Happy Birthday Willie

I had the pleasure of interviewing Willie recently on the eve of the release of his latest album, Let’s Face The Music And Dance. The full transcript of that chat is here. Thank you Willie for more than five decades of great music, and more to come!

The photo’s buyer, Steven “Zeke” Schein, an experienced vintage guitar dealer, immediately had a hunch that it was Johnson in the photo (left, his frequent traveling companion Johnny Shines is on the right). That hunch was recently confirmed by Lois Gibson, a forensic analyst for the Houston police department. Gibson is also known for confirming the identity of the sailor kissing the woman in the famous VJ Day photo published in Life Magazine.

The other two photos of Johnson only came to light in the late 1980s, over 50 years after his death, reputedly by poisoning at the hands of a jealous husband.

For a detailed account of the photo’s journey to this point, read this excellent Vanity Fair article.

Here’s my personal Top 10 (along with some pretty cool videos):

Have Not Been The Same: the CanRock Renaissance 1985-95, a compilation of rare and unreleased Canadian indie rock, will be released November 13, 2012 by Pheromone Recordings, assisted by the generous support of Slaight Music. The project is a companion piece to the best-selling book of the same name by Michael Barclay, Ian Jack, and Jason Schneider, recently published again in a 10^th anniversary revised edition by ECW Press. All proceeds from sales of the 21-track double LP, single CD and digital release (also on iTunes) will be donated to Kids Help Phone.

Popmatters.com called the new edition of the book “addictive and exhaustive… a nearly complete look at the Canadian indie rock scene in its formulative, post-punk years.” In praising the book, Blurt.com described it as chronicling, “a vast, varied music scene that has long existed as if in a parallel dimension to the rest of the world.”

In compiling the album, Jason Schneider finally gives readers a taste of the music that initially inspired him and his co-authors. Opening with the title track by Vancouver grunge pioneers Slow—available again for the first time since 1991—the collection offers a treasure-trove of long out-of-print and previously unreleased material, touching on every chapter in the book.

“This has been part of the plan since the book was first published in 2001,” Schneider says. “I’m grateful to all of the artists for donating their work, and in many cases going the extra mile in giving me something really special that very few people have ever heard before. I’m confident that this compilation will shed new light on an era of Canadian music that is still in process of being rediscovered.”

Mastered in Toronto by Joao Carvalho, Have Not Been The Same brings a modern clarity to the previously raw sounds of seminal artists like The Nils, Jr. Gone Wild, Change of Heart, and many more who blazed the trail for today’s internationally acclaimed Canadian indie rockers.

TRACK LISTING:
1. Slow – Have Not Been The Same
2. Poisoned (Art Bergmann) – Final Cliché
3. NoMeansNo – Dad
4. The Nils – In Betweens
5. Doughboys – Long Hall (previously unreleased)
6. Rational Youth – To The Goddess Electricity (2011 mix)
7. Jane Siberry – Symmetry (previously unreleased version)
8. Hunger Project (pre-Cowboy Junkies) – The Same Inside
9. The Pursuit of Happiness – Wake Up And Smell Cathy (previously unreleased)
10. A Neon Rome – Shatter The Illusions (previously unreleased)
11. Change of Heart – Smile
12. Jr. Gone Wild – God Is Not My Father
13. Skydiggers – When You’re Down (previously unreleased)
14. Crash Vegas – Moving Too Fast (previously unreleased version)
15. 13 Engines – Beached
16. Weeping Tile – Pushover
17. The Grapes Of Wrath – Misunderstanding (2000 acoustic version)
18. Sloan – Lucky For Me (previously unreleased version)
19. Jale – Jesus Loves Me
20. Bob Wiseman – Gabriel Dumont Blues

21. Local Rabbits — Play On

STREAM THE FULL ALBUM: http://exclaim.ca/MusicVideo/ClickHear/various-have_not_been_same_album_stream

About a month before the release of Soundgarden’s King Animal, their first album of original material since 1996, I had the pleasure of speaking to the band’s lead guitarist Kim Thayil. I first discovered Soundgarden in 1989 after stumbling upon a copy of their SST album Ultramega OK at the community radio station where I volunteered while in high school, which gave me a preview of the grunge revolution to come.

