  Left to Right - Jack Lawrence, Jack White, Alison Mosshart, and Dean Fertita - as the band The Dead Weather - pose for a photo on June 13, 2009. (Toronto Sun/Ernest Doroszuk) |
Jack White may be plowing his way through his third band with the heavy blues-rock outfit, The Dead Weather, but he hasn’t forgotten about his cross-Canada tour with The White Stripes a few summers ago.
On the contrary.
A documentary about the adventure — which saw White, the singer-guitarist in The White Stripes play in every province and territory with bandmate and ex-wife Meg White on drums — is due later this year.
“I think it’s the closing film of the Toronto film festival which is a big honour for us,” said White, 33, in Toronto recently with his Dead Weather bandmates at his side — Alison Mosshart of The Kills, The Raconteurs bassist Jack Lawrence and guitarist Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone Age.
“The film is called White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights.”
White has fond memories of that road trip, but says it was hard on the group. Meg White pulled out of the White Stripes’ fall tour afterward due to “acute anxiety issues.”
“We played two shows a day, every day,” White said. “A free show in the afternoon, and then a full concert at night time. And then we would pick in the morning at breakfast where we would play. ‘Oh, let’s play on a bus in Winnipeg today. Let’s play on a boat today. I think that might have been in St. John’s. We were just gangbusters. So fast. I had a child coming so we wanted to get everything done.”
Now a father of two young children with wife and former model Karen Elson, White said his favourite show of the Canadian trek was unquestionably The White Stripes’ 10th anniversary concert in Glace Bay, N.S., on July 14.
White’s Nova Scotia roots make him a distant cousin of acclaimed Cape Breton fiddlers Ashley MacIsaac, Buddy MacMaster and Natalie MacMaster.
“(It was) an incredible, beautiful theatre in Glace Bay. It was unbelievable,” he said.
In the meantime, White has a lot on his plate with The Dead Weather — his third band after The White Stripes and The Raconteurs. They have been playing surprise club shows (including Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern on June 13) before a larger tour this month, as they promote their debut disc, Horehound, due in stores on July 14.
White said they are sticking to Dead Weather material and a few covers in a live setting.
It was an impromptu recording of the group’s first single, a cover of Gary Numan’s Are Friends Electric at White’s specially designed Nasvhille-based studios, that led to the formation of the band in the first place.
The Kills were opening for The Raconteurs at the time, and Fertita was in town to see the show.
“I thought, ‘You know, hey, we’re so exhausted why don’t we record right now? Maybe this is the perfect time to do it,’” said White with a laugh.
Mosshart was really sick and gone to the hospital after losing her voice and White had a slipped disc in his neck.
“It was spontaneous, it was brilliant, and it kind of immediately worked,” Mosshart said. “We did that Gary Numan cover and then just started jamming, and started writing about four things.”
Added White: “It’s good to be at the edge of something and almost the edge of ridiculousness to then venture into doing something creative.”
“(Weeks after I thought), ‘Maybe this is an album and we didn’t realize it.’ We thought it was just a seven-inch (vinyl single). We were all just talking about how it felt so good. It felt right.”
The Dead Weather’s dark, moody, atmospheric sound combines late ’60s, early ’70s-era blues rock. Fertita describes it as “pretty uninhibited. We didn’t didn’t take the time to plan anything out. You’re kind of hearing just everyone’s personality or what they were feeling at that moment.”
Still, the band name says it all.
“It’s very difficult to evoke a mood that makes sense and is long-lasting,” White said. “The Dead Weather, there’s a negative connotation in dead, and weather has this ambiguous thing, it could be good or bad, so I think there’s some kind of dusty, particulate mood to it.”
The biggest surprise about The Dead Weather is that White is behind the drums and sings lead on only a few songs, with Mosshart as the group’s frontwoman.
Turns out, White began his career behind the drum kit.
“That is what I did as a child,” he said. “I haven’t played in a band on the drums since I was about 19. I’m really looking at the song structure differently. In a different thing, like The White Stripes, we could speed up, no one would know, or I could be out of tune, and no one would know. But in this band I have different challenges like that, where I’m the structure underneath what they’re doing.”
White is also preparing a massive reissue of The White Stripes’ catalogue on vinyl, via his newly formed Third Man Records label offices in Nashville.
“I built the whole headquarters there,” he said. “I’m re-releasing every record I’ve ever been a part of. So I’m collecting all the old ones and getting them back on our shelf. If there’s kid in Nunavut who wants that 45, I want him to be able to get it, if he wants it. I don’t like out-of-print records. I don’t think that’s fair.”
Unlike most people in the record industry, White seems to have faith that people will keep buying music in the future — and on vinyl, no less.
“I think they need to re-relate it to something tangible,” he said. “The ease and use of an mp3 and an iPod is all well and good and it’s convenient and affordable. But without moving parts I think people are losing the beauty and the romance of music. It’s becoming invisible. So I’m trying to inject something, some kind of interest in that idea. And we’re having people lining up around the block to buy these records in Nashville.”
Added Mosshart: “They drive from, like, five hours away. They come from everywhere. It’s really cool.”
White juggles band, movies
Jack White isn’t exactly what you’d call lazy.
In addition to his Detroit garage-rock act, The White Stripes, which he founded with ex-wife and drummer Meg White in 1997, the 33-year-old singer-songwriter-guitarist became a founding member of both The Raconteurs in 2005 and now his latest heavy blues-rock outfit, The Dead Weather.
White also collaborated with Loretta Lynn, whose 2004 album Van Lear Rose he produced, and wrote and performed the 2008 James Bond Quantum Of Solace single, Another Way To Die, with Alicia Keys.
On the film front, he appeared in 2003’s Cold Mountain opposite former girlfriend Rene Zellweger, played Elvis Presley in 2007’s Walk Hard, and played with the Rolling Stones on their 2008 concert film and album, Shine a Light.
His personal guitar journey is also featured alongside that of fellow axemen Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and The Edge of U2 in the documentary This Might Get Loud, which is due to play in some theatres later this summer.
Dead Weather tour dates
The Dead Weather have the following Canadian dates surrounding the July 14 release of their debut disc, Horehound:
Ottawa, LeBreton Flats (Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest) July 19
Montreal, L’Olympia De Montreal July 21
Toronto, Kool Haus July 22
Vancouver, Commodore Ballroom Aug. 21-22
jane.stevenson@sunmedia.ca
