Jack White's latest project comes to the Pageant
By Daniel Durchholz
04/23/2010

The Dead Weather is the latest musical project for Jack White (the White Stripes, the Raconteurs), but this time he's playing drums, not guitar, and he's teamed with singer Alison Mosshart (the Kills), bassist Jack Lawrence (the Greenhornes, the Raconteurs) and guitarist Dean Fertita (Queens of the Stone Age). We spoke with Lawrence by phone from his and White's home base of Nashville.


Was the Dead Weather formed with the intention of it being a real band, or did you think of it as a side project?

We weren't in it to start a new band. We were on tour with the Raconteurs, and the Kills were on tour with us. Jack had just finished his studio and wanted to do something, so he grabbed Alison and brought her back here. We were just going to make a 45, but we kept going and all of a sudden had an album. So we said, "Well, we should name this band and do we want to tour?" Everyone was really excited about it, so we just kind of went with it. It was kind of a happy accident.


Jack moves pretty nimbly from one thing to the next. It seems like he operates on the theory that, if it happens, if it happens. In this case, if it didn't at least you got a record out of it.

Yeah. You just let the music take you where it feels right. I think that's the way we've been doing it. We just inspired each other to keep going. It's a great band to be in. We're all loving it.


Being in other bands at the same time, how do you manage to clear your schedules long enough to actually record and tour as the Dead Weather?

Luckily, we all have the same booking agent. That's a plus. But Alison is recording now with the Kills. So we have to play around with the schedules.


Your next album, "Sea of Cowards" is due next month. What can you tell me about it?

It's a little more aggressive than the last album. We started when we were on tour. If we had a couple days open, we came to Nashville to record. So it had the energy of the live show coming through.


Was there anything that changed in the writing of the new album? Or did it follow the same methodology of "Horehound?"

It kind of followed that same path. We're all writing. A few of the songs are kind of like puzzles. Dean might have been playing something and then I'll play a piece that fits in there, and then Alison comes up with the lyrics or Jack comes up with the melody. That's kind of how we record. The studio is small. There's two rooms, a tracking room and the control room. So we're all in one room together when we record. There's bleedover in all of that, but also the energy is there. We're always bouncing ideas off of each other as we record.


Tell me about working with Alison. What is she like?

She's great. I get inspired by her all the time. She has a great spirit and it's nice to be in a band with a woman. It's a really nice perspective to see things from a girl's way of writing and just having her in the studio. I love her. She's very inspiring and we all work off of each other so well. You can get her laughing, too, which is great.


You worked with Jack in the Raconteurs and Dean played with the Raconteurs, too, right?

Yeah, he played keyboard and guitar with us on the first record.


Is there a difference working with those guys in this band as opposed to that one?

Yeah, especially for Jack, having him play drums. I've only really played with one drummer, with Patrick [Keeler] in the Greenhornes and the Raconteurs. It's nice to have someone else to play off of. It keeps me on my toes. When you play with someone for a while, it's good, but you want it to be fresh and new all the time. It's nice to play with Jack. We're still getting used to each other as a rhythm section. It makes you come up with new things that maybe you wouldn't normally play.


How would you rate Jack as a drummer?

He's great. And he's also played for a long time. I think drums were his first instrument.


Will we hear some of the new stuff in the show?

Yeah, we've been doing around five songs in the show. That's what we just did when we were in Australia and Japan. So maybe we'll play some more of the album closer to the release.


I like something Dean said, that the Dead Weather does not make "breakfast music."

Yeah. It's a little bit smokier. Nicotine-stained music."

Source: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/stories.nsf/music/story/FB47E20C5C07D85B8625770C006D63D2?OpenDocument

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March 2010

I didn't think I was ever going to be a musician.
That's the sort of vibe where I came from in Detroit. I remember when I was working at some restaurant as a teenager a guy was saying he was in a band and they were going to go on tour and record an album, I was like, 'What the fuck are you talking about man? There's no way you're going to be able to do that.' And I think about that all the time. That's where my head was back then.

If you don't want it you're going to get it, it's Murphy's Law.
With The White Stripes, Meg and my attitude was, 'We don't care. This is the music we love.' We resigned ourselves to the idea that nobody was going to be interested in a two-piece band dressed in red, white and black, a peppermint painted on the bass drum and playing blues music. We didn't think anybody would give a fuck about us so we just got on with it because we weren't striving for that Britney Spears world. Of course what happened was the exact opposite.

What motivates me is a question that's hard not to have a pretentious answer for.
The answer in my heart is 'the truth'. That drives me on a daily basis whether it's artistically, creatively or socially. To take the pretension out of it for a second, it's like with the comedian Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm; the way he is looking for the truth and finds himself annoyed constantly all day long. That can be a turn off for the people around you. And I have to watch myself, I'm constantly like, 'Why do people do it like this? Why do they set up a table like this? Why would you have two doors to a gas station and lock one of them? What the fuck does that mean?'