I’m happy to report that King Animal is fine return, and Kim is genuinely excited to be back in action with the band. What follows is the full transcript of the conversation, parts of which were utilized for my Timeline piece in this month’s issue of Exclaim!

My first reaction to King Animal is that there’s still the edge the band has always had, but with a lot of maturity behind it as well. Do you guys feel that as well now, having played solidly for the last couple of years?

Well, I wouldn’t want to use maturity as a euphemism for age. I would interpret maturity more as a different focus or a tension that we have. We did take a slightly different approach on this record. We didn’t forget how we worked with each other and how we record. We still used those techniques, even though we couldn’t ignore how technology is different now. But there is a different focus and maturity to what we’re doing now, I think.

My personal feeling was that when the band broke up in ’97 that it didn’t feel like a real break-up, that you guys just needed some time apart and would eventually reunite. Is that going to far out on a limb?

Maybe, yeah. I didn’t imagine that we would get back together, just because I think everybody had resolved that this was done and we were all going off in our own directions. But in retrospect, it wasn’t a huge, contentious break-up. It was pretty un-dramatic. We were a little bit burned out, and I think people were interested in pursuing other things. Chris was writing a lot of songs that weren’t really Soundgarden material and seriously thinking about a solo career. We easily could have tried to do more, but I think the main thing was just the burn out. It felt like the right time for a break.

Was there also a sense that the music business was changing in the late ‘90s and you wanted to get away from that?

Yeah, I think the record companies at that time were a lot wealthier and had a lot more influence, and MTV was still around. In our case, we had a pretty good say about the direction of our career because we had built up our audience, not the record companies, by touring around in vans in Europe and the U.S., and putting out records on Sub Pop and SST. But later, when you start working with wealthy and powerful record companies and management, there is going to be some pressure put on you. It wasn’t ridiculous—the guys at our record company were wonderful—it was just a constant busy schedule. You’re traveling a lot, not sleeping, you’re working a record and they want you to add another show in the middle of a tour, they want you to come up with another song. There was always something that somebody wanted, or that the record company needed—a show to play, or an interview to do, some TV thing or radio station promo. We weren’t saying no enough. We weren’t controlling the schedule we wanted. There were differences in that regard. People were saying, the door’s open now, here’s your opportunity to walk through. We would say, or we could wait and open that door later. No, the door will not be open later, you’ve got to strike while the iron’s hot. But you can’t take advantage of every opportunity, because you’re getting opportunities from everywhere, from TV and magazines and record companies to booking agents. You can’t do it all, and if you try to do it all, you’ll burn yourself out. There were varying motivations within the band and the management and people within the whole Soundgarden machine. I think in any band there are varying degrees of ambition and careerism; people wanting to go a little faster on the treadmill, or wanting to pull the leash in a different direction. It’s like trying to walk four dogs. It’s not like a horse or mule team. At some point, everyone’s smelling something different and wanting to chase after it. We always tried to manage ourselves democratically, and did a pretty good job at it. But that’s a tough thing to maintain when you get people wanting the singer to do one thing and the guitarist to do another thing, on and on and on. I guess the lesson we learned from that time is that we just need to slow everything down a bit. Looking back, that would have been a good move.

What were the factors that got that machine going again? It must have been something pretty strong considering Chris had his thing going and Matt was playing with Pearl Jam.

I think was a recreational attraction. There was no pressure, we weren’t obligated to do anything other than be Soundgarden. We didn’t have to be entertainers and diplomats at the same time, we could just be songwriters and musicians. That made everything easier to manage, less demanding, and fun. Ultimately, that’s what it was. We have to enjoy what we’re doing, and set our own pace. Again, we had trouble saying no fifteen years ago, and I don’t think anyone has trouble doing that now.

You did the tour last year before diving into making the new album. I can only assume that that was positive experience all around?

Yeah, that was a lot of fun. We were kind of clamouring for that. We played a couple of shows, Seattle and then Lollapalooza, and people started saying, why don’t you come and play in New York? Why don’t you come to L.A.? It was also a good way for us to get our chops back up and go out and address our fans, see what kind of response we’d get, gauge the audience that we still have. I’d say we were very pleasantly surprised that the fans we’d developed in the ‘80s and ‘90s were not so committed to homes and kids that they couldn’t come out to see a show, or pay attention to music like they did when they were younger. Then there were all of these young fans, kids with guitars that are just starting their own bands, whose big brothers wouldn’t take them to see us the first time around because they were going with their buddies instead. We just got to play with Iggy & the Stooges in Hyde Park. They’d broken up in ’74 before I even heard their records, and when I finally got to see them in Seattle a couple of years ago, that was a big deal for me.

