Episode 289 - Jack White
Marc:are we doing this really wait for it are we doing this wait for it pow what the fuck and it's also what the fuck what's wrong with me it's time for wtf what the fuck with mark maron
Marc:All right, let's do this, what the fuckers.
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fucking Tennesseans?
Marc:Is that not, man?
Marc:Come on.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:It's got to work.
Marc:It's got to work as a word.
Marc:Have some respect.
Marc:Have some respect for the context, man.
Marc:Why are you talking to yourself?
Marc:Because I'm in a car...
Marc:I'm driving from Murfreesboro, Tennessee to Nashville, Tennessee to interview Jack White.
Marc:I'm in a very decidedly not sexy car.
Marc:It's like a Candy Apple Red Rev4.
Marc:Is that what it is?
Marc:SUV.
Marc:I'm not cranky.
Marc:I guess I'm a little nervous trying to prepare here.
Marc:That'll help.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So now I'm in a car in Nashville on the highway to Nashville listening to Sun House Death Letter.
Marc:A song that had a profound effect on me.
Marc:And I listened to it on vinyl for the first time.
Marc:It was just one of those portals into the pain of the blues that punched me in the brain.
Marc:And I guess I'm
Marc:heading out to Jack White to talk about the blues.
Marc:It's got to be part of it.
Marc:I love his new record.
Marc:Liked his old records.
Marc:But there's a haunting thing to it.
Marc:I mean, the guy is haunted by the spirit of American music, and I just... He seems like a fairly charismatic dude.
Marc:Got a lot going on.
Marc:Fucking rock star.
Marc:I'm driving in my red Toyota.
Marc:Rented.
Marc:Rented.
Marc:Would never buy a red Toyota.
Marc:Buy maybe a silver Toyota.
Guest:I can live with that.
Marc:all right so i'm going over to the third man records and uh pick this up when i uh when i get there
Guest:They have like a comedy stage or something?
Marc:Yeah, they got a comedy stage.
Marc:It's alright.
Marc:It's not the best situation for comedy.
Marc:Wandering people that are just like, I just want to cool off.
Marc:And they wander in.
Marc:There's a lot of people there, but it's very hard for me not to hate them immediately.
Guest:Festivals have never been my favorite place to play.
Guest:It's just very...
Guest:It's not a good environment for any kind of performance.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Why is that?
Marc:Because I felt like you can't hear the audience.
Marc:You don't know how you're doing.
Marc:Shit just dissipates.
Guest:It's a party.
Guest:It's basically an organized, gigantic block party, wherever it is.
Guest:The best place for music or probably, like you're saying, comedy is in a dark club with the lights off.
Marc:Nice low ceiling.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Like a bar.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You can't walk out of a club.
Guest:You can walk away from a festival show.
Guest:Even just the freedom of that, even if you're stuck in the crowd, you still know in the back of your mind, I could just walk over that other side of this place.
Marc:and like if you're in a movie theater you get the vibes that you know the door in the door's not locked behind you but you you basically feel like you're here right you can't leave yeah and that's reverential to what's happening on stage or on screen you know yep but yeah at a concert you're just sort of like you know there's a guy like you know half a mile away going nah he's gonna go get some uh fried chicken or whatever the hell it is some fried dough it's it's like i uh listened to uh
Marc:coming over here in not so much in preparation but but like i was listening to a sun house in preparation to talk to you it's like i mean i i had the vinyl of death letter and uh and it was and i got that later in life and it was one of those moments where it was one of those listening that song where you're like holy fuck
Guest:changed my life yeah and i was listening that coming over here because i know you you go back that far with that yeah yeah and like in terms of like when that first struck you the the sort of soul of that music when the hell was that i was a teenager i can't remember what how old i was but i was a teenager sometime i had known a little bit about the blues like holland wolf and all the english bands that loved the blues and all that stuff yeah but not really full-on like getting into robert johnson or sunhouse or any of the the deeper ones
Guest:I have to admit, I was a little bit scared.
Guest:I remember when I was about 14 years old, I went to a record store when I was about 14.
Guest:I remember I was a freshman in high school, I guess.
Guest:And I had that new Robert Johnson box that had come out that did so well.
Marc:With the two discs?
Guest:Yeah, and his picture on the front.
Guest:And that picture on the front was legitimately scary.
Guest:It was scary to me when I was 14.
Guest:The cigarette hanging out of his mouth?
Guest:Yeah, it's kind of wild.
Guest:I kind of look back and I'm like, why was that so scary to me?
Guest:I just had heard something about him selling his soul to the devil or something at that time.
Guest:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:Maybe that picture just was, wow, I don't want to listen to that music.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I remember saying that at 14.
Guest:So it's kind of funny, like a couple of years later or whatever, how maybe that was the final attraction.
Guest:Eventually, when you say something like that, you're eventually going to be drawn into it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, that's the same with me and cigarettes and everything else.
Marc:Everything that looked kind of dark and weird.
Marc:Eventually, you're like, I got to go in there.
Marc:Maybe so.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you grew up where in Detroit?
Marc:In Detroit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And was it was there a music scene like did you get any of that kind of wave crashing of any?
Marc:I mean, you're younger than me, so all those Motor City bands are kind of gone, right?
Guest:There was a garage rock sort of scene.
Guest:It had started a few years before the White Stripes had played, which is a band called the Gorys and Rocket 455.
Guest:Those were the big garage rock bands in Detroit.
Guest:There was a new scene developing by the time the White Stripes had come around with bands like the Henchmen and the Demolition Dial Rods and things like that.
Guest:And by the time the Westchester started getting like in the, you know, maybe a couple of years in, there was a lot of bands.
Guest:It was 30 bands.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was, it was really, really smoking.
Marc:And there was just that, that, that like punk rock thing almost.
Marc:It's just the thrust of it all.
Guest:Did you ever listen to the gun club?
Marc:oh yeah oh yeah big time yeah because like i was like i was going through the old white stripes and and uh and there was a drive there like that that dude you know he had that blues thing too huh yeah yeah and they came from a bizarre kind of another angle of it which is so interesting that los angeles sort of uh you know almost like if you look at a picture of the club looks like they should have been in motley crew yeah yeah oh yeah yeah yeah when you know let's i wanted to go there was a moment where i had with uh with the robert johnson thing like when you first start listening to that
Marc:Like your brain doesn't really know what to do with it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then like, you know, to sort of integrate it and to figure it out.
Marc:Cause like, it seems that you took like some of those patterns and you were able to translate it.
Marc:Cause I, a lot of times people dismiss the blues and it kind of, it pisses me off because like the blues at some point became like bar band music.
Marc:But the deep shit is, it has its own life and it keeps growing in your brain.
Marc:And you were able to sort of extract that and fucking punch it up.
Marc:When I listen to your shit, it's like,
Marc:You seem to be haunted by the spirit of American music.
Guest:That's a good way to put it, yeah.
Guest:It feels that way to me, too.
Guest:If you sit down on the piano and I play a chord, they're not my chords.
Guest:They're not my feelings.
Guest:I think if you grew up in an Appalachian family, played that kind of hill music, southern music, you would always feel like, yeah, this is 100-year-old stuff I'm playing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And there's nothing wrong with that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's great.
Guest:I didn't write this, but nobody cares.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We're not interested for breaking new ground right here.
Guest:We're interested for the tradition of it, the respect of it all.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I feel that same way about the blues, no matter what its other contexts are, like punk rock or country or whatever else it split up into, the thousand things it split into.
Guest:It's all the blues to me, so I'm immediately respectful to it as soon as I play the first chord.
Guest:And you feel it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:If you're lucky, you feel it, you know?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And you grew up like in, what was the family situation?
Guest:I grew up in a train car.
Guest:My family was dead on the side of the road.
Marc:Okay, great.
Marc:Yeah, that's good.
Marc:That's the mythology.
Guest:A lot of people think that's me making stuff up, but... That's the origin story.
Guest:It is funny how much people think I make stuff up, though, but I've never done all that kind of... I remember you have a lot of those rappers put in there from hard hoods and stuff.
Guest:I actually was from a fucking hard neighborhood, and it almost seems like people even in Detroit didn't care about that.
Guest:Because most of the Detroit artists are all from the suburbs.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And...
Guest:It was kind of like, no, no, no, no.