The Blues is the truth.
I think people have a funny notion about the truth and authenticity. People are very easily distracted. A lot of people looked at The White Stripes, the colours we wore and the way we presented ourselves and didn't understand what we had to do with the blues. A lot of people thought we were taking the piss. They weren't able to see through [our appearance]. And to me that is the ultimate test - if you can't pass that then go away!

If a 15-year-old kid asks me, 'What way do you like to listen to music?' I say, 'Listen to it on vinyl...
put the headphones on or sit in a room with your friends. Put the needle down.' There is a tangible experience going on there, a romantic experience where it's reverential to the music, the artist and, most of all, the song. iPods, iTunes and downloads aren't reverential. They're just easy. And I understand that - I own an iPod too, you know. But as far as reverence goes I can't say in good faith, 'Let's abandon physical formats and move to the invisible age.' It's just not magic. How great that last year was the biggest vinyl-selling year in a decade.

I don't ever doubt myself while I'm working.
I do look back and think, 'There might have been a better way of doing that,' but never at the time. I think indecisiveness is really weak. And it has no place in art. A painter shouldn't be sitting there debating whether he should use blue or green for weeks, fretting and having anxiety about it. There's no place for that. You have to make a decision fast and move on. If it's the wrong decision then at least your heart was in the right place.

I love collaborating with female artists.
All of a sudden one of the barriers is torn down. You immediately get closer to the song when you collaborate with a female. You put four or five guys in a room and something else is going on. There is some kind of hunter, competitive aspect in the air. Like with The Dead Weather, you bring Alison into the room and all of sudden everything is instantly balanced. Who knows? You could chalk that up to sexuality or sociological outlooks or something - and the rudeness comes down by like 90%. Guys will just start ripping and clawing at each other but you put a girl in the room and all of a sudden they're on best behaviour. It's interesting.

Everything is a performance.
Whether I'm standing still and wearing what I slept in last night, it's still a performance. Art is the biggest fabrication. It's about owning that fabrication and presenting it with your best abilities. If it takes acting or pushing yourself to do something you've never done before, then it's worth it. I mean, I don't want to see a regular guy walk out on stage. Fuck that! Imagine how disappointed you'd be if Michelangelo was just a normal guy. I don't want to know that. Do you? I want to see something interesting, special and beautiful. Something I haven't seen before. It's like that in the modelling and fashion world as well - those girls don't wear those clothes in the daytime.

I'm not a perfectionist.
Sort of controlled chaos would be a better description of my working method. Perfectionism turns into insulting people. Like, 'Move over. I'm doing it. You're doing it wrong.' And yelling at people. I can't do that. I don't get shitty with people. I'm very polite when it comes to ideas. I want people to generate ideas. That's what it's about. Perfectionists would just tell everyone to be quiet and do what they're told. That's not how you collaborate with people.

I almost feel like a director more than a producer.
I've never been a producer who comes in and has some champagne and says, 'Yeah change that, go ahead and mix it and I'll see you next week.' I've never been that way. I think if you're doing it you've got to do it all the way. You can't go half way. You have to be semi-obsessed with what you're doing. You have to be in love with it. I can't imagine leaving songs for someone else to mix and coming back later to listen to them. I wouldn't be able to put my name on it.

I'm business minded because I'm forced to be.
I wasn't ten years ago; back then, I was presentation minded, aesthetically minded. But now, in the last few years, all this Internet trickery has come up. Everything is about selling things. It feels like hustling a lot of the time especially because you're never going to be able to sell the amount of records you did before 2005 because that's peaked, and it's going in an opposite direction now. I figured that if I have to do all this hustling and business I want to do it from a creative standpoint - that's why I started Third Man Records.

I hate words like 'retro', 'recreate' and 'relic' - all the 're' words -
I hope none of them are on my tombstone or in a paragraph about me. I have always been trying to find out what is romantic about music and art and the best way to record it and present it to people. And sometimes the new way of doing it is not the right way. It's not about looking back and emulating something from the past but staying with the things that make the most sense and pushing forward with them.

Source: http://www.anothermag.com/exclusives/jack-white

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Just seven months after their blooze-rocking debut album, Horehound, Jack White's band the Dead Weather are already planning to release their second LP this April, according to a recent interview with the singer-drummer-guitarist-workaholic on Australia's triple j radio. The news dovetails nicely with a new Dead Weather tour set to start Down Under this March before heading to the U.S. in April. All those dates are below.

Naturally, there's even more Jack White-related news than that. In the interview, the man said he takes lead vocal duties on the forthcoming Dead Weather single, called "Blue Blood Blues", and that the new record is "bluesier and heavier than we ever thought we could be." He's also apparently editing no less than six music videos right now, including two for new Third Man Records band the Black Belles.

And if you're looking to stock up on Third Man releases and you're heading down to Austin for SXSW this year, you're in luck-- White and company are planning another pop-up store at the fest, which takes place March 17-21.

Listen to the triple j interview-- in which White sounds more like Elvis than ever-- here.

