British-born guitarist Peter White is as soft-spoken as his renowned acoustic riffs. Over the past couple of decades, he’s quietly recorded a dozen solo albums that appeal to a crowd attuned to Earl Klugh and the gentler side of Pat Metheny. White’s latest release, Good Day (Peak Records), is a set of 10 original tunes scheduled for release on September 8.  

 ”I hadn’t made a CD of original songs for some time,” says White. “The last one was Confidential, which was released in 2004. So I just started going through my backlog of material – songs that I’d never finished, some going as far back as 10 or 15 years – and I discovered that I had a lot of gems that I really wanted to show to the world. I wanted to record them in my own time and in my own way, without any outside influence or interference.”

One of the songs, “Love Will Find You,” is a collaboration with White’s younger brother, guitarist/songwriter Danny White. Danny had originally written it with Basia, his longtime collaborator. Peter rearranged Basia’s vocal line and superimposed his own melody on top of it. “I basically took the song that she and Danny wrote, chopped it up, took her scat part – which she sings at the beginning and at the very end in the original version – and put it into the middle of the song as well,” he says. “I use it as a hook throughout the song. I just thought it was cool that we could collaborate like this and come up with two versions of the same song.”

“Bright” is White’s homage to the late bassist and NBA star Wayman Tisdale, with whom the guitarist had performed onstage a number of times. “The guy was always so happy, so positive, always had a smile, always made you feel great,” says White. “Even before his death, I’d always called this song ‘Bright’ because it sounded uplifting and happy and funny. Then I realized that it would be the perfect song to dedicate to Wayman because that was the way he came across to the world.”