Guest:I'm actually from the city, by the way.
Marc:What was left of the city then?
Marc:I mean, what was high school like for you?
Marc:What were you driving around?
Guest:It's very, very desolate.
Guest:It's still even less buildings.
Guest:Like Dominic, my friend from high school, he's playing bass with me now live, and we just went and played Detroit last week, and we played across the street from when we went to high school.
Guest:And the high school had been knocked down, and they built a new one next to it.
Guest:The old building was such a beautiful building.
Guest:It was kind of a shame they had to do that.
Guest:Not even kind of.
Guest:It was a terrible shame they had to do that.
Guest:But yeah, it's a lot of bizarreness.
Guest:There's not enough money to keep those things alive, to keep those old buildings alive and have no interest in someone redeveloping it.
Guest:So a lot of those things just go.
Guest:Old Tiger Stadium, which was the oldest stadium in the league, got knocked down.
Guest:And it seemed like if that was in another town, if that was in Boston or Chicago, that wouldn't have happened.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I heard about stuff about Detroit now where they were actually thinking about pulling in the city line and just cutting most of the city loose.
Guest:Yeah, they've been talking about that for a long time.
Guest:That's a great idea.
Guest:They really should just get rid of the city government altogether and start all over again.
Guest:I mean, they've just failed.
Guest:They have failed for 30 years.
Marc:You still have family there?
Marc:Yeah, my whole family lives there.
Marc:How many people are in your family?
Marc:I know it's big.
Guest:I got nine brothers and sisters.
Guest:Can you name them all?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yes maureen and ray steve joe barb leo eddie allen and me i can't i can't 10 kids man and you were wearing the order i'm the last i'm the last oh my god and my mom was 45 when she had me too so and i was seven years older than the
Guest:It was seven years since the ninth child.
Guest:So I was way tacked on at the end.
Guest:I was basically like they found an orphan or something in the house.
Guest:It's bizarre.
Guest:All my brothers and sisters were like 21.
Guest:They could have been my parents.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so you were like, were you in an accident?
Marc:Oh, I had to be, yeah.
Guest:I think every one of them was.
Guest:It was like a Catholic family.
Guest:There's no accidents.
Marc:They're all gifts from God.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But they're all, you know.
Marc:Nobody was planned.
Marc:And what was your old man's business?
Guest:My parents both worked for the Catholic Church, so he was in charge of like three buildings in downtown Detroit, maintenance for all of them.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:And your mom did what?
Guest:She was a secretary for the cardinal.
Marc:So for the big guy?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:So were you hip to all the politics of the church?
Marc:I mean, when did you sort of start to understand that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We were fully engrossed in it.
Guest:I was an altar boy.
Guest:My brothers all went to the seminary.
Guest:I got accepted at a seminary.
Guest:I didn't go at the last second.
Guest:I changed my mind and went to...
Guest:public high school at the last second i mean were you really i was i was i was accepted i was going to go to wisconsin go to the seminary like my brothers had done too and i just sort of your brothers are priests no they didn't become one of my brothers became a brother it's called a brother yeah and uh but none of them none of them had become priests now when you were all growing up i mean was did you believe it
Guest:you don't really know any better or know any different or have a choice.
Marc:So hell was a real thing to you?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, you have, like, all of that, all of it.
Guest:Yeah, you're fully engrossed in it like that.
Marc:Like, I can't, I grew up Jewish, and I know that, you know, the Catholic thing, you know, you go into a Catholic church, and it's a pretty heavy mindfuck.
Marc:I mean, there's a lot of, I mean, was it full on, like, incense and the whole business?
Guest:Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Latin?
Guest:Yeah, well, that had changed in the 60s before I was gone.
Guest:But that was what they used to do.
Guest:My brothers went to those Latin masses.
Marc:Did you find that when you were a kid, you did confession and all that?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you carried all that shame for everything?
Guest:See, there's Jewish guilt and Catholic guilt.
Guest:They have similarities.
Guest:Yeah, guilt alone is a heavy thing to throw on kids.
Guest:It can help you sculpt your life.
Guest:It can help you have a good personality in a lot of ways.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But in a lot of ways, too, you can't shake it.
Guest:The guilt.
Guest:It's hard to cleanse yourself of that and shake yourself and realize that a lot of other people are not feeling the same guilt that you're feeling.
Guest:You have to go through a whole period where you kind of try to get rid of that.
Marc:Yeah, and not beat yourself up.
Marc:Because it's hard not to translate guilt into just, I'm an asshole.
Marc:Oh, exactly.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:And you have kids now.
Marc:Do you raise them Catholic?
Marc:Is it still in you?
No.
Guest:I've never been a religious person since I've been an adult.
Guest:When I said the word religion, it's a bad word.
Guest:I believe in God, but I don't believe in any paths to get to Him, any of these things people made up down here.
Guest:How about the hell thing?
Guest:Is that still intact?
Guest:I don't believe in hell.
Guest:I don't think that's a sort of ridiculous thing.
Guest:I don't even think the Bible really talks about hell.
Guest:If you really get down to studying it, it's something about Revelation said something about that.
Guest:But everything else doesn't really mention that very much.
Guest:And I think a lot of people disagree with that.
Guest:But there's a lot of funny things about the Bible that people don't realize.
Guest:There's no mention of the devil living in hell in the Bible anywhere.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you went and did the research?
Guest:No, it's just like when you read things here and there, you kind of...
Marc:you kind of think there's a lot of misconceptions and they're going to keep continuing for hundreds of years you know yeah just because it's just it's easier to sell it if you do it that way sure yeah if you can scare the shit out of people into coming to church every week and throwing a few uh few bucks into the dish but like i imagine that getting rid of hell was probably a load off
Marc:Did it just fade away?
Guest:I made a record a few years ago called Get Behind Me, Satan, and that was my favorite thing that Jesus said in the Bible because I think it's such a bizarre statement to make, to get behind me and the double side of it, like...
Guest:You're playing the devil's music, and the devil's a part of it, if there's any kind of quote-unquote temptations.
Guest:There's a movie that Al Pacino made where he's the devil.
Guest:Yeah, I saw that.
Guest:The movie can be cheesy at times, but he gives this great speech at the end where he says he's a friend of man.
Guest:I've always given man exactly what man wanted.
Guest:I never said you could look at this stuff that you can't have.
Guest:Look, but don't touch.
Guest:Right.
Guest:touch but don't eat but don't taste all these things and that's really brilliant that is exactly what if there is a devil that was exactly what he's doing giving you what you want and why does God do the opposite why does he put that in front of us and take it away and why do you make us want these things that we're not allowed to have right what is the whole point of that that that test is a ridiculous test that seems beneath
Marc:a god.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I think.
Marc:Well, I think that conception of god was to try to provoke us into having some sort of moral compass.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, once you realize, like, hey, if I fuck all of these women and my dick falls off, maybe I shouldn't do that so much.
Marc:Or, like, hey, if I drink and my belly becomes distended, you know, like, there was, like, I never understood it until I talked to some dude who, he was actually, he's a journalist, Chris Hedges, he was in the seminary and then he decided to be a war journalist.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:And he like wrote this book about how, you know, there's no perfecting the human.
Marc:It's just sin.
Marc:The idea of sin is there just to keep us sort of in the middle of the road.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Or you have something to judge our shit again.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So like this preoccupation with the devil, it sort of drives blues music and rock and roll, though.
Marc:And you seem to be pretty aware of that.
Guest:I think because you can't help but decide when and where you're allowed to really want something.
Guest:I mean, one person could tell you, yeah, you're allowed to have that, and somebody else could tell you, you're absolutely not allowed to have that.
Guest:And we have to decide for ourselves what's quote-unquote right for us to have, what to experience, to do, to say, all those things.
Guest:And I've written about that a lot over the years.
Marc:I'm still written about it on the new record as well.
Marc:I know the new record, there's some beautiful songs about that.
Marc:The challenge of relationship, the challenge of trust, the challenge of what love means and whether something is love or not.
Marc:I mean, that stuff is pretty, it's real shit.
Guest:Well, if you're going to talk about love in a song, your challenge as a songwriter is to really try to think of something, a new angle on it, because it's been done so many times.
Guest:And to really evoke that word, to actually say it out loud, love, you have to really be at least trying to think about it on a different level.