Lastly, Third Man is starting a new live concert series called, um, Third Man Live. The afternoon shows will take place at Third Man HQ in Nashville and will be "recorded direct to 8-track analog reel-to-reel tape for the purpose of producing a live album," according to the label. The first show will take place tomorrow, February 4, with the Dex Romweber Duo. More info on Third Man Live here.

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By Greg Cochrane | 16 October 2009

Alison Mosshart, lead singer with The Dead Weather, has confirmed a second album from the band is "halfway done".

The project, with Mosshart singing and The White Stripes' Jack White drumming, released their debut album Horehound earlier this year.

Up until now it was not confirmed as to whether the band would continue beyond 2009.

Mosshart said: "In between now and Christmas I'm going to go back to Nashville [White's home] at some point.

"I think I'll spend most of December in America and finish the second record. So there will be more."

The singer, who also fronts London-based pairing The Kills alongside Jamie Hince, added: "It's a kind of endless train of things which keep coming up. So I suppose next year is going to look a lot like this year.

"We kind of wrote 15 songs in three days. We had three days off at one point which we didn't expect."

"They [the songs] sound great. I really like them. We've been playing three or four of them on stage so they keep changing all the time.

"The boys are extremely quick but the four that we do have I'm sure are on YouTube. I'm sure they're everywhere."

Commenting on the prolific speed at which the foursome write (Mosshart and White are joined by Jack Lawrence and Dean Fertita) she said: "I love it. I don't think we could do this if the four of us in a room didn't move so fast because the four of us have other stuff going on.

"It's all really spur of the moment."

She also took time to praise the skills of The White Stripes man, who also stars and directed the video for new single I Cut Like A Buffalo.

"He's [Jack White] a man with a billion ideas every single day. He works really hard and rarely sleeps.

"It'd be great if there was a day with 48 hours instead of 24 for him I'm sure. It's pretty incredible to be around."

During 2009 they've taken in a huge world tour including a surprise guest appearance on Glastonbury's Park Stage in June.

It's a 12-month period that will conclude with a small clutch of UK shows beginning in Manchester on 19 October.

"The last year has been incredible," she said. "I never knew it was going to go like this. We never planned to be a band. Certainly I didn't think we'd be so busy and that things would go so well."

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/music/newsid_10000000/newsid_10002400/10002412.stm

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Jack White has a new flame: The Dead Weather

By Brian Mansfield | 03 August 2009

Jack White says starting a band is like falling in love: There's nothing like that first kiss.
"The fire is so overwhelming at the beginning," says the musician, who didn't let his relationships with the White Stripes and The Raconteurs get in the way of hooking up with his latest flame, the Dead Weather.

"I love to hurry up and record it and make it happen, see where it can go," says White, 34. "That's your moment of truth, and you only have that moment once, when it first happens."

White's faithful fans have taken to his new love: Debut album Horehound has sold 68,000 copies in its first two weeks, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

White describes the band's sound as "really dangerous and abrasive music that I think none of us are doing in our other bands."

Each of White's collaborators on this project is getting a little something on the side with the Dead Weather. Singer Alison Mosshart - accustomed to what she calls a "volatile, one-on-one situation" with Jamie Hince, her partner in The Kills - gets to experience a different creative dynamic.

Bassist Jack Lawrence, who plays in The Greenhornes as well as The Raconteurs, gets to stretch his musical boundaries. Guitarist Dean Fertita, who is used to working as a hired gun and now also playing with Queens of the Stone Age, gets more ownership of the music, plus a chance to work with White, a longtime friend.

As for White, "I'm the drummer in this one."

The group's first recording session took place last fall, immediately after The Raconteurs' tour, which featured The Kills as opening act. White initially planned to release the results as part of a vinyl singles series (mostly material he has produced for other artists) on his own Third Man Records label.

"We were writing more and more, and the songs were better and better," Mosshart says. "We didn't want to stop."

Current single Treat Me Like Your Mother is getting airplay from alternative rock stations, and the group is touring through August. Additional dates are scheduled for October. Beyond that, who knows - although White says the band has recorded tracks for a follow-up album, just to capture more of that new-love rush.

"I feel guilty if I don't let things happen, if I say, 'I'm too busy,' " White says. "That makes me feel like I'm doing a disservice to what I've dedicated my life to."

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2009-08-02-dead-weather_N.htm

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By Kathy McCabe | July 23, 2009

It was always on the cards that Jack White would become the indie rock Willy Wonka. The physical potential was there - unruly black locks, the mischievous grin, the snappy uniforms for each of his musical incarnations. Success has now afforded him the luxury of building his own "chocolate factory", the Third Man Records & Novelties in Nashville.

It has old photo and phone booths, curiosities such as Meg and Jack White Russian dolls and all the bells and whistles required to invent his own everlasting gobstopper. In musical form, of course. To pique the interest of his followers in his latest treat, The Dead Weather, White has even staged his own golden ticket lottery, placing six lucky passes for a private tour of his Nashville headquarters in American copies of the band's debut record Horehound.