You guys always did seem like a band who were fans first, and never lost that.

That’s one hundred per cent true. We wanted this band to be the band that we would listen to, the band whose records we would buy. We wanted to create an allegiance with an audience that would have included us when we were younger—the way I felt about, say, the Ramones or Black Sabbath. We wanted it to be like it was when you’d go to head shops looking for posters and t-shirts, and then sitting around with your friends listening to records and arguing about what’s good and what isn’t and why. Like, these guys are real and these guys are put together by some manager. Or, these guys are right-wing nutjobs and these guys are all about the coke and pussy. But these guys are about the music, man! They’re great! We all had an idea about who was worthy of respect from an artistic standpoint, whether that was Pink Floyd or Captain Beefheart, or later on, the Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, the Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Jr., the Minutemen, Saccharine Trust, Sonic Youth. We had to be that band that we would have sat around arguing about, and learned to love. We modeled our career after what we understood of these bands we grew up liking.

What was so cool about Soundgarden at the beginning too was how you took a lot of classic rock clichés and turned them upside down, not really in a mocking way but…

There was some of that though, like when we put out our version of Cheech and Chong’s “Earache My Eye.” Being a fan of punk music at that time, you had a proper perspective of what was overblown and ridiculous about classic rock. You understand that some of those songs are cool as hell and sexy as hell and inspiring, but you also had a sense that the band’s took it too far or were too indulgent, whether it was the limos or the drugs or the chicks. I wanted to be on stage with a Marshall stack and say fuck off to the whole world, not because I wanted to party with some strippers but because that was the perspective we had. That infusion was there with nearly all of the bands that came out of the Seattle scene. We certainly all liked Sabbath and Kiss and Pink Floyd. My regard for Pink Floyd has actually increased a lot as I’ve gotten older.

You guys were also known for covering “Working Man” by Rush in your early days, never one of the cooler bands out there.

They were definitely important for us. Do you know how many of my friends would do bong hits while listening to 2112? We’d sit there and make fun of their robes while rolling joints on the gatefold sleeve. We wanted our records to create that same sort of communion. If we weren’t accomplishing that, then we were doing something wrong. We’d try to come up with riffs specifically thinking about a kid spending an hour in his garage trying to figure it out and then showing it to his friend.

It seemed just before the break-up that each of you were working on your own songs separately. Was King Animal more of a group effort?

Yeah. Collaboration was paramount in our early music, especially right at the beginning when it was me on guitar, Hiro on bass and Chris on drums. Later on, it became four songwriters who played different instruments all writing guitar parts that I had to learn. That was basically the situation when we made Down On The Upside, and it kind of forced me to say, well if I going to have a song on this fucking record, I’m going to have to write lyrics, so I wrote “Never The Machine Forever.” I don’t want anyone to think that that was the sum of my creative input. There are guitar things all over it that I came up with, but that’s unfortunately not the way we credit songwriting. Bands come up with their own ideas of how they credit songwriting. The way we’ve always done it is kind of linearly, and I learned years ago that it may not be the fairest way, but it works for us. It’s because Chris was our first drummer and both he and Matt see things linearly, like, an arrangement of a song starts at point A and ends at point B, but it’s also constructed vertically with bass and guitar and vocal parts all building on top of each other. Compositions do work linearly in time, and I think drummers orient themselves to time, whereas guitar players work off of that and are used to adding things vertically. So there are lots of things on that album that I added, which I didn’t get credit for. For instance, you can take a song that Chris wrote and compare what Audioslave does with it and what Soundgarden does with it. It’ll still be the same riff, but it will sound quite a bit different. So, the creativity is there, but the way this band credits songs for publishing purposes, for better or worse, doesn’t take into account what is added to the original riff.

That signature sound you guys had almost from the beginning is still there on King Animal. Would you say that Chris is comfortable being back in this musical environment again?