Marc:For some reason, when I was driving over here, I was thinking, like, you know, listening to all the songs and listening to blues music, does heartbreak play into it?
Marc:I mean, have you ever been handed your ass?
Guest:I think that's sort of the greatest definition of the blues, yeah.
Guest:That exact kind of pain when someone leaves you and is not coming back, whatever that pain is, that stomachache, like seeing your girlfriend with some other guy somewhere or something, you know, where you get that stomachache.
Guest:Some people actually throw up.
Guest:Some people just get this pain.
Guest:Some people kill people.
Guest:Yeah, well, they go, yeah.
Guest:But the actual pain of it, the physical pain that your brain gives your stomach is very... I think that's very much the pinnacle of...
Guest:I want to say the pinnacle, but how to define what the blues could feel like at those moments, that kind of loss.
Guest:Sometimes if someone died or someone you love died, you might not feel that stomachache where it's 13 different feelings at once, jealousy, anger, hurt.
Guest:Self-hate.
Guest:Self-hate, all that are all inside that stomachache.
Guest:And I think that's a really good spot to think of if you think of what the blues is supposed to mean.
Marc:Yeah, and what you do with that moment.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What kind of asshole you become.
Marc:How far you fall.
Marc:How much you drink.
Marc:I mean, you know, because you think about it, people are only killed over money and pussy, really.
Marc:And that's the whole blues thing.
Marc:I'm going to go shoot that guy or I'm not.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Or I'm going to shoot myself that it's a weird mixture of longing, the urgency of like, the fucked up thing about it is there's nothing you can do.
Marc:If someone goes and they're done.
Guest:There's nothing you can do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And somehow says that to the best, it ain't hard to love somebody that doesn't love you.
Guest:And that's sums it up pretty, pretty quickly in one sentence.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's exactly what we're just talking about.
Marc:So when you were younger and you were thinking about going into the church, I mean, what was the drive there?
Marc:Was it just sort of like, I guess I'm doing this or I want to help people or...
Guest:Whatever the calling is to feel that you're okay to stand on stage in front of a microphone and let any kind of words out that you have the right to do that or the ability or whatever, I think it's the same drive for what they would call the calling of that vocation of priesthood.
Guest:Why do you think that you could do that?
Guest:I don't know, a lot of times when I'm on stage and performing, it'll sometimes hit me in the middle of a song, like, who do I think I am that I'm standing up here playing?
Guest:People always say, were you having questions that perturbed me are, did you have fun or were you nervous before the show?
Guest:I don't really get nervous, so I don't know that feeling that way.
Guest:I've always just been able to walk up in front of a thousand people and be no big deal, whatever.
Guest:They're just standing there and I'm just standing here, so what?
Guest:And the other thing is fun.
Guest:Did you have fun?
Guest:I don't know how to really have fun performing music.
Guest:I don't really know how to do that.
Guest:I know to try to get somewhere where they push myself.
Guest:I know all these other things.
Guest:And that sounds a little bit pretentious to say, but I always kind of thought fun was like being in a Motley Crue or something like that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You've got to be twirling guitars around.
Guest:Or you're having everyone smile and having a blast, and it's a party.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I've never had that feeling.
Guest:I get...
Guest:enjoyment and fulfillment, like accomplishing something and getting somewhere while we pulled that off or that was a hard one to do or that note was really expressive or whatever.
Guest:And involving yourself in struggle, that's not a problem.
Guest:But how do you say that after a show?
Guest:Yeah, I really involved myself in struggle and pulled off something really complicated.
Guest:You know, I can't.
Guest:Sure, if you want to call it fun.
Guest:Yeah, fun.
Guest:It's fun.
Guest:How do you confuse a fan?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Dude, did you have a fun up there?
Marc:Oh, we were engaged in a struggle.
It's like, oh.
Marc:All right, man.
Marc:All right, cool.
Guest:It sounds pretentious.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:I don't think it's pretentious.
Guest:It's hard to explain it.
Marc:It's not.
Marc:I know the exact same thing.
Marc:Just as a comic, if I get up there, I mean, my whole thing was, but this is different.
Marc:It's like...
Marc:Early on, I was like, I'm going to defy you to like me.
Marc:And then we'll do that thing.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:It's just a dynamic.
Marc:But when you're up there, you know when you hit it.
Marc:And there must be some at least elation or something somewhat dopamine flustering.
Marc:You must feel the juice.
Guest:Well, you get to a different point, too.
Guest:Sometimes, like, say the White Stripes got to a point where we could play a festival, like we were talking about, and we could write out a set list and say, well, all right, let's play this, this, this, and this, and that'll totally win them over.
Guest:Kill.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:But it's like, we never had a set list, and I still don't.
Guest:It's like, I don't want to do that.
Guest:That's too easy.
Guest:That's not... We're not accomplishing anything.
Guest:We're not experiencing anything, and the crowd is just witnessing something...
Guest:the hits just showbiz yeah you're like a live you're just you know uh you're a puppet of your own making yeah exactly you didn't used to be able to do it before you had any any sort of thing that would have been played on the radio you didn't have that ability to just go out and do that yeah you can imagine now if you're a famous band like green day or chili peppers or whatever those bands they they have a million radio hits they can come out and just slaughter a festival crowd and sleep through it yeah and you can sleep through it too so that's a tough challenge i bet um
Marc:Yeah, I just saw Radiohead the other night, and they got balls, man.
Marc:Yeah, they do.
Marc:And they mentioned you.
Marc:They said they were over here.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But I don't know what's up with that.
Marc:You're like Nashville royalty now.
Marc:We're just going to go by Jackson.
Guest:Why did you end up down here?
Guest:I had to leave Detroit.
Guest:I didn't feel comfortable anymore.
Guest:I didn't have any friends left.
Guest:It was not the environment that was good for what happened to the White Stripes.
Guest:It was very cynical and jaded.
Guest:Just the musician scene?
Guest:Yeah, the musician scene around us.
Guest:It's a tough town.
Guest:The whole Rust Belt is a tough place to live.
Guest:It's a gruff place.
Guest:jaded kind of place to live you know you got to be and i was fine with that i was fine with that i didn't even notice it yeah until that the white stripes hitting like oh man you can't do this here you can't really do this here well because of the jealousy and the spite and the infighting and everything about it there was no real infrastructure to to keep growing right i mean if you're a country star here in nashville and you come up and you're taylor swift or something and you come up in this environment
Guest:There's a lot here to support you.
Guest:There's also a lot to tear you down, but there's a lot to support you and let you exist.
Guest:You can find your place.
Guest:But I didn't have a place in Detroit anymore.
Guest:There was no place left for me.
Guest:It was all used up.
Marc:And you didn't want to go to L.A.?
Guest:Big cities are kind of claustrophobic for me.
Guest:It's hard for me to breathe in.
Guest:I feel like everybody's doing this or...
Guest:But the attitude like, yeah, I've seen that, so what?
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:That kind of makes me not interested in art anymore.
Guest:It makes me feel like... Oh, yeah.
Marc:And also, once you get to a certain point of expertise in your thing, you don't want to go somewhere just to be dismissed as a...
Marc:Yeah, he'll be around for a little while.
Marc:Yeah, sure, sure, yeah.
Marc:And you can't even pull people in L.A.
Marc:But here, there's integrity to this place, man.
Marc:I mean, there's a lot of ghosts down here.
Marc:This is like the real historic American music town.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:You can go out to Graceland and, you know.
Guest:It always felt accidental.
Guest:That's in Memphis.
Guest:Comfortable and accidental, yeah.
Guest:Tennessee altogether is, you know.
Guest:music history is amazing and uh but but the uh anywhere down south i looked all over you know georgia and mississippi i looked all over for a place to live and um why the south in particular it always felt comfortable to me every time i went on tour i thought wow this feels really like home to me yeah here everyone's so nice and and and their respect for music is so different than anywhere else in the world
Guest:the English-speaking world that I actually know about.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And this is really the heart of it, isn't it?
Marc:I mean, the South is really where it all came up.
Guest:Yeah, and then I kept working in Tennessee and Memphis and Nashville, and Memphis is very similar to Detroit.
Guest:It's basically the same town, so it ended up being Nashville that felt right.
Marc:Did you ever go on any pilgrimages when you got down here?
Marc:I mean, did you go to Graceland?