"The winners' eyes will be exposed to delights never-before imagined by those with eyes or imagination," White promises on his website.

The Dead Weather, like all of White's musical endeavours, whether they be a new White Stripes record or the offerings of his second band The Raconteurs, was most unexpected. It became a band by accident after The White Stripes creative controller summoned Alison Mosshart of The Kills and his Raconteurs buddies, "Little" Jack Lawrence and Dean Fertita, to Nashville on a collaborative whim. After a weekend of good times and musical merriment, the quartet went their separate ways until White decided this meeting of minds offered more possibilities than just an old-school 7-inch single, which was his original intention. Minutes after finishing playing only their fifth gig at a Washington club, White says he is relaxed about whether or not fans of his other bands will love or hate The Dead Weather.

"There's a lot of people who came to the show tonight who could not care less about The White Stripes and The Raconteurs; they may look at The White Stripes as my side project," he says, laughing.

"I am happy with all those terms being used to describe The Dead Weather; super-group, side project ... I'm fine with all of them. I used to not be as fine when The Raconteurs started because it felt like we had to prove ourselves so people wouldn't think it was a throwaway thing. I hope people know I do these things for very real reasons. They are not ventures for celebrity or to put your face on something."

"The hardest part of any band is dedicating yourself to finding out whether your ideas have any life in them." Many have already remarked on the fact Mosshart could be Meg White's evil twin.

"I love collaborating with females, Meg, Loretta Lynn, Alison and on and on. It only takes one female to offset every male in the room. All of a sudden, everything is balanced," he says.

The seeds for The Dead Weather were sown when The Kills supported The Raconteurs on their US tour in late 2008. Battling pain from a slipped disc and bronchitis, White implored the Kills' singer to fill in on some songs for the last five gigs.

When the tour finished, the party continued at White's Nashville home and in between playing pool and drinking Scotch, they went to his new studio to muck around.

A few months later, White made the calls, asking Mosshart, Fertita and Lawrence to come back to Nashville and see what magic they could weave. He describes the three weeks at the beginning of the year as "intense" but neatly sidesteps the question of what was their preferred creative lubricant. One can only assume it was whisky again.

"I would knock on Alison's door and wake her up, get breakfast together and get to work finishing what was left from the night before and write another song. It was a very intense record to make, for sure. It was darker and dangerous, more dangerous than anything else we had written or recorded before in our other bands." He isn't kidding. Check out the video for new single Treat Me Like Your Mother. It features Mosshart and White as star-crossed lovers armed with machine guns who plug each other with countless bullets.

"I wanted to do a video where I was walking and Alison told the director about how we went and fired machine guns a few times while we were recording so he combined the two ideas," White says. Only in America.

Working on Another Way To Die for the latest James Bond instalment Quantum Of Solace also sparked a desire for the songwriter to return to the instrument he first started playing in bands; the drums.

"I never realised how much more of an inspiring angle the drums could be for me as a producer; I'd never had that opportunity with The White Stripes or The Raconteurs. I can conduct the band from there and I am a different musician than when I am playing the piano or guitar," he says. "I can't be as clumsy as I am on the guitar because there's a structure that needs to be fulfilled. Yes, and the view is very different."

Another Way To Die finally broke the curse of awful Bond themes of the past decade and even managed to make a convincing dent on the singles charts worldwide. The song paired White with r&b superstar Alicia Keys and he describes writing and recording for the famed film franchise a "strange challenge". "Amy Winehouse couldn't do it and I had to make a decision in a moment," he says.

"I didn't know if I wanted to jump into the world of movie themes when the film was already half made. But it worked out much better that way rather than writing a song when they first started filming and having it changed 10 times," he says.

White hopes to bring The Dead Weather to tour (Australia) within the year, possibly for Big Day Out. Before that, there is the premiere of The White Stripes road movie Under Great White Northern Lights at the Toronto Film Festival.

In the meantime, fans of this prodigious songwriter, musician and producer will enjoy the spoils of his new Third Man records set-up which will reward those who subscribe with the regular 7-inch singles he plans to record with whoever, whenever he can.

As for the Novelties side of his chocolate factory, White reaffirms his love of that old-school vinyl format when asked what is the most novel product available for purchase. "A record!"

Source: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/welcome-to-the-chocolate-factory/story-e6frewyr-1225754146663

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Dead Weather is Jack White's latest blended band
By Chris Riemenschneider | July 31, 2009

Three of them had just come off a long tour and were tired and ragged. Two were sick and had lost their voices. One had a slipped disk in his neck. Another had to get to New York the next day.

Sounds like the makings of a great rock 'n' roll band, huh?

"It's a really lucky surprise that we even became a band," said Alison Mosshart, singer of the highly buzzed-about supergroup the Dead Weather.

The devilish-sounding, distortion-flaunting quartet is the latest side project of the White Stripes' mad genius Jack White. And it is indeed a great one.