Oh I think so, yeah. He’s said as much to all of us and our management and in interviews. We’re old enough that we don’t have to mince words. It’s been 30 years that we’ve basically known each other, and all the pluses and minuses that go with that. I think everybody is really happy, or else we wouldn’t be doing it. And that’s not to take away from Chris’s interest in a solo career, or Matt’s interest in Pearl Jam.

What I did notice specifically with Chris’s performances on King Animal was a more soulful tone in his voice.

Yeah, that may have come out of his solo writing and recording. But he is older and he’s a father now, and if I were him I wouldn’t want to be screaming all the time. Would you believe him if he was doing that? You might start thinking that’s it’s a gimmick. But this is Soundgarden, so he’s going to have to yell and scream, but I wouldn’t that of him for the whole record. That would be boring for him.

Since you guys were there at the beginning of Sub Pop, I’m curious to get your take on how the label has adapted, and the overall state of the Seattle scene.

There’s gotta be five times as many bands in Seattle now than there were twenty years ago. We anticipated as we started getting bigger that, oh great, there’s going to be a big gold rush now. People are going to start moving here from Minneapolis and New Mexico and probably even California. I thought that Seattle was going to be like San Francisco in the ‘60s after the Summer of Love. All of these people started moving to San Francisco and it made the city rich with talent and ideas, but also made parts of it a big fucking butthole. I think the same thing’s happened with Seattle. There’s just so many people—young people—who come here seeking their fortune, as if there’s gold in them thar hills and there isn’t. The gold is in your fingers and your heart, and that can be wherever you’re at. But people have come here for their fortunes, and 99 per cent of them are going to fail. They’re not going to find their fortunes, they’re going to be confronted with their failure, and ultimately you’ll see them on the street with a German Shepherd with a bandana tied around its neck, and the guy will be wearing some Mardi Gras beads and maybe a leather jacket if he doesn’t have to sell it, playing guitar. But what Sub Pop’s doing now, there is this thing, this neo-folk pop genre that I didn’t think I would like because I was a kid in the ‘60s and ‘70s and didn’t like most folk music then. Some of the hippie stuff was neat and cool, but as I got older it started to annoy me because it didn’t really rock. That’s why I tended to listen to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and the MC5 moreso than the Grateful Dead—although I have respect for the Dead and what they did. So, as a genre, it’s not interesting to me. But these bands are so talented. Like, the Fleet Foxes, I love them. There’s this crystalline nature of their harmonies that’s so unbelievable, and the fact that they are a DIY band from Seattle, that they write and arrange their own songs, makes it that much better. Then there’s a band like the Shins, where you’ve got Mercer who writes with such sincerity. And these bands are versatile. They’re willing to incorporate other instrumentation aside from the traditional rock thing. Like I said, I’m not in general interested in the genre, but the talent present in some of the individual bands is undeniable. But also, Seattle has some wonderful bands like Black Breath and Black Cobra, and the guys in SunnO)) grew up here, so if you love 12-minute doom drone, as I do, then you’ll orient yourself to that kind of music. By its very nature that music isn’t going to be radio or video friendly, but it’s amazing live and amazing on record. So, there’s great stuff in the Seattle indie underground. But there’s two kinds of indie: there’s the experimental, edgy do-it-yourself kind of punk rock, and now indie has sort of come to mean something else. There’s that pop for collegiate couples that indie has come to mean with certain magazines and websites that endorse it. If you have talent you have talent, but some of it annoys me because some of it is oriented toward collegiate couples, which I myself am not. Even when I was in college and I was a DJ at the university radio station, I still hated music that was oriented toward college couples. I think that’s some of the most homogenous, weak music you can think of. Seattle does have that, but on the plus side there’s still a lot of cutting edge underground music, in the true sense of underground. It’s subversive and transgressive, and that’s what I really love because it appeals to a lot of that anger that’s never really left me.

Vish Khanna and I talk Waging Heavy Peace

Vish has indeed been kind enough to send me a copy and I will read it. As I explained in the clip, I am harbouring mixed feelings about Neil at the moment, and my review of Psychedelic Pill has drawn a few nasty responses. That’s not to say that my admiration for the man has lessened at all. I’m greatly looking forward to the surreal experience of seeing Crazy Horse in my hometown on Nov. 20, and I’ve no doubt it’s going to be a great show.