Marc:Did you go do that stuff?
Guest:I didn't go to Graceland until like a year ago with the Dead Weather.
Guest:We were on tour, and they let us come in there.
Guest:They gave us a private tour, which was really nice.
Marc:What were your feelings about it?
Marc:Were you surprised?
Guest:It was very funny for me because Scarlett and Henry and my kids were with us, and Scarlett was about four years old, I guess.
Guest:It was like a year and a half ago.
Guest:And she said some really funny things over there.
Guest:She goes, well, you know, I'm not going to be shy, Dad.
Guest:If Elvis comes out, I'm not going to be shy.
Guest:I'll shake his hand.
Guest:I said, I'm sorry, honey.
Guest:Elvis isn't here.
Guest:He went up to heaven.
Guest:Oh, yeah, sure.
Guest:And she says, okay.
Guest:And then we got in the van where we were leaving.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She said...
Guest:And we're driving away in Memphis.
Guest:We're driving away from Graceland in the van.
Guest:She says, Dad, are we in heaven?
Guest:And I said in Elvis' voice, I'm close, baby.
Guest:We're in Memphis.
Marc:she said a lot of funny stuff were you surprised at how like like it wasn't it's not that extravagant uh a home in a way no not at all it's tiny too yeah and like you think like grace land it's just like there's a shag carpet yeah there were three tv sets and that was like a big deal then big deal yeah he'd watch all three yeah whoa holy shit that guy lived yeah
Marc:Did you go into the trophy house and see all that stuff?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, all that, all that.
Guest:And it's a nice place.
Guest:What's cool about it is it's in a neighborhood.
Guest:I mean, on his yard is everyone else's backyard.
Guest:They could look over and see Elvis in his yard.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's pretty amazing that he lived like that so close to people.
Marc:Were you a big Elvis fan?
Guest:Oh, yeah, of course.
Marc:Totally, totally.
Marc:Like when you were growing up.
Marc:How can you not?
Marc:I know, I know.
Marc:But he's another guy.
Marc:It's like the blues music.
Marc:This shit grows on you.
Marc:Do you find that with music as you get older?
Marc:Like you go back and listen to something?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you're like, how did I not notice that before?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:That was a good example.
Guest:There would be a time period where you'll go like, big deal, whatever.
Guest:I mean, he was a pop singer from back then.
Guest:or something, but then you realize, oh, wow, Elvis is just an alien.
Guest:Just like Hank Williams.
Guest:These guys are just aliens.
Marc:Yeah, Hank Williams, man.
Marc:Did you ever go down there and go to where he used to play?
Marc:Didn't he play in those hockey clubs?
Guest:Well, yeah, he grew up on my block.
Guest:Excuse me, he didn't grow up.
Guest:He lived on my block that I lived on here in Nashville, and they moved his house to where he grew up.
Guest:I think they pulled his house.
Guest:Tammy Wynette bought it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and now it's like a church, I think.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I think it's a church community center or something.
Marc:His house is a church community center?
Marc:Yeah, down the street from my house, yeah.
Marc:Oh, not the house?
Marc:They didn't move the house and make it a church?
Guest:Someone told me they went into Tammy's house and pulled out Hank's house in the middle, plucked it out and took it down a...
Marc:wherever he's from montgomery alabama i think he's from yeah where he grew up so you do you hang out with these cats now because it seems like you're at this level where you got to be playing with your heroes on some level um like you know what people like george jones and stuff do you see them around i would love to meet george i never met george you know i think he lives like a mile from my house i don't know where though someone told me he does so
Marc:And you had Jerry Lee Lewis here.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How was that?
Guest:He was great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was great.
Guest:Really great to talk to.
Guest:And, um, he, uh, actually he was sitting in this office here and Chris Christopherson came in and, uh, they had talked about some old shows they had done together.
Guest:And, uh, it's a lot of interesting things, you know, like the, you know, Steve Cropper was in, he's playing in the band that day.
Guest:He said, yeah, I mean, Jerry recorded this song, the meat man never got released.
Guest:Uh,
Guest:back then so we're all looking that up and listening to those songs that hadn't been released or got released in some european label later on whatever it was just a lot of a lot of history going on those guys have played so many shows together you know yeah do people just stop by jack i mean what's going on here i gotta tell you like when you there's something about the build the building that this is and i and for me to to people who work here to strangers to other musicians
Guest:There's something about it that is kind of electromagnetic.
Guest:I don't know what it is because I just wanted a place to store my gear when I bought this building.
Guest:It was going to be store my gear and I had Swank and Blackwell were coming in here and they were going to just re-release the old White Stripes 45s.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:They had a job to do like, there's like 1545s, let's get them back in print, get the artwork and get it.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:And then we said, oh, we'll have a little shop in front.
Guest:When someone buzzes, we'll go and sell them a record if they want to buy one.
Guest:It'll happen twice a week or something.
Guest:Good Lord, man.
Guest:That shop probably, it has hundreds of people that come through it every day.
Guest:And this place has turned into, in like three years, I've produced 150 records in three years here.
Guest:And all records that wouldn't have existed had this building had not been built.
Guest:the building was here though right or you built it was yeah it was just it was being used for some audio uh uh video production on my tip yeah industrial videos well it's pretty like you've you've got it you know kind of swanked out it's pretty i don't know what the it's sort of victorian gothic kind of i designed the whole place that and sometimes and the materials is my favorite part is picking the materials
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's beautiful, man.
Guest:This is very similar.
Guest:This is our Waveboard studio boards there that were used in my studio that we broke the blades on after we made them.
Guest:We cut them so nobody else could have the same ones.
Marc:Right.
Guest:To scatter sound.
Guest:Just to scatter sound.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:Not absorb or reflect it.
Marc:And what about some of these?
Marc:You got a lot of taxidermied animals.
Marc:Yes, this is a peacock.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What's that called?
Marc:You got a skull.
Marc:You need a human skull.
Marc:Got to have a couple of those around.
Marc:Then you've got the strange bit of tribal African paraphernalia up there.
Marc:Or is that like armor?
Marc:Somebody gave me that.
Guest:That's from the Congo.
Guest:Somebody gave me that.
Marc:Of course it is.
Guest:Of course.
Marc:Now it's got a place on top of a Macintosh 275 tube amplifier.
Marc:I get what's going on here.
Marc:You get where I'm coming from?
Marc:Sure, man.
Marc:You're sucking shit out of the sky.
Marc:I get the... I'm not going to mention the steel casket against the wall.
Marc:At the end of the interview, you're going to show me Robert Johnson's head somewhere?
Marc:And there's a blunderbuss, right?
Marc:That is a blunderbuss, yeah.
Marc:It's a real one?
Guest:That was from the Ryman Theater here, the Grand Ole Opry Theater.
Guest:We sold out tune lines, so that was their present to me.
Guest:It was a blunderbuss framed up like that.
Guest:that's that's amazing now what's it so you track down like these instruments is that an old harmony yeah that was a mass that's a guitar that was made into a mask i wore on the cover of a dead weather's last album it was oh okay all right prop and it turned into a mask
Marc:now what's that oh I'm trying to see that's a Gibson I see the giraffe that's a real giraffe head right that's from Joan Jett Joan Jett gave me that that Gibson and that's like a giraffe head that's like a real for some reason I just took it in it's not a real giraffe head but now I'm looking at it well the funniest thing about it is it has a brass plaque at the bottom that says giraffe on it if anyone's wondering where'd you pick this shit why the animals what's up with that
Guest:When I was younger, I would go on tour and I would come home and I would never go shopping for a t-shirt or anything.
Guest:I never bought anything when I was younger.
Guest:And then I started to go out.
Guest:Because I didn't go out.
Guest:I would play the show and just go to sleep.
Guest:I never was interested in partying, never did drugs, never stayed out late with people.
Guest:Never?
Guest:I just didn't really do that early on at all.
Guest:I was just all about the music, and then I would just go to bed.
Guest:And so I started to let myself go, and I've always loved older things, antiques and things.
Guest:So I used to go to antique shots wherever we went to.
Guest:You start doing that around the world for 10 years, you just start picking things up here and there.
Marc:And what's the seating there?
Guest:That looks like it was from... Oh, that was from a bowling alley in Pennsylvania.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:Now you're getting it, man.