In this case, White mostly plays drums, though he sings occasionally and produced the band's album, "Horehound." The vocals are otherwise handled by Mosshart, a sly rock howler who also fronts the cult favorite London-based duo the Kills.

Rounding out the group are the bassist from White's other band the Raconteurs, Jack Lawrence, plus Queens of the Stone Age member (and sometime Raconteur) Dean Fertita on guitar.

The quartet more or less formed on a whim and a buzz when the Raconteurs finished a tour with the Kills near the end of last year.

"Jack lost his voice on that tour, so I started singing some of his songs for him, and then I lost my voice because of that," Mosshart says. "Then on the last day of the tour in Atlanta, we were all having celebration drinks. Jack had just finished building a recording studio behind his house in Nashville, so he was like, ‘Do you have any days off now? Why don't you come out and check it out?' "

They started out with a 1979 song by "Cars" hitmaker Gary Numan called "Are Friends Electric?" which White intended to release as a 7-inch single on his own label, Third Man Records. After hammering out that track, though, Mosshart said, "We just didn't stop playing. We played for like five, six or maybe seven or 10 hours straight and came out of there with five songs. Then I got up and went to New York the next day without any sleep to do some Kills gigs."

A month or two later, the sessions were back on, and it was clear this was a real band making a full album.

"Every song was kind of written by everybody," Mosshart said. "It all really came out of old-fashioned jamming. Someone would play something, and someone would play something else off of that. I was writing lyrics 2,000 miles an hour to keep up. It was all very spontaneous and thrilling."

"Horehound" is indeed a thriller. Over 11 tracks, it bounces, bobs and bleeds between Led Zeppelin-style blues-rock bombast to more hyper, punky gems that don't sound too far off from the White Stripes, if the Stripes had a woman out front, and White was playing all his instruments at once at top volume.

The lyrics match the music's dark, bleary-eyed style and are full of bad intentions, as in the hard-pounding grinder "Hang You From the Heavens," when Mosshart sings, "I'd like to grab you by the hair and hang you from the heavens."

She and White also trade off wicked verses in the freaky single "Treat Me Like Your Mother," fueled by a maniacal boy/girl dynamic that's one of the most fascinating things about the Dead Weather.

Both Mosshart and White already had a knack for writing from the perspective of the opposite sex. The gender-bending also plays out coolly in their remake of Bob Dylan's late-'70s, Christian-era "New Pony," which has been interpreted by some Dylanologists as a heaven-vs.-hell look at divorce and affairs. It's full of the electric spontaneity at the heart of the album. Mosshart had not heard the song before they rehearsed it.

"The lyrics blew me away," she said. "They're really dark and weird and obviously sung from a man's perspective, so we thought we'd have an interesting twist on it. In the end, ours doesn't really sound anything like the original."

One other big changeover in the Dead Weather, obviously, is having White on drums instead of out front playing guitar. His skills as a six-string player are highlighted in a new documentary, "It Might Get Loud," chronicling a daylong tete-a-tete he had with the Edge and Jimmy Page. See the trailer on The Star's music blog, Back to Rockville.

In a recent New York Times interview, White said playing drums in the Dead Weather "makes me reinvest in writing and producing music again."

"For years I've been playing guitar like a drummer," he said. "Now I want to play drums like a producer and see what happens. Looking at a song from that seat is a whole different ballgame."

Never fear, though: White also has been promising that another White Stripes album will land in 2010, and a documentary featuring the duo is scheduled for a big-screen release later this year.

Likewise, Mosshart plans to get back into the studio with her Kills cohort Jamie Hince by the end of the year.

Mosshart, 30, traveled a long way to form the Kills with Hince (an Englishman) in London, having spent her childhood in Vero Beach, Fla., where she fronted an emo-ish punk band.

"There really weren't any kids, just a lot of old people and Cadillacs," she said, "and a lot of Cadillacs driving into buildings."

She loves the idea that her new collaboration with White could turn the spotlight on her old band.

"I think it's a positive way to find out about them, because it's all music-inspired. One band influencing you to go seek out another band, that's the best press I can think of."

For now, though, she is savoring her time with the Dead Weather, and she thinks there will be more to come.

"We did a record. We love it. We're already starting to write another one."

Stopping to think, she added, "We're all really busy. None of us needs to have another band. But so as long as this band feels good to us and people are excited about it and want more, they're going to get more."

Like a lot of the Dead Weather songs, that sounded equally like a love letter and a threat.

Source: http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/story/1357867.html

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By Mike Burr | July 28, 2009

Alison Mosshart already had a good thing going with the Kills, but when a friend like Jack White asks you to sit in for some recording sessions, there's some room for, as she puts it, calendar management. What started as a one-day project to record a single seven-inch with Mosshart, White, Dean Fertia and Jack Lawrence quickly evolved into the Dead Weather's debut album, Horehound.


How does it feel to be a member of a "supergroup"?