If anyone wants to dispute or add to anything I’ve said, feel free to post comments here.

Last spring, I was honoured to be asked to write a booklet essay for Blue Rodeo’s 8-disc retrospective. It includes the band’s first five albums, a new remix of their debut, Outskirts, by Greg Keelor, a collection of demos for the third release, Casino, and a full disc of previously unreleased material.

It was a true thrill to interview nearly all of the players involved, and I thank them again for their generosity. I wish I could reprint the essay here, but you’ll just have to buy the set to read it!

For details on how to do that, go here

Crazy Horse’s Americana tour is now underway, and rather than focusing on the album, Neil, Poncho, Billy and Ralph seem to be following the usual pattern of testing out a lot of as-yet-unheard material. One song will be of particular interest to Canadians. For the moment, simply entitled “Ontario,” it’s an ode to Young’s home province, possibly inspired by his experience making his latest cinematic collaboration with Jonathan Demme, Neil Young Journeys.

Although not quite in the same league as some of Young’s great autobiographical numbers such as “Helpless” or “Don’t Be Denied,”  ”Ontario” could also possibly stem from Young’s reflections while working on his book, Waging Heavy Peace, due out later this year. If there’s a soundtrack to it, this song would be track 1.

Here is evidently the first recording of “Ontario,” from Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO, Aug. 5. Thanks to the anonymous taper.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse “Ontario”

“I can never half-ass anything I do,” Jack White says. “I can never do things for image sake, that don’t have meaning underneath them.” He didn’t need to tell me this; I knew it even as I prepared to see him in his Third Man Records office, the door for which evidently once belonged to a John A. White III, D.D.S. Elsewhere in the waiting room, White’s passion for taxidermy was on full display, the main piece being a water buffalo-like creature with white stripes across its back, naturally.

The chat came a day after White fully unveiled the two (yes, two) new five-piece bands, one all-female and one all-male, that will be touring with him in support of his first solo album, Blunderbuss. The meaning behind that move? Presenting himself as a solo artist is virgin territory for White, and as he has consistently demonstrated throughout his career with the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, the Dead Weather, as well as notable collaborations with the likes of Loretta Lynn, Wanda Jackson and Tom Jones, doing things in his own inimitable way is what has gotten him this far.

“What it feels like is I’ve taken a deep breath and I’m saying, ‘OK, here’s me playing by the show biz rules right now,’” White says. “When you’re in a big band and that’s over, you’re supposed to make a solo album. I resisted that for a long time, but now it’s like I’ve finally let myself do this. A solo career was never an option before because I thought it was the easy way out.”

There is no doubt that Blunderbuss sounds like a Jack White solo record should, at least to anyone who has followed his career to this point. There are the bluesy, fuzzed-out riffs, but also deft displays of the musical evolution he has undergone since relocating to Nashville from Detroit five years ago. Fiddle, pedal steel and a range of vintage keyboards are now standard in his group(s), and audiences should be prepared to hear many of their past favourites given thorough makeovers.

There is also the question of whether the reason Jack is finally stepping out on his own with Blunderbuss is a reflection of his marriage to model/singer Karen Elson ending last year, soon after the White Stripes were officially put to rest. There is nothing to indicate he’s suffering though. To the contrary, those showing their support at the Third Man showcase included not only Elson, but also Raconteurs and Dead Weather band mates, and even White’s mother. It is more accurate to say that there is 20 years of experience packed into Blunderbuss.

“Sometimes it’s easy for people to think that new songs are about what you’re going through that week, but that’s not necessarily true,” White says. “Most of the time these feelings really have to fester before they get a chance to come out of you. It’s your job as an artist to figure out a way to nurture how to have it all come out when you want it to come out. That takes years, and you sort of have to train your body and your mind to do it.”

I guess it seemed inevitable that you would make a solo record, but has it taken this long because you’ve felt secure being part of a band?