Marc:And now this is interesting because this is a huge blow-up picture, I think, of the only existing photograph of Charlie Patton.
Marc:That's right, yes.
Marc:And...
Marc:That's a ghostly image, man.
Guest:It's a beautiful photograph because you really can't tell what kind of person that is.
Guest:I mean, it could be white, black.
Guest:Holland Wolfe said he was Cherokee Indian, too, which is very interesting.
Marc:I think he was red-haired, wasn't he?
Guest:That's what they say, yeah.
Guest:And it looks like it could be in that photo.
Guest:It's a very bizarre-looking person.
Guest:That's exactly who you'd think would be the grandfather of the blues, somebody who looked like that.
Marc:I had a moment with those.
Marc:With Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton, there's a finite number of recordings.
Marc:No one's going to unearth any more shit.
Marc:You've got these Library of Congress things or the Alan Lomax things.
Marc:But I had the thing that broke my brain open with him was Bowl Evil Blues for some reason.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:It's just like he sounds like he's got gravel in his throat.
Guest:He really does.
Guest:I mean, the first, I would imagine most people, the first time you listen to Charlie Patton, you'll be like, what is this?
Guest:This is undiscernible garble, whatever.
Guest:And man, three, four times in, it just becomes so incredible.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So incredible.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Lead Belly, same thing with you?
Guest:Yeah, Lead Belly.
Guest:The difference between him and Lead Belly, Lead Belly is a master of melody.
Guest:I mean, his ability to write melodies in songs is just unparalleled back then.
Guest:He started so many traditions, I think.
Guest:I think he started traditions that people don't really notice with melody or what folk songs that he would pick to sing.
Marc:There's a song on the new album that's got a real sort of folk, almost lead-bellied drive to it.
Marc:What's the one on the new album that's kind of like Irene Goodnight a little bit?
Guest:I guess I should go to sleep.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:We recorded that on this band.
Guest:Poki Lafarge was the band in the studio when we did that.
Guest:And afterwards, we were talking about it.
Guest:I was like, you know, this has kind of a lead-bellied feel to it.
Guest:Now we play it back.
Guest:Didn't feel it at the time.
Guest:But yeah, very much so.
Guest:You could hear some melody like that.
Marc:And I noticed about their new record, too, that you seem to be...
Marc:There's something representative of almost every element of your musical psyche on there.
Marc:That's my assumption.
Marc:Maybe so, yeah.
Marc:Because there's some good blues, there's some almost ballady stuff.
Marc:There's a lot of that piano that I can only... The type of piano, the way you're using it now, like Beggar's Banquet or a couple of those things.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:When did you start doing that?
Marc:I mean, because that's sort of new.
Marc:I mean, it's all over the record.
Marc:There's even some electric piano on there.
Marc:It sounds great.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:There was a great piano player on this record named Brooke Wagner, who she kind of can do anything.
Guest:So this became a thing where I started orchestrating my own music, which I'd never really done before, having seven, eight people
Guest:and tell them exactly what I want them to play.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You don't really do that in a band.
Guest:I do that in Rackin' Tours of Deadwood.
Guest:I don't really tell those guys what to play, really.
Guest:You know, we have a suggestion here and there, but when you're in a band, all the people play their own parts, make up their own parts, even if they didn't write the song, they accompany the way they want to.
Guest:When you're doing this and you have like six, seven session people, they're just standing there waiting for you to tell them what to do.
Guest:So it was a totally different scenario, which is how I attacked it.
Guest:It just kind of made me feel comfortable to make a record with my own name on it for the first time.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And so did you use a lot of Sessions guys down here, like older dudes?
Guest:Yeah, and from other places, from Detroit and from Brooklyn and L.A.
Guest:and stuff, too.
Guest:They're from all over, but there were a lot of Nashville ones.
Guest:I've been producing these 45s for Third Man for the last couple of years, so I've known all these different session musicians from each one of those sessions.
Guest:So we knew who would be a good footer player on this song, who would be a good pedal steel on that song.
Guest:We just would know.
Guest:And I'd say, well, try to get so-and-so today.
Guest:I like to pick the day of, can someone come right now and play drums?
Marc:That's a great moment for your musician.
Marc:They're just waking up, Jack White needs you over at the place.
Marc:Fuck, I got to go.
Guest:Where are my pants?
Guest:That kind of feeling, yeah.
Guest:This really is.
Guest:That's exactly what it is.
Guest:It's a good energy because you woke up that morning not knowing what you were going to do, and then you're in the middle of that recording.
Guest:If I told you three days ago on Thursday... You've been freaking out about it.
Guest:Or something would happen, or we're going to do this thing, the energy would get lost.
Guest:What I love about that is that all that drummer is out of town.
Guest:He's playing a gig.
Guest:Okay, well, then get somebody else.
Guest:Now the whole situation is totally arbitrary.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And now we can, and I can, create something out of that.
Marc:But you know these guys are awesome.
Marc:So there's never the sort of like, well, that guy's not as good.
Marc:There's just a different drummer.
Guest:But you do get in these scenarios where you have to use somebody that I would not have normally used.
Guest:And it's sort of like, all right, that guy's only bluegrass.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we're going to put them on this rock and roll song.
Guest:We'll make it work.
Guest:That wasn't my first choice, but now we can make something cool.
Guest:And usually it's better that way.
Marc:When you were a teenager, who were your guys, really, in terms of the music?
Guest:It changed year by year as I was a teenager because I was coming out of like my brothers all had a band and they were very into sort of...
Guest:Rock and roll, famous rock and roll.
Guest:Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones.
Guest:They were into all those big bands.
Marc:That's the gift of older brothers.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:I mean, you grew up with just, can I borrow this record?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:What was the first rock record where you're like, holy fuck?
Guest:I remember when I was a kid, like about six years old, I remember listening to The Who with my friends on the block.
Guest:We were listening to The Who a lot.
Guest:So that was definitely the first act I can remember while rewinding the tape and playing it over and over again and knowing all the lyrics and stuff.
Guest:that that was the who meaty beady big and bouncy that like greatest hits of theirs i think it was yeah and how did it evolve so you had all that you had the basic sort of uh bedrock of classic rock yes and you were driving around listening to that shit yes and then uh by the time i got to be uh like maybe 15 i was working at upholstery shop and that upholster who actually his family grew up next to ours
Guest:and he started turning on all kinds of things, Velvet Underground, The Cramps.
Guest:You need that guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Those guys, they're life changers.
Guest:They really are.
Guest:They're my mentors.
Guest:I've had a lot of mentors.
Guest:I kind of would seek out mentors.
Guest:I think from having older brothers, so many of them, you kind of were born with mentors already in the house a bit, because they're not your parents, and they don't really need to turn you on, but they do to things.
Guest:So I would always seek those out as I was growing.
Guest:As a songwriter, too, I started hanging out with
Guest:you know, European artists and coffee shops and different things like that.
Guest:And, and just always people like 20 years older than me.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Well, how was your dad around too much?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He just passed away a couple of years ago.
Guest:So he was there the whole time.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:He was good.
Marc:He was like a solid dad.
Marc:He's very fun.
Guest:He was very funny guy.
Guest:He's classic, classic old forties kind of dad, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What, what, what'd you learn from him?
Guest:He was always, uh, he, he would, uh,
Guest:That's a good question.
Guest:I'll give you an example just popped in my head would be like, one time we were watching W.C.
Guest:Fields juggle boxes, juggle cigar boxes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, it's just three boxes and he flipped the middle one on the end and grabbed the end back in the middle, that thing.
Guest:And he just looked at me and said, try it sometime.
Guest:And it's sort of like that kind of thing where, yeah, you know, that's right.
Guest:This shit ain't easy.
Marc:That's the moment.
Marc:Did you try it?
Guest:No.
Guest:But his point, you know, his point was these guys know what they're doing.
Guest:And there's people that know what they're doing.
Guest:There's people that don't.
Guest:And people have heart and soul to what it is.
Guest:And people who are all fluff and are just up there for whatever.
Guest:And so that's what his scope was on it.
Marc:And these other mentors, so you had the guy, there's that important guy that's sort of like, you've never heard of the Velvet Underground?
Marc:You're like, no.
Marc:And then all of a sudden, everything changes.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But you were consciously seeking some sort of input from dudes.
Guest:Yeah, I wanted to play music at any and all costs.