I don't know how it feels to be a member of a supergroup. I'm not in one.


The press has been pretty quick to call The Dead Weather one.

No musician ever uses that term. It only appears in the press. You should call us a gang. We're a supergang.


What do people need to know about Horehound?

It was written and recorded in three weeks by a group of friends that never really meant to be a band. We just got together to make a 7-inch. It was all about doing things that we'd never done, and when we finished it was already a success. The whole point was to make something without intention, and the result was pretty dirty and loose and like nothing any of us had ever done before.


You didn't have any specific objective or audience in mind when you started the project?

We had nothing in mind, honestly. When you're doing it for yourself, music can be a really selfish thing. I've never learned to write a song for an audience. I can only really write something for me and hope that other people will find something to like in it. A musician shouldn't be trying to please a big majority of people; that's more of what a politician should be doing.


How did you come up with the title for the record?

It was a word that Jack heard, and I think he heard it as "white horehound." He's always attuned to things that have white in them, so he became sort of obsessed with this word. When it came time to name the album, he threw it out there and everybody liked it and went scrambling to look it up. I thought it sounded like a fast car.


Jack White has been at the forefront of most of The Dead Weather press, and the album was recorded on his label. How much did his vision influence the album?

It's really hard to say. Democracy is a terrible word to apply to music and art, but we did everything together. We did it on Jack's label, but that made the process very freeing. We made a 150 7-inches and then went and saw them being pressed. After that we took about a million photo-booth pictures and then hand-colored all of the sleeves. It was like art camp, but during the process, the music became very important to us as a group of friends and a group of musicians. Anything from The Dead Weather is a product of this collaboration.


The songwriting credits on Horehoound are very definite, though. How was the process for "Hang You From the Heavens," credited to you and Dean Fertia, different from "Treat Me Like Your Mother," which was written by the entire band?

It's hard for me to remember, because it all happened so fast. Those guys are really quick and such good musicians, so a lot of the time I felt like I was playing catch-up. On "Hang," Dean had a riff and then I had the first line. By the time I finished the rest of the verses, the guys had put together almost the whole song. "Treat Me Like Your Mother" was the one song on the album that I just couldn't write for; it was just this impenetrable wall of sound. It was so heavy that I ended up walking out of the studio. I had to tell Jack that I was stumped, and he helped me see it a couple of different ways. We worked through it as a group, and came out with this amazing song.


Was there added pressure following Meg White and Loretta Lynn?

No. Not at all. It's such a different thing. If I'd walked in cold it could have been pretty tough, but I ‘d known Jack and Meg for years. Standing in front of Jack for the first time was weird. Jack is one of the most incredible performers of his generation. I'm used to being in the audience and watching what he does. Now that I'm out front, I have to be bigger than I'm used to being. It's still at the stage where every night is exciting, but it can also be a little scary.


How is this going to play out over the course of a tour?

We've been touring a bit without the record being out, and the crowds have been great. I hope that double the audience now that the album is out, or maybe people will get the record and hate it. Who knows? We started out playing 500-capacity clubs and that was the perfect starting point for the band. We wanted to play small venues before we moved into the phase where people are coming to the concert but unable to see. It's really fun and only happens once in the history of any band. You're out there and it's just hot, sweaty, and energetic. Once you've moved on from that stage, there's no going back.


How do you think this band will affect the trajectory of your career?

I honestly haven't thought about it. I've never planned anything in my life, and this band isn't any different. I've wanted some things and made them happen, but I've never looked years into the future and said I'm going to do this to get to a certain place. This keeps me busy, and that's definitely a good thing. I'm also getting to share music with a larger audience, and that's also something exciting.


What is the status of the Kills?

The only thing that's affecting the Kills right now is that The Dead Weather is keeping me extremely busy. It's just calendar pushing at this point. I'm in writing mode right now, but the touring is going to keep us out of the studio until September at the earliest. There was such an outpouring of creativity with The Dead Weather that we've already recorded another full album of material. We even talked for a while about how hilarious it would be to release the second album before the first. The Kills and The Dead Weather are really different bands, so there's not going to be much crossover with sound, but I hope I can bring that creativity to the next album.


You've recently had some tabloid coverage. Are you worried about suddenly being under a much bigger microscope?

No, I'm not worried about it at all. I haven't done anything that one of those papers might want to write about, and it's really a game that I don't want to play. If it's criticism of my art or music, that's one thing. When it's about me as a person, that's out of bounds.


Then exactly how volatile is your relationship with White?

Are you asking about the punch-up that supposedly happened in New York?


There was a lot written about it.

Didn't happen.


None of it?

None of it. I was with 15 people. Nobody saw anything, and it was still reported in the paper. The worst part is I have my mom calling and asking me if it's true. People believe things just because they're printed in a newspaper. I guess I've done the same thing in the past. That's the problem with this whole cult-of-celebrity thing. We're all a little bit guilty.