I wouldn’t say that. This album naturally happened pretty much like everything else I’ve done. The Raconteurs just happened, the Dead Weather just happened. If you would have asked me a month before, ‘Are you going to be starting a new band,’ I would have said, ‘Are you crazy? I have no time to do that.’ It was the same thing with the Dead Weather, I had newborn kids, why would I start another band? It was hard enough to do what I wanted to do with the White Stripes, but the thing is, once something starts happening naturally, I don’t get in the way of it, I let it happen. I wouldn’t say that I choose to do it, like actually tried to make myself fit into a particular situation. Even with the White Stripes, it just happened.

You’re from a large family, and seeing you last night surrounded by so many band mates and all the other people who are part of Third Man suggested to me that you’ve wanted to have your music career be like a family too. Is that fair to say?

That would be my armchair psychiatrist opinion about myself, yes. I think when you’re raised in a house where there’s 20 people running around like crazy all the time, it’s not that much of a stretch to assume that’s how I want my environment to be. I like when things are happening and when everyone has a reason to be involved. It is a real familial type thing and as you saw last night, [the Dead Weather’s] Alison Mosshart and the Raconteurs guys were here and we all went out and saw the Greenhornes afterward. This is our family of musicians, and it was like that up in Detroit too when we had that whole garage rock scene.

Would that community mindset have been influenced by your Catholic upbringing as well?

I don’t know. I think that kind of stuff gets in the back of your brain when you’re raised in a religious household, or whatever your family is into. You carry that with you for the rest of your life. It’s like your heritage, if your family members are immigrants from Europe. You carry some of those pieces with you, and sometimes you don’t even realize it. I was saying the other day at breakfast, while putting salt on my oatmeal, that that comes from the Scottish side of my family in Nova Scotia. I actually read an article about it, and I never realized it until then. I’ve never known anybody else that puts salt on their oatmeal.

I don’t like to draw direct comparisons between artists, but the more I’ve seen of this latest project and what you’re able to do here at Third Man in terms of fulfilling your artistic desires, it’s reminded me of Prince in a lot ways. I hope you don’t take that the wrong way.

No, not at all. I think Prince is brilliant. You can go as deep as you want into those kinds of comparisons and it doesn’t bother me. Some people have walked in here and said it’s like the Beatles’s Apple Records and some people have said it’s like Chess Records. Paisley Park is certainly another one of those institutions where artists wanted to have a specific location in order to facilitate their ideas, and that’s what Third Man really is, a place to facilitate ideas.

Many people will probably call Blunderbuss a break-up record, just based on what we know you’ve been through in your personal life in the past year. But to me it sounds more like you’re getting to an age where you’re pondering larger questions.

Well, for starters, it’s not a break-up record. If it were, it would be really weird to have Karen singing on three songs. To me, that disproves that idea. But people are always going to take things however they want to. If I come within 10 feet of a female on stage, people are going to make something out of that, even though I’m more likely to kiss Loretta Lynn than Alison Mosshart.

But the way you write about love on this record made me wonder if your art is fed by a need for the complications that stem from intense relationships?

We all have struggles we go through every day, no matter how “nice” we think we have it. As a songwriter/creator/producer, when I don’t have a struggle on a particular day, I will make one up. I will force a struggle to occur, and that could manifest itself through deciding to record a song with all female musicians and then getting another group of all male musicians to record the same thing just to see what happens. That suddenly raises all kinds of questions for me as a producer: how will they react to me, and what will I do differently? Will it make any difference at all? I want the musicians I play with to experience that kind of provocation, and I want the audience, both at a live show and listening to a record at home, to experience that as well.

The anger on a lot of these new songs reminded me of the great version of Dylan’s “Love Sick” that you and Meg used to do. The tension the two of you created always seemed to stem from something left unresolved in your relationship, even though that’s a huge assumption.

I see what you’re getting at. Some people might have an experience in love that might hurt their feelings for a second, but they let it roll off their back and they move on. A lot of artists, we don’t let things roll off our backs that easy. It absorbs into us and stays there forever. Sometimes when you put yourself inside a song, like when we recorded the U2 song “Love Is Blindness” during these sessions, I try to pull out anything from it that I can relate to that would make any sense for that song, just like with “Love Sick.” Lucky for me that I do hold onto these things. It’s sometimes a feeling that happened 12 years ago.

Were there moments of catharsis for you making this record?