Marc:You never did another job?
Marc:You mean... Outside of music, like when you were younger?
Guest:Well, yeah, I did upholstery, and then I had my own upholstery shop after that.
Marc:How old were you when you had your own upholstery shop?
Guest:About 21.
Marc:You opened an upholstery shop.
Guest:I was very go-getter, man.
Guest:When I was 21, I had my own house, mortgage.
Guest:I had a van, a shitty van, and I was in three bands, and I had my own upholstery shop.
Guest:I was always trucking really fast.
Marc:You wanted to make the business?
Guest:I just wanted to create things.
Guest:I mean, I think the business side of it was bad for me when it came to the upholstery shop because I got so into the cartooniness of it.
Guest:I was writing people's bills in crayon and dressed in yellow, black, and white with a yellow van that used to be a fire department van.
Guest:People didn't take it seriously.
Guest:Like antiques and things for people.
Marc:And you knew how to do it.
Guest:Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
Marc:You could upholster something now?
Guest:Oh yeah, I could do this couch right now.
Guest:This is a channel back couch with, you know,
Guest:This ultimate color welting, this is mohair fabric from 1940s, which is why it's still together right now.
Guest:If it had been velvet, it would have been worn out easily, but mohair can last.
Marc:This is the original fabric?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you could strip this down and put it back together with the tools.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's a very difficult trade.
Guest:It takes probably like 10 years to really get to the point where you can feel really comfortable doing it.
Marc:And what other arty things did you do when you were upholstering?
Guest:Well, that's a good point.
Guest:It's a good way of putting it because I had a studio, and I was also doing constructed sculpture there, and I was also in three bands.
Yeah.
Guest:constructed sculpture sort of like i was working on um yeah it would be amalgamations of things putting things together not taking away like chiseling sculpture right oh yeah sure sure sure and uh and like this entire room basically yeah so i was doing all that i was in all those bands and it was very very hard to uh because i didn't care about the money like they pay you for a couch or something you'd finish and you just i'd always be like
Guest:I'm not excited about this because I'm just going to take this money and pay the electric bill with it.
Guest:And that's it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So what?
Guest:It never got me excited to like, Oh, if I did two couches, I could have had twice that much money.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I mean, like who cares?
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:I just never, just getting by and making shit.
Guest:Never bit into me like that.
Guest:I cared more about like, if I could really, if I could figure out a way to make music or art and, and not have to have a day job and actually have that freedom of that, where you can create all day long.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:What's that like?
Guest:You know, I'll get these little tastes of it here and there.
Marc:So you were a black and yellow van.
Marc:Now you've got a black and yellow building.
Marc:And then you did red and white for a while.
Marc:What's with the color schemes?
Guest:They're very centered around the number three.
Guest:I'm sort of obsessed with that number being about perfection.
Guest:There's an appeal to it.
Guest:It's like yellow, black, and white, or red, white, and black.
Guest:I was just reading something yesterday about teams that wear red in the Olympics, countries that happen to have red in their flag, that they're more likely to win a gold medal.
Guest:It's just a statistic.
Guest:Who cares?
Guest:But at the same time, red's a really powerful color.
Guest:So I knew that with the White Stripes, when we had picked that, I said, that's a really powerful color.
Guest:I mean, from Nazi iconography to Coca-Cola...
Guest:to uh you know the red cross to fire department fire engines and that that color invokes so much inspiration and anger and all kinds of things with people i think that's just the most powerful color combination you could pick and uh i'm glad that was a i'm glad that was a long list i'm glad it wasn't just like the nazi and just stop right there
Guest:You know how great they were.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's a very powerful color.
Guest:No, but you know it does invoke the cartooniness of the Nazis.
Guest:Take that for example.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:There was a cartooniness to them.
Guest:Like if you were going to design the evil other army you were fighting.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:It would be them.
Guest:How could you not?
Guest:You looked exactly like that.
Yeah.
Guest:There's some English comedy show like Little Britain or something like that where there was like two Nazis at a bunker.
Guest:And one of them says to their like, you know, we have skulls on our hats.
Guest:Like SS soldiers.
Guest:And he goes, yeah.
Guest:So he goes, don't you think maybe we're the baddies?
Guest:We're the bad guys.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:That's a revelation.
Guest:None of us ever sat and thought about it.
Guest:I think maybe we're the bad guys.
Marc:We're scaring people.
Marc:That's funny.
Marc:So the three thing, that's a real obsession.
Guest:Yeah, it's very... It's like a good blessing.
Guest:If you're working on something, to me, it means that's an attempt at trying to do it the right way.
Guest:It's an attempt at trying... Because it's not good to be a perfectionist perfectionist.
Guest:That just gets into OCD and anal and... And yeah, beating yourself up.
Guest:Control freak and all those things.
Guest:But I find that if I revolve something around the number three...
Guest:at least there was an attempt made towards doing it right maybe like those wc fields those three boxes right right like that you know maybe maybe it has that feeling like you can show uh that there's not much else like you take a speaker you got you got low mid low mids and highs you got the there's thousands of frequencies but we separate to those three things you also got the uh you got it all covered the father son the holy ghost
Marc:Yes, you got that too, yeah.
Marc:Maybe that's the last thing you held on to of your Catholic upbringing was some obsession with the Trinity.
Marc:Triangles, points.
Guest:But I don't like triangles, by the way, actually.
Marc:No triangles.
Guest:I don't like them, but they scare me for some reason.
Marc:A lot of points.
Marc:They make a good point, yeah.
Marc:I never was any good at the mathematics.
Marc:So...
Marc:with the new record like i gotta tell you about this moment i had because i hadn't listened to the new record yet and i was just in the car i knew i was going to talk to you but i i had no idea what was on the record and it was during the day i'm driving down the street i'm listening to kcrw and uh you know i'm shaking comes on
Marc:and you know and in my mind you know that song is like the blasters owned that song you know and i'm just driving i never knew about by the way i never even knew the blasters you never know well but not until we know until we put it out right and so like i'm just driving i knew that song and and it's like sort of like uh someone's covering i'm shaking and then like it turned from that to like what the is this
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Like, you know, there was that just those bursts of background vocals and that that drive that you got with that drum.
Marc:That thing kicks ass.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:You must have been happy with that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's why I went on the album, because it wasn't supposed to.
Guest:It was just it was I had all female musicians in the studio.
Guest:That was the first day.
Guest:I said, well, tomorrow we'll have all female musicians and see if that changes.
Guest:the energy of what's happening here uh in the room uh we'll have them record the same songs the guys did yesterday yeah so that was the all-female band yeah so i said yeah let's usually when you start with a whole new thing it's good to start i like to put a cover song out there first break the ice get everybody used to playing together oh you mean oh when you're recording yeah like so these girls never played with each other never played with me have they ever played that kind of music rather than go right into one of my songs and try to make it great on tape or whatever right
Guest:Let's play a cover song together and see if we can all find some common ground, and then you'll get the vibe of what we're trying to do.
Marc:Now, when you do that, did you play the original, the Little John?
Guest:Yeah, I played him Little Willie John.
Marc:I didn't know about the pastor's version.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I didn't even know.
Guest:That many people knew about Little Willie John.
Guest:That was left on a CD at my house.
Guest:Someone made a comp CD and left it at my house that I'm shaking, which I had never heard that song until like two years ago.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:It's a great song, right?
Marc:I love it.
Marc:Yeah, I love it.
Marc:How do you pick your covers?
Marc:It's tough.
Guest:It's tough.
Guest:You almost like... Stop breaking down.
Guest:Let's get another example where I didn't know the Rolling Stones had done it.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, I just liked Robert Johnson's version.
Guest:And that was supposed to be... At that point, that was also another... There was another idea behind why we did it was because it was going to be the back...
Guest:Side of this song the big three killed my baby was gonna be a 45 and I thought stop breaking down It was like a tongue-in-cheek about anti automotive auto companies right like the cars breaking down, right?
Guest:So it was that was the initial well that would be great if we did that but then we started playing it and it turned into something way more powerful and
Guest:And so that ended up going on the album just like I'm Shakin' did it.
Guest:It kind of grows on its own.
Guest:You kind of think it's just going to be no big deal.
Marc:Right, just to cover.
Guest:Of course, that's the one that grows into something bigger, and you have to put it on the record.
