Photo: Kenda Benward

Simone White appears frail and attentive, eyes wide and thoughtful, looking upwards for most of our interview, as if searching for answers in the empty space above her. She is expressive and reflective, approachable and natural.

When she sings her voice is sharp yet woollen; shrouded in a hollow blouse of silkiness that echoes as it leaves her mouth. She found her ‘true voice’ in New York, after “a really big break up of a marriage. I went through a lot of heartache. It transformed me in a way. I was singing songs I had sung before but that I had cloaked lyrically in a prose style, or that were very literary, carried over from the books I read in my teenage years. I remember singing a song, and thinking: “I’m saying all these metaphors, but what am I really saying?” And [after that] I felt like I was getting to the heart of it, and I stopped being afraid to sing beautifully. All these things I had done stylistically before, through all these fears and insecurities, were just burying my self. Now, this is how it comes out naturally.”

She is currently working on material for a follow-up to ‘I Am The Man’, and will start work recording it in September. ‘I Am The Man’ was released in June last year and was produced by Lambchop’s Mark Nevers – who chose to record it in his house in Nashville.

Simone’s real break, financially more than anything, has been the use of ‘The Beep Beep Song’ for the Audi R8 TV advert, a track composed on little more than a whim and a coincidence: “I was saying goodbye to this guy that I thought I was in love with, but I sort of knew that I wasn’t. These two cars outside said to the other, they beeped in perfect time back and forth: “beep”, “beep”, like the beginning notes of the song. And I said “Hey! Did you hear that?!” I said “I’m going to write a song about that” and he said “I’m going to as well”. But he never did, and that very day I sat down and wrote it. Sometimes they just come up fully formed – breaking forth like Athena.”

In response to those who accuse her of selling out Simone admits that although she’s an environmentalist she does drive a car, which meant that “with the Audi I think I would’ve really been in a bind if it had been a Hummer. I’ve been offered several other ads, for things that I really don’t believe in and I turned them down. It’s not really a black and white situation” although she says that “my younger self might be more angry about it. But my younger self also totally separated art from money. I worked in restaurants and was a caterer. I didn’t value myself as an artist so I couldn’t ask for money for my art. Two years ago, I decided I was going to make money from what I love to do, and I love to make music, and I wanna be able to support myself on that”

She does however, feel frustrated by negative comments over the ad, since “there’s really no way for musicians to make money anymore…now, when it gets patchy earning money from touring, I fill in with the Audi money.”

This younger Simone described herself as a self-appointed “pauvre artiste”: steady in the belief that art cannot remain pure whilst having or needing a monetary value, that the involvement of money corrupts or devalues art in some way. But she also states that for the whole period she was growing up her father made money without compromising his work: “I should’ve looked at my dad as a really good example; he’s been an artist for thirty or forty years, supporting himself and his family on it. But somehow I didn’t see it even though it was standing right in front of me”

Simone’s mother and grandmother were also performers, “My mum’s on the cover [of the album] with the leopard. They had an act, a burlesque sort of thing. My grandmother had different songs and outfits, she’d sing in different languages. My mum did stuff with her, and then she became a folk singer in her own right, doing folk singing back in the 60s. My mum sang constantly around the house, and I think I thought that vocalising was just a really normal thing.”

Because of the nature of her family’s professions, Simone led a nomadic childhood, constantly moving from place to place, but for the moment is content in Venice Beach with her boyfriend. “I’ve moved so much and I’ve made my home everywhere, that I just consider wherever I am to be my home. There’s a line in the song ‘I Am The Man’ that says “home is the house you build with your bones.”

Throughout our interview Simone also talks of photography, painting and writing. But with all these creative outlets and mediums, how did she settle on playing a guitar? She replies “I haven’t settled. I still feel like I’m an artist in other ways, it’s just that this is what I’m focusing on. I’ve never really thought of anything I did as exclusive to the others. They all feel like a part of who I am as a creative person.”