Always, always. I feel fortunate whenever that happens, because like I’m saying, it’s not as if hitting a button just does it. I think I’ve gotten better over the years at realizing the difference between singing soulfully, and actually having it come from your soul. I also think that audiences can smell the difference.

From a purely sonic standpoint, Blunderbuss makes sense as a solo album simply because it draws from nearly every project in which you’ve been involved. Especially the last song, “Take Me With You When You Go,” seems to encapsulate a lot of it.

Yeah, there was no place else to put that song than at the end.

Have you been soaking up more sounds the longer you’ve lived in Nashville?

I would say it’s more a result of all the 45s and other records I’ve produced for Third Man. That really influenced the production style I used on this album, especially thinking about the Wanda Jackson record and having to orchestrate a 12-piece band. Had I not started Third Man and done all of those 45s, I don’t think this album would have been possible, certainly not in the way it turned out. Good or bad, it wouldn’t have sounded like this.

“I’m Shakin’” [originally done by Little Willie John] definitely sounds like it could have been on Wanda’s record.

That was the first track we did for Blunderbuss, actually. I like to start projects doing someone else’s song like that whenever I’m working with musicians who are new to me, just so everyone can a feel for what’s going on. We did with the Dead Weather too, recording [Dylan’s] “New Pony” first. Sometimes it turns out so well that it goes on the record.

Both of your current bands are fantastic, but I think people are really going to be blown away by the female band. You’ve obviously made it priority to include women in your music, and for me that’s always underscored how rock and roll always suffers when there isn’t that feminine balance. Do you agree?

Yeah, I mean, to compare the Raconteurs with the Dead Weather, just having that single female presence of Alison completely changes the whole dynamic. And obviously, the White Stripes wouldn’t have sounded like we did if there was a guy on drums. What Meg brought to the band is what made it what it is. I’ve never had any prejudice toward anybody, and I’ve probably worked with more women than guys. What I’ve noticed working with women is that a lot of bullshit goes out the window, and the focus is on accomplishing the task and getting down to something. Guys can often walk in the room with a lot of other agendas going on—egos, hang-ups—especially 20-something white hipsters. They can bring so much bullshit to the table that you have to sift through, and then they might turn around and sabotage you a week later because of all those hang-ups. I haven’t really experienced that working with females. That being said, it’s your job when you’re working with someone to bring out the best of what both of you can do together, so all of those are challenges to me. And like I said, I like the idea of shaking things up for myself, and that’s really what was behind this idea of two bands. We did rehearsals for this tour in two different locations across town and would drive back and forth between them every couple of hours. We’d rehearse the same songs with totally different rhythms, speeds, intros and outros, and it was my responsibility to remember all of it. On top of that, each band knew that there was this other band rehearsing the same songs. It wasn’t until the show here last night that they’d heard each other. I was even tempted to tell them that they weren’t allowed to watch, just to see what that would do. But that was the time when it made sense for them to finally see each other, while we were in this environment with everyone here for support. I felt it would really open things up before we go on tour. I think it was really inspiring for both bands, because it wasn’t one-sided in any way. Everyone who came out had something to say, and it was totally balanced. Half the people I talked to talked about a certain female musician and half talked about a certain male musician, whoever it was. I’m so pleased, because up until yesterday there was this lingering feeling that this might not work. Everybody could have said, well, we like the girl band but we don’t like the guy band, or so-and-so was better than so-and-so. But it was completely balanced, and I consider that a total blessing because it could have been a disaster.

So there weren’t any particular songs that you felt were better suited to a particular band?

I had to think about last night’s set a little bit because we were doing 10 songs apiece, and also, nobody knew that we were going to do White Stripes, Raconteurs and Dead Weather songs. What I knew was that coming out of the gate with a White Stripes song would change the pace of whatever expectations there were for hearing all of this new material and sort of say that this is how things are going to be. But I’m sticking with my no set list rule, which is something that none of these musicians have experience with. It’s high energy with everyone all the time.

Was it important for you and Meg to make that announcement last year that the White Stripes were officially over?

Very much so, because as much as I’d like to think that everyone is open-minded these days and less cynical, I don’t think a lot of people would know the difference between a Jack White solo record and a White Stripes record. I think a lot of people are just too close-minded in terms of believing that Meg didn’t bring a unique component to that band. I don’t even want to battle those people’s dumb misconceptions in any way. So that was one of the reasons why I wouldn’t have done a solo album while the White Stripes existed. I’m not saying that in an insulting way, but when you’re out there you realize that there’s this show biz stuff going on where people perceive things in a certain way and you can’t shake them out of it no matter how hard you try. People can say that they wish Meg was a part of it too—that’s actually flattering—just as long as they don’t say that this is the same thing as what the White Stripes were. That says to me that they think I’m mixed up for not knowing the difference.

Is it a full-time job being Jack White?

I think you have a choice to make when you call yourself an artist. To some people that means, I’m not going to have a day job, I can do whatever I want, I’m going to paint paintings and sleep in until noon. To some people that’s what the term rock star means, partying like some heavy metal guy. The other choice is to really become an artist by sacrificing yourself. Whatever your name was before, and whoever you were before, you don’t get to be that person ever again. I can only imagine that it’s like going to war and coming back a completely different person. That is what I think true artists have to do, to make that very dangerous choice to give yourself over and never go back. That means you never get to go home again, which is a scary thing to admit out loud, but I made peace with that a long time ago. I made that choice that this was not a 9-to-5 job for me, this was 24-hours a day, and that’s all it can ever be for me. I can never exploit myself for celebrity or money or anything. All I can do is create, because I have an incessant need to create. And it’s even scarier from a child’s perspective, being raised by someone who’s completely given themselves away to something they can’t come back from. I understand it, and one day they’ll understand it to.

An edited version of this piece also appeared in the May 2012 issue of The Word.

This piece is also posted at www.exclaim.ca

With their 2010 album, Brothers, the Black Keys did everything right in ambitiously expanding their sound without sacrificing any soul. It was a career-defining work, and the Akron, OH duo of singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney were rightly rewarded for it in the marketplace.

But while some artists might use such a milestone as an opportunity for further artistic reassessment, the Black Keys have stormed back in what seems a scant 18 months with El Camino, a crisp 11-track collection that displays a band that have constructed a grand home upon a simple foundation, but for now are content to rearrange the furniture. This is most evident in Carney’s drumming; for the first time, he no longer sounds self-taught and El Camino‘s tightness is its biggest surprise.

But after the opening salvo of “Lonely Boy,” “Dead and Gone” and “Gold on the Ceiling,” all of which could have been 1960s AM radio hits, Auerbach throws a curve with riff-fest “Little Black Submarines,” although it’s a rare concession to the band’s new arena audience. The rest of El Camino shifts gears effortlessly from the Hound Dog Taylor-esque boogie of “Run Right Back” to the vintage R&B of “Stop Stop.”

The latter bears the sonic stamp of producer Danger Mouse and his return to the fold after a minimal contribution to Brothers is another indication of Auerbach and Carney’s current desire for familiarity. Like the battered mini-van on the album cover, El Camino won’t attract the same gawkers that its souped-up predecessor did, but it’s reliable enough to get long-time fans where they want to go.

I understand that this record was made earlier this year and it’s been done for some time. True?
Yeah, but that’s how it generally goes for us. We’ll finish a record and it’ll take something like four months for it to come out.

Were you guys still itching to do something after finishing the tour for Brothers?
We actually hadn’t finished touring when we started this record. It took 40 days to make, but it was off-and-on because we had to leave for shows, come back and leave for shows again.

Did you have a plan in place with Danger Mouse?
We really love hanging out with Brian and respect him as a record maker and I think he feels the same about us, so there really wasn’t much to talk about. We agreed to do it, set up some dates and started working. That’s pretty much it; we didn’t talk much about what we were going to do ahead of time and we didn’t do any demos. There were no rehearsals; we had nothing when we went into the studio. We started from scratch every day.

You hadn’t written any songs?
No. No lyrics, nothing.

That makes sense, since my first impression of the record was just how tight and punchy it is. All of your records are raw to various degrees, but was your intention to do something really spontaneous?
Well, like I said, we didn’t really talk about it; we had no goal. But we were certainly listening to a lot of three-minute songs on 45s, old rockabilly records ― the Johnny Burnette Trio, the Sweet, the Cramps, the Clash, the Cars. We were just listening to stuff that was sort of compact. I guess subconsciously