Jack White: Music Business Maven or Artist On The Run

Yeah, that is crazy. That’s not very good routing. You should talk to your agent about that.

[Laughs]

So, what were those respective trips? Was that just getting ready for the tour?

We did three shows of The Dead Weather in Louisville, Detroit, and Toronto and those all went incredible, and then in New York. Anna Sui asked me to present her with a Lifetime Achievement Award (the Geoffrey Beane Lifetime Achievement Award) at the CFDA’s (Council of Fashion Designers of America) last night. And I’m in L.A. now. We’re playing the Roxy tomorrow night and then The Tonight Show. I’m finally gonna do The Tonight Show now that it’s hosted by someone I can trust. [Laughs] Naw I mean, I just never liked the look of the other Tonight Show.

How’s the band been developing live?

It feels good. We wish we could do 50 or 60 shows in small clubs first, and then go out and do bigger shows but, you know, with the Internet and all that you sorta don’t have that luxury anymore. You kinda have to come out in a blast. We’ve been feeling incredible. It’s a good challenge to really get up and running really fast. We did the same thing with the Raconteurs, I guess. It feels good with this band. I think everyone’s really inspired.

Has it felt similar because, like you said, it wasn’t like with either one of these projects you could keep them hidden too long? Was it a sense of déjà vu, of unveiling this new band and going through this process again?

Yeah, sometimes I wonder what am I doing? Why do I keep starting over when I don’t need to? [Laughs] But, I guess the problem with that last question is that I do need to. I obviously need to or I wouldn’t be doing it. Because you wouldn’t call it a good business move. But it’s for other reasons, for artistic reasons. It’s gonna have to happen. I just don’t want to get in the way of it.

Everyone knows you more as a guitar player, even though you have a history of playing drums. Has sitting behind the kit on a more regular basis spurred on some new thoughts and some new songwriting ideas?

Yeah it has. Like [with Dead Weather], I would walk over and start a beat and then I would walk over to a synthesizer and I would play something and I would say “Well, Dean [Fertita], take it from here.” And then I’d go back and play drums and he would play that for a minute and then Alison would jump in… a new songwriting process had started from the drums. That happened in the White Stripes a lot too. Dean and Alison were writing as well on guitar and piano. But for me the big part was the producing as the drummer. That’s what I’m getting a lot out of.

In addition to The Dead Weather, you’ve been producing a number of projects for your Third Man label too, right?

Yeah. They’re all coming through a whole new system. I built this studio and this entire headquarters in the last 6-8 months and all these records have come out since then through that idea. And there’s more to come that I’m working on right now. It’s just incredible. I can’t believe we got it up and running so fast. I mean, that whole building was gutted and in two and a half months, it was finished. You know, it was just break-neck pace. It’s supplied just an unbelievable palate to be able to create things that wouldn’t have existed had we not made the structures to facilitate it.

You’ve had Third Man as an imprint to release records through for a while, but in the back of your head, was this always something where you said ‘One of these days I’m gonna get around to making this thing bigger’?

There were a lot of things. It was something I’d been wanting to do for years. You know, back in Detroit, I used to record 45s in my living room and bands would stay there and so forth and this is the exact same thing, just on a bigger scale. Just now I’m using the mics I wish I had back then.

The last time I got to talk to you for American Songwriter, we talked a little bit about the boundaries you put on yourself and how it helps you creatively. Have you set up similar sorts of structures in the way you are producing like you did with the White Stripes, limiting the number of tracks and things like that?

I think it’s smart to do that, yeah, for any artist. And I love to work that way, so I always do that. Sometimes you don’t have to say it out loud. It’s almost bad to say it out loud. But sometimes when you can do the set up of the studio where it’s only an 8-track studio and we come and record, then that’s it. I mean, what are you gonna do? It is like you lock the door… and you’re forced to create in a different mode. I can guarantee you that any of the music nowadays that sounds plastic or auto-tuned or fake, if it was recorded on better, analog equipment it would sound a thousand times better, and it would be extremely palatable. When you look back at country music of the ‘50s and ‘60s, a lot of the novelty songs are the songs that maybe at that time you wouldn’t think were that cool if you were into rock and roll, but now looking back at them, you hear how much soul they have and how unbelievably enticing they are. And it’s the equipment. It didn’t water it down. It was culturally thought of as watered down at the time, but looking back, it completely wasn’t.