluntness of it.
                    Whitey Ford Sings The Blues is code for 'Everlast is
                    bugging the fuck out.'"