He was a founding member of the innovative and influential[2][3][4] Austin trio the Bad Livers, formed in 1990 with banjoist and singer/songwriter Danny Barnes and bass and tuba player Mark Rubin.

[13] Due to the frequency of their gigs and the length of their sets, the Bad Livers performed many covers, including songs by bands such as Motörhead and the Misfits.

[22] Though their style was difficult to describe, McLeese wrote that "the Bad Livers represent one of the healthiest impulses on the Austin music scene, a determination to employ traditional elements within a radically fresh dynamic.

"[12] McLeese wrote of one live show in 1995: "The uncommon telepathy enjoyed by Danny Barnes, Mark Rubin and Ralph White makes the band's frenetic acoustic interplay sound like the work of a six-armed, multistringed monster.

"[21] The Old Time Herald wrote that the music of the Bad Livers "sounds right at home in the briar patch,"[26] describing White's fiddling as "the thrashing of a Georgia-bent bow applied to a dark cross-tuned Ozark melody" which struck "a novel and fetching chord" with young people who were previously unfamiliar with country music.

[26] The Bad Livers' first album, Delusions of Banjer, was released in 1992 on Quarterstick Records and produced by Paul Leary of the Butthole Surfers.

[9] In his review, McLeese admired them as "a band drawing from the wellspring of tradition to create something fresh, vital and original.

[29] By the end of 1996, after playing about 1,500 live shows with the Bad Livers,[30] White grew weary of touring and decided to leave the band.

"[8] White's former Bad Livers bandmate Danny Barnes reviewed the album, which he described as "a fantastic record [that] literally drips with all the things you don't hear anymore," adding: "There's a wide range of emotions and feelings stirred in the central nervous system.

Like his previous recordings, it featured arrangements of banjo, kalimba, and fiddle that "bask in an authentic herky-jerky loveliness.

In 2013, he released a split 12" record with Sun Arrow with Monotonous Press, and Austin PBS station KLRU aired a documentary about him as part of the series Hard Sound.

In January 2016, he collaborated with Thor Harris on the album Tossing Pebbles on the Sleeping Beast, released on Self Sabotage Records.