Source: http://www.prefixmag.com/features/the-dead-weather/interview/30892/

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By Cortney Harding | July 25, 2009

It all started with a lost voice and a missing tour bus. Alison Mosshart sang for the Kills, the dirty blues-rock band that opened for the Raconteurs last fall, when Jack White lost his voice.

White's hoarseness came near the end of a fairly cataclysmic tour for him and Mosshart; the White Stripes/ Raconteurs frontman injured his back and the Kills' tour bus driver disappeared with the bus. (The bus was found a week later, and the driver eventually was arrested.)

"I was wearing the same clothes I'd been in for a week, because the bus still hadn't been found," Mosshart says. To get their minds off their mishaps, White suggested an impromptu end-of-tour jam session in Nashville.

"We had one day left with her before she had to go to New York and we were in Nashville together so we said, 'Why don't we record a 7-inch?' " White says. "We had absolutely no energy left and were completely burned out."

And so the Dead Weather was born, with White on drums, Mosshart on vocals, Jack Lawrence on bass and Dean Fertita on guitar.

The "supergroup's" album, "Horehound," is now out on White's Third Man Records. It's a deep, sludgy collection that recalls early Led Zeppelin and includes a dark cover of Bob Dylan's "New Pony."

On tour the band's playing clubs, despite the fact that White's name alone could draw much larger audiences.

"It's good to pay your dues a little bit with the band," White says.

The band members say the birth of their new project doesn't signify the death of the Kills, the Raconteurs or the White Stripes. Mosshart explains that the Kills are writing their fourth release.

White recently opened a Nashville music complex that recalls the setup of old-school labels like Stax: recording studio in back, record store in front, office and performance space on the premises. For the time being, White will be Third Man's only producer, so his aesthetic will rule.

Source: http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/1684145,CST-FTR-dead25.article

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The Dead Weather Tears the Roof Off the Rock World
By Nick Haramis | June 10, 2009

There are super-groups and then there is the Dead Weather, a serrated, rock-bluesy outfit featuring the White Stripes' Jack White, the Kills' Alison Mosshart, Queens of the Age's Dean Fertita, and Jack Lawrence of the Greenhornes and the Raconteurs (White's other handpicked band of musical brothers). But, a word to the wise, do not call them a super-duper group. On the eve of the band's first New York performance (only their second live gig ever, after the opening of White's Third Man Records space in Nashville, Tennessee), we sat down inside Manhattan's Gramercy Park Hotel to discuss their debut record, Horehound, the danger of overzealous fans, and "weird fucking aliens." (Also see our other Dead Weather feature.)

I understand that none of you necessarily operates in a zero-sum economy, but are there things you felt were missing in your previous musical incarnations, creative impulses you were hoping to satisfy by forming the Dead Weather?
ALISON MOSSHART: I don't know if it's about getting something that I'm not getting elsewhere, but I always want to do things that I haven't done before. It's all a step towards learning what you're supposed to do next. So, I don't know, maybe everything fills a void you didn't even know you had.
DEAN FERTITA: It's dangerous when you get involved in other projects because it's tempting to compare the two, like, Wow, we all just laughed out loud. There are four people laughing out loud in a room to a joke, while, in my other band, there are only two people laughing ... if that.
JACK LAWRENCE: I don't like to think of them as relationships because then I'd be a whore.
AM: At the beginning, I felt like I was cheating on Jamie [Hince, the other half of the Kills]. It's weird, because I know I'm not-I know I'm not. It's just that other people make you feel that way.

People are so quick and eager to label things.
AM: Exactly! For something good to happen, they want something bad to happen, to counter-balance it. Nothing can just exist.

If the Raconteurs were considered a super-group, then the Dead Weather must be some kind of super-duper-group.
AM: [Laughter] Super-duper-group! Oh my god, please don't say that!

Is there pressure associated with that?
AM: I like being scared to death. It's brilliant. If I'm not terrified, then it's not worth doing. It's easy to do easy things all the time and just kind of coast along.
JACK WHITE: When we're in a room together, we don't really think about it. It's only when we go out and talk to other people that we realize people have certain expectations. We did an interview a couple of weeks ago and the person was finding it hard to believe that this was not a premeditated idea-the four of us in this band. But the pressure's good. It's always a very good thing when you can throw yourself into a situation that you're not supposed to be in.

What do you mean by that?
JW: Well, it's "quote, unquote," really. Like, I'm not supposed to play drums or something.
AM: Or you're only supposed to be in the White Stripes ...
JW: ... or the Kills or the Queens, or the Greenhornes, or the Raconteurs, or whatever. Or, "We already have so much going on. What are we doing? Get back to work!" But this is our work, and when you fail to recognize that, as an artist or a writer, or a performer of any kind, you fail to recognize that you have a responsibility to work. Not a responsibility to take it as easy as possible and party as much as possible; to take the easy way out. It's tough-the music world is a world that rewards people who take the easy way out all the time.
JL: We're in the business of upsetting people.