Marc:And also, those are ones that are like... They've got that weird depth of having the history of that song, like you talked about earlier.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Like you said, you're not aware you're playing a song that's 60, 70 years old.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then it comes with all that.
Marc:There's a magic that you're pulling out of it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Guest:Well, there is.
Guest:It's almost...
Guest:It's almost a little bit easy.
Guest:I think when sampling first came out, people thought, oh, well, of course, you're just taking a song that's already proven itself.
Guest:It's already a hit.
Guest:People already know it and love it.
Guest:And you're just putting something else on top of it.
Guest:That's not fair.
Guest:The rest of us have to sit and think this stuff up and write it from scratch.
Guest:And it is a little bit of, still, when you are covering a song, if you don't pay the proper respect to the fact that it is part of a tradition, in your own head at least,
Guest:you have to like, you know, bow a little bit towards that before you change it and add it and change it to something new instead of just like, I don't give a damn who wrote this.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or whatever.
Marc:Well, I don't think you were going to get a lot of flack.
Guest:It's like, oh, that's just, you know, Robert Johnson did the work on that one.
Guest:Well, he didn't either.
Guest:You know, all Robert Johnson's songs were other people's songs and he didn't really write his own.
Guest:And he added to mostly traditional stuff, which I didn't realize for a while as well.
Marc:What do you think of Hellhounds on my trail?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:It's unbelievable.
Guest:It's crazy, right?
Guest:It doesn't seem like it could be possibly recorded.
Guest:I don't think you could even attempt to recreate that moment.
Guest:Imagine who recorded that, the white businessman from the record I recorded.
Guest:Okay, Robert, that was great.
Guest:Let's try something else.
Guest:We got a hit.
Guest:Can you imagine him not looking at someone else and like, what the fuck is this?
Guest:That must have been amazing.
Marc:Have you ever had moments like that here?
Marc:Because I don't know, what exactly is your model here?
Marc:Are you running the new Sun Records?
Marc:I mean, people just stop by and they get in the booth and come on, let's see what happens.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:I was saying recently, there's people who come here and everybody has a different vibe.
Guest:Which I think is great.
Guest:Because you can hear someone come up and say, like, oh, your record's good or your show is great or whatever.
Guest:And you might think you're getting somewhere.
Guest:There might be a chance you're getting somewhere or something new.
Guest:But you know you're really getting somewhere when people say different things.
Guest:Like if everyone says, that song sounds great, it sounds like the Beatles.
Guest:Right.
Guest:If everyone says that to you, you're kind of like, after the fifth time, you're like, ah, damn.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It just sounds like the Beatles.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But when everyone, like, when people come here and someone says, like, you just said Sun Records, and then other people have said, this is like Apple Records, or this is like Prince's Paisley Park, or this is like Chess Records.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We hear that all the time across the board.
Guest:Now I know we're getting somewhere totally new because, you know what I mean?
Guest:People are saying that sounds like third-minute records.
Marc:Because that's what I would do.
Guest:I would walk in and be like, wow, this place is like blah, blah, blah, something like that.
Guest:And then you start thinking, like, you know, it's hard for...
Marc:just human nature to to to think that you're walking into something totally brand new and and nothing is totally brand new everything is part of the tradition my sense was that like you know i don't have a sense of how record you know recording studios work yeah you know because it's not my business but it just seems like there's a community evolving around around you and around the around the place and you know the respect that other artists have for you as a producer and as a musician they want to come hang out and be part of that and my feeling was always with sun records was that
Marc:You know, that Elvis and Jerry Lee were just hanging out and Carl Perkins was popping in.
Marc:Sure, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Marc:Why don't you guys get in there and do that?
Guest:Yeah, well, very much so.
Guest:It is in that world because, I mean, if you think of the bigger labels of Capitol or something like that, you would never think you could walk into Capitol and have anything to go on there.
Guest:Even if you're already a named artist or something, you couldn't really walk into Capitol and say, hey, can I put out a 45 in your label?
Guest:There's contracts, there's all your kind of stuff.
Guest:But this sort of label is so many different kinds of things at once.
Guest:You could come in, you could be a band.
Guest:The Red Hot Chili Peppers could come in here and play a live show here in this room and release it on vinyl, vinyl only on live concert if they want to.
Guest:And I'd love them to do that.
Guest:That'd be great.
Guest:But that's the thing.
Guest:I think it's the kind of place I would think that if I saw, I found it on the road, on tour, it's the kind of place you kind of expect to run into a few times.
Guest:I'm going to start touring for years, and then you think you're going to run into these places, but you never do.
Guest:You never run into these mythical places in your head where things can happen.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:We're in Brazil, and we recorded in the studio straight to acetate.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It doesn't happen.
Marc:No.
Marc:It's like we were playing... It takes a lot of planning to do Exile on Main Street.
Marc:You've got to rent a mansion.
Guest:Well, like this place has, the live venue has the only, I think the only one in the world where you can record in front of a live audience to analog tape.
Guest:You have an eight-track tape booth next to the stage.
Guest:And people say, oh, there's got to be other ones.
Guest:I would have heard of it.
Guest:I mean, someone would have said it to me.
Guest:All the places I've gone on tour, you know, next time you play Berlin, you should play here because they have a...
Guest:Well, no one does.
Guest:A tape booth next to the stage.
Guest:Someone would have mentioned it.
Marc:So you start with analog tape for your vinyl, always?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It seems like you've got to respect for the old crackly stuff.
Marc:I mean, you've got all these Macintosh tube amps.
Marc:They're beautiful.
Marc:But do you have an issue?
Marc:Did you do Blunderbuss on analog?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Really?
Mm-hmm.
Marc:No one does that anymore.
Marc:Am I wrong?
Guest:I did it on 8-tracks, yeah.
Guest:No, nobody does it.
Guest:It's very difficult.
Guest:If you're used to Pro Tools and computers, how easy it is to edit and record, you just click, click, click with the mouse.
Guest:I mean, tape looks like just a bunch of work that's not necessary anymore.
Marc:But outside of the ritual, I mean, what to you is the primary sound difference?
Guest:It sounds so much better.
Guest:I mean, it's just uncanny how much better it sounds.
Guest:There's actually a thing that really proved it to me.
Guest:I worked at the studio in Blackbird here in Nashville, a couple records, a White Stripes and a Raconteur's record.
Guest:And what we would do is you would record on a 16-track, for example,
Guest:you got the songs recorded and you're going to mix it.
Guest:You bounce all those tape tracks to Pro Tools and you do all your moves that you're going to do in the mix.
Guest:You program all your moves on the board.
Guest:Not in the computer, on the board.
Guest:This snare drum is going to get louder during the chorus or whatever.
Guest:All those moves, you go through it.
Guest:So you listen to the song 200 times.
Guest:memorizing all those moves right and programming all those okay so you don't want to wear out the tape and the heads on the machine and work the motors and listen wait for it to rewind and all the stuff you do it on the pro tools okay we're all done we got all the moves set pop the tape back on oh my god you wouldn't believe how much better that tape sounds than that pro tools thing you've been listening to 200 times in a row right if you if you could just tell let people sit there that whole time and experience that they would never record
Guest:on computer again if they could know the difference but if you just listen to it once if I play it here I'll play you my song on tape now here it is on Pro Tools you'd be like what sounds exactly the same so what it's just this inherent thing I mean you really have to get down into it to really know the difference and I didn't experience that until like 10 years into
Marc:recording it and always just feeling like tape just feels right yeah you know well yeah because it's uh it's a real thing it's not just a you know some configuration of ones and zeros or whatever the fuck happens that you know you've got this thing that needs to move yeah something needs to turn and this song this this book sorry the perfecting sound forever they kind of they wrote this great way of putting it is that you know an analog
Guest:which is cutting into vinyl or recording onto tape, the pencil gets put on the paper and is dragged across the paper, and it never leaves the paper.
Guest:With digital and computers, the pencil is lifted off the paper.
Marc:Over and over.
Guest:Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Guest:Your sample rate can be a million times a second or a thousand times a second.
Guest:It doesn't matter.
Guest:you're still there's still separations between that no there's also people who think that there's a psychological thing that does to our brain like it fatigues us yeah because we're missing those pieces is that's what's doing it to me that's what's doing yeah there's a lot of pieces missing everywhere but it's interesting it is fucking interesting i know we're running out of time but uh
Marc:I love the Loretta Lynn record.
