Sky White: Foxy Shazam keyboardist, tea entrepreneur

For the last ten years, Sky White has lived on the road, rock and roll-style, as the keyboard player with Cincinnati-based rock band Foxy Shazam.

His job has meant daily 8-hour commutes in a van or a bus, then performing highly theatrical, insanely energetic shows during which he plays his 100-pound keyboard above his head, stands on the keyboard, and jumps off stage and crowd-surfs while playing the keyboard. The band has circled the country. "We probably played Los Angeles and Chicago 40 times," said White.

For White, who started in the band when he was in high school at Walnut Hills, it was a dream to create music, to share it with people, and to meet 200 people at a time when they're having a great time.

But life on the road is not exactly glamorous. It's not even really normal. "You don't have your own house, you don't even have your own bathroom," White said. "And I've never understood why people want to come backstage. Backstage is terrible."

One thing he found while touring that was a good thing, something he could count on having every day, was a good cup of tea.

"I don't drink coffee," he said. "But on the road, I'd take my Mason jar with a good green tea to a gas station and fill it with hot water from the coffee machine. People would look at us weird: six sweaty guys, the one with the long beard drinking tea from a jar." But green tea makes him happy and makes him feel good.

He deepened his appreciation of tea, seeking out better varieties, going to tea shops in large cities, spending a lot of time on the internet looking for the best, the most legendary and unique teas to buy.

Now Foxy Shazam is off the road for an indefinite period of time. White is living in a house with his brother, sister-in-law and doted-upon niece on the west side, a few blocks from his parents. He's hanging out, making friends, being normal, drinking a lot of tea.

And he's made tea into a business. He started a mail-order company called Wendigo, selling tea he imports himself.

"I started the website the day we announced we were coming off the road," he said. "My software guy quit a couple of days before we were going to launch, so I stayed up a few nights and taught myself HTML and programmed the website."

It's not White's first business. He did much of the business for the band, and he also owned Casablanca Vintage clothing for awhile. (Where he negotiated a 25 percent lifetime discount for himself when a couple of employees bought it.)

White has the conviction that tea is going to be the next big thing. "I'm sure of it. I'm just seeing it a little ahead of everyone else," he said.

It's true that fine tea is gaining popularity, and especially among millennials, who drink as much tea as they do coffee.

But White couldn't see anyone marketing tea to that age group. Most tea is sold with either the mystery of the Orient or cute English tea time aura. "It's all thoughtless," said White. "I honestly figured my rock and roll skill set might be useful in getting people to drink good tea."

Wendigo is branded with cryptid monsters: those mythical beasts that probably aren't real, but that people love to believe in. Wendigo is a Native American deer-headed humanoid monster. "It sounds friendly and nice, but it's the super-scariest monster I found," said White.

The first two teas on his website are a black Chinese tea named for Bigfoot and a green jasmine tea called Nessie. His Wendigo tea was just released; it's a Japanese sencha White is in love with. He tries to match up the personality of the tea with the right monster – a cozy jasmine tea with the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot with a strong, big-flavored Chinese black tea. He thinks of them as his celebrity endorsers.

There is no end to the cryptid monsters who could brand teas. "Not all of them are suitable; I don't think anyone will drink a tea called the Mongolian Death Worm," said White. But he has a giant ghost dog from northern England, Black Shuck, in mind for an English tea, and long lists of more.

He finds his tea by going online, googling various combinations of "tea" and "import" and related words until he finds what he wants. He's not completely sure which ones will work.

"I don't know if I want to sell just the best tea in the world, or to sell tea that's not quite the best, but that normal people would drink and can afford," he said. "Do I find the people who already love the best tea, or try to create new tea drinkers?"

Just to be clear, there will never be a blueberry-flavored tea or anything with almond flavoring added and no tea bags, He might go herbal with something very classic, and classic flavored teas like Earl Grey. He already has a jasmine. He'll probably never have more than a dozen teas. He's also starting a tea club that might give people access to special, more expensive teas.

Craft beer and good coffee are models for his business. "There's this solid wave of people who care a lot about what they consume," he said. "I want to give them special, unique tea that feels important."

Brewing Tea

There's nothing easier than brewing a cup of loose-leaf tea. Leaves + hot water = tea.

But a few simple things are important:

• You need a brewing method for steeping, then separating the tea leaves from the brewed tea at the right moment. The Wendigo website has several kinds of tea-brewers that work at home, or for one cup at a time.

• Every tea requires its own perfect temperature of water. That's almost always a few degrees below boiling. It's hotter for black tea, less hot for green and white tea.

• And, each tea has the perfect brewing time. Wendigo's Nessie jasmine tea is amazing: fragrant and just barely bitter at 2 minutes, a little too bitter and jasmine-y at 3. "I always google it before I brew a new tea," said White.

• With really good tea, it's perfectly fine to brew tea leaves twice, even three times – stretching the value of expensive tea. You get almost all the caffeine on the first brew, subsequent brews are lighter. You can brew the same leaves several times into the same pot, creating a mix of strengths. This is only possible in one brewing session, though; you can't come back to used tea leaves the next day. White usually brews extra, puts it in the refrigerator for iced tea.

• Tea lasts 18 months to 2 years. However, it's hard to know how old tea is when you buy it. Better not to stockpile too much.

• Did you know this? Jasmine tea is not made with jasmine flowers. (Though some might add a few blossoms for decorations) The jasmine blossoms are laid on top of the tea as it dries, then blown off. Sometimes this is done three times. Then it's rolled by hand. Wendigo's jasmine tea sounds like little ball bearings when you spoon it into your cup.

• All real tea is made from leaves of same species of tea bush. The level of oxidation created by heat after it's picked makes it white, green, or black. The quality and variation in fine tea is much like wine: it varies with growing conditions, soil , climate and topography