At this point, you have all achieved a lot of acclaim and success, and are now forced to deal, not only with recognition from fans and critics, but with this other level of celebrity. How are you dealing with the public scrutiny?
AM: It's the weirdest thing in the world, because I grew up obsessed with photographs of people from Andy Warhol's Factory-Mick Jagger and Debbie Harry-and that kind of stuff was probably happening to them, but at a different time. There was no Internet, there was so much mystery, and that was really appealing to me. Now that there is no mystery, it seems like a bad time.

Jamie and Kate Moss are now photographed everywhere, doing the most mundane things.
AM: At a gas station, anywhere-it's not interesting, it's not beautiful, it's not mysterious, it's not inspiring, and it's not going to help anything. That inspires the wrong things, if kids look at that and want that. People who seek that kind of attention freak me out. I can't even talk to them. I don't understand where they're coming from; they're just like weird fucking aliens to me. My most normal instinct is to do the opposite thing and hide. But, yes, I love what I do, and I know that fame comes with it.

Has if affected you, specifically?
AM: It gets to me through Jamie, especially lately. It's horrible because it's horrible for him. He's sad. People make him look like a clown all the time, which makes me angry, because that's not who he is.
JW: It's weird, because I've always wanted to be a clown.
AM: You are, Jack. You are, in a way.

Is there a difference, though, between a TMZ camera in your face whenever you're traveling and a room filled with fans screaming your names?
AM: That's the danger, isn't it? You will suddenly lump everything into the same category because you feel paranoid and frightened about walking down the street. It could just be really sweet kids, or it could be someone who is ready to fucking push you against a wall, or attack your car at a gas station. You don't know and so, thanks to them, it's really hard, because you just don't want any attention at all.
JW: A few weeks back, somebody began hurling insults at me and chasing me for blocks, and a policeman came upon this whole scene and was concerned that I was being victimized. But then this person told the cop that I was famous. And, all of a sudden, the cop stepped off, and was like, "Oh, then I can't help you." If I had been an 18-year-old college girl on my way home from school, that person would be in jail. But since I'm famous, it's okay to harass me. Basically, if you want to kill somebody, just put a camera around your neck.

I wanted to ask about the title of the album. Horehound is a medicinal plant, right? It clears bronchitis?
JW: White Horehound.

Is that a nod to how you guys all came together professionally?
AM & DF: [Whispering and laughing] We came together at Cracker Barrel.

But it's also a laxative, and seems to represent a type of purging.
JW: I don't really want to say the real reasons behind that name, but I can say that I love the sound of that word. I didn't know that it came from a White Horehound plant. A few years ago, I thought about White Horehound, just because it's my last name, and I put it on the back shelf. I threw it out there when we were sitting around talking about the album and two or three of the guys in the band left the room.
AM: I liked it because it sounded like a fast car. I was like, Sure, I'll ride that.

When we were preparing for your photo shoot, we were wondering, "What are we going to put them in? Does the band have some sort of specific aesthetic?"
JW: I've already been in a band that's embraced that kind of color-code, so the Raconteurs and this band have not been about that at all. But since the day we started playing together, there's definitely been a dirty, dangerousness to our music. I don't know if our clothes end up reflecting that, and what does that even mean? Are we only going to wear paisley-print and lavender clothes?

Alison, there's something inherently sexual about your voice in each of the songs on this album. Do you tap into that sort of thing when recording and performing?
AM: What ... sex?

I don't know if I mean sex outright, but the songs sound very sexy.
AM: I don't know ... I'm so shy.
JW: You know what they say: a singer in the living room, a Horehound in the bedroom! It's old music industry lingo.

Have you given any thought to what you've added to the world of music?
JW: It's tough to know in this generation. I think that, because of technology, music is just getting washed out, which makes it near impossible to leave any kind of mark.

Do you feel anachronistic?
JW: I waste a lot of time fighting technology, fighting the era, and being a salesman of my own art. I hate to see all of the energy that I waste trying to get around that crap. And that sounds like, "Oh, are you serious?" but I speak for all musicians. We live in an era right now where people don't know whether to call you a sellout or not if you have your song on a commercial, but they're the same people taking the music for free. So now it's like, What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to have a MySpace page?
AM: And if I don't, do I exist?

But I would imagine you have to sell yourselves less than most other bands.
JW: There are some niceties to having done this for so long, for sure. It's easier to walk up on stage, it's easier to come out with a new record-there are no complaints there. But as far as legacy goes, I watch television and I don't really know what a "social impact" is anymore. Reality television has completely clouded and confused me. In the '60s, it was a fucking turkey shoot, from segregation and the treatment of African-Americans in the South, to women's rights and the Sexual Liberation. Now, you've got Paris Hilton, and ...

Tila Tequila?
AM: What's that?

Well, she had a reality show called A Shot at Love where, every episode, she'd ...
AM: [Laughter] You're like, "I love it! I watch it every day!"

Source: http://www.blackbookmag.com/article/the-dead-weather-tears-the-roof-off-the-rock-world/8141

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