Guest:Oh, thank you.
Guest:Thanks.
Marc:Just out of curiosity, was there some love there?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I mean, were you just blown away?
Guest:Meg and I listen to Loretta Lynn constantly on tour in the van.
Guest:It was all the time.
Guest:And we actually, on the way to recording our album White Blood Cells in Memphis, we stopped at Loretta's house that you can go on a little tour of.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Hurricane Mills.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and because uh when we stopped there we we said oh we should dedicate the album to loretta it would you know we love her so much and we listened to it and there's no irony at all i mean we just love loretta lynn you know we dedicated the album to her and out of that dedication came an invitation to her house and while we're at dinner she said she was working on an album i just said
Guest:if you're looking for a producer, just, I'll put my hand in the, put my hat in the ring, just mentioned it.
Guest:I thought, no way, they're not going to let me produce that or whatever.
Guest:And then they asked me to do it.
Guest:But then I was worried about, oh no, it's going to be one of these, they're going to want to do like one of these compilation where every song's a duet record or one of those kinds of records that I don't like.
Guest:And,
Guest:I said, okay, well, what were you thinking?
Guest:Loretta's like, well, I've got all these songs, and we went to her house, and she brought all these songs out in her bedroom.
Guest:She has hundreds of unrecorded songs written down.
Guest:And just the first 10 that we pulled out were the ones we recorded.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:We didn't go searching through them all.
Guest:We just pulled out 10.
Marc:And you pulled something out of her, man.
Marc:I mean, because, like, you don't, like, country music isn't produced like you produce that record.
Marc:In the way that, like, you know, you left her voice so raw.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, like, on Vanderleer Rose, when she kicks in and your guitar plows in, holy shit, you know, you almost cry.
Guest:Yeah, that record, it's hard for me to listen to that first song, especially.
Guest:And it's...
Guest:It escaped, I think for some people it hasn't escaped the idea or my attachment to it or hero worship for producer versus whatever other albums have been made like that.
Guest:But in my mind, I don't think it's, I think it's all Loretta.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:I think it's, and people kind of said at the time we were getting the green horns and all, well, you don't have any country musicians on the record.
Yeah.
Guest:I said, well, Loretta is country.
Guest:I mean, she'll be country.
Guest:You can't stop that.
Guest:There's no point in putting more country on top of her country.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, they don't know how to take something in.
Marc:Hey, where's the pedal steel?
Marc:Right, right, yeah.
Guest:But was there one on there?
Guest:There was one on a couple songs.
Guest:Yeah, there was one on a couple songs, but it was very light.
Guest:It's not like country pedal steel.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's coming from a guy from Detroit playing it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So it's a Motor City pedal steel.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But you did get a little flack from the old guard.
Guest:I think people, well, for example, that record won like, we got like five Grammy nominations, and in the country music awards, zero.
Guest:Isn't that weird, man?
Guest:They did not dig it at the time.
Guest:Isn't that weird that there's this old boy network down here?
Guest:It's bizarre, yeah.
Guest:I think it's changed, they came around to it quickly after, but at the time it was kind of funny.
Marc:And how'd that record do?
Marc:Great, yeah.
Marc:Did it do good with the country fans?
Guest:yes yeah i mean when i walk around here people would say two things to be cold mountain and lower land that's that's when i when they see me you know that must feel good it's great it's great that there's another side of uh uh the world that that looks at it from a different angle with the things you put out there yeah it's kind of nice what's the plan you're gonna tour now
Guest:I'm just home with my kids for a couple weeks, and now I'm going back out to Europe.
Marc:For how long?
Marc:How many days?
Guest:I'm trying to do two weeks on, two weeks off now because I have kids.
Guest:That way it makes sense to do it and then come back.
Guest:Instead of three weeks on and one week home, that starts to get like... I mean, with kids my age, the age my kids are at, and when you're gone for more than two weeks, you're missing a lot.
Guest:I mean, they just grew up so fast.
Guest:Plus the shows...
Guest:I think after two weeks, the way I play shows with no set lists and stuff, you start to get into ruts.
Guest:You start doing the same thing again.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And I'm trying to shake that up, too.
Marc:And your ex was here, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And how's kids changing you, man?
Marc:It's great.
Marc:It's amazing.
Marc:It's funny.
Marc:Do you find you're a little less self-involved?
Yeah.
Guest:You sort of start all over again from scratch.
Guest:You sort of like wipe the slate clean, literally.
Guest:And then you're starting, you're living life all over again through somebody else.
Guest:Pretty amazing.
Guest:From the beginning.
Guest:It teaches you so much you forgot, so much you thought you'd never care about.
Guest:And there's definitely elements of it.
Guest:When you have as much freedom as an artist, as I've been lucky and fortunate to experience, that is definitely something that's telling you you're not going to have this anymore.
Guest:So you get a little bit worried about it.
Guest:Like, wow, I'm definitely not going to be...
Guest:I'm not going to ignore this element.
Guest:I'm going to be a definite big part of it.
Guest:And you have to give up a lot to do that.
Guest:And so you kind of thought, all right, well, you just jump in and swim.
Guest:And I thought I was going to have to give up maybe half or most of what I do in my life.
Guest:And that's actually not true.
Guest:You can do both.
Guest:Just like any parent has to go to work nine to five every day.
Guest:Maybe you go to work nine to five every day, but I go away for a week and a half or whatever it is.
Guest:It's the same thing.
Guest:We're all away from our kids for a time and we come back.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And if you're not leaving because you don't want to deal with things, the love is still there and everything holds on.
Guest:Well, the funny thing is I might even spend more time with my kids because when I'm home, I'm with them all day long, 24 hours a day, instead of an hour in the morning and an hour at night before they go to bed.
Guest:Exactly, yeah.
Guest:So it's kind of funny.
Marc:You make up the time.
Marc:And I can't even imagine.
Marc:They must have a million cousins.
Marc:Yeah, they do.
Marc:They do, yeah.
Marc:And you and Meg get along all right still?
Guest:Yeah, and we have that whole family of people who live here that are all their aunts and uncles too.
Guest:All the people, the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather, all our friends and Swank.
Guest:Those are all their extended family.
Guest:The way Third Man is, we just have a huge family, which is great because me and Karen came here
Guest:by ourselves we didn't know anybody we just came here cold me and her that was it we didn't have kids even so it was a little bit scary at the time we might be here by ourselves for a few years before we make any friends but now it's changed very much so and third man's changed for everybody so it's very it feels very productive creative fulfilling for everyone across the board well congratulations on all your success man thank you it was great talking to you thank you
Marc:okay i'm back out in the car um i think that went pretty well i i was i was uh i was a little nervous but i'll tell you man i just saw some a couple things i just saw something happen that was really pretty great but i i don't know if i gave you a full idea of what he's got going on down here i mean jack white has got this amazing operation there's a store
Marc:in front and then you go in and there's a like a warehouse shipping area and then you go further in and there's a seating area with a kitchen counter and a fridge and all these stuffed animals and a great stereo system bathrooms there's a sound studio and some office space and then back where we were talking is his office which has got this beautiful door and
Marc:And then in the very back, there's a performance space that seats like 200 people for a live performing that he's got hooked up to at the analog recording booth.
Marc:Pretty amazing.
Marc:And his new album, Blunderbuss, is amazing.
Marc:And when I walked out to come back out here to the car, you know, there was like a father with kind of a melody haircut and his two teenage sons looking through the records in the store.
Marc:And I just walked out and I got back into my car and then I saw Jack and his assistants or the people that work for him.
Marc:He walked out with his shades on out to his things, you know, his black.
Marc:I believe it was a Mercedes there and he's walking out and the father come running after him from the store.
Marc:And I don't know what was said, but from what happened next, I believe it was, can you take a picture with my boys?
Marc:And, you know, Jack just turned around, came back, stood for the shot, let the old man take the picture.
Marc:And that's a pretty great thing when performers, rock stars, take a few minutes out for the fans.
Marc:Well, that's it.
Marc:I'm going to drive to the airport now.
Marc:And I guess, you know, look, if you need anything, go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:You know the drill.
Marc:I got a little time here.
Marc:I think I'm going to go find some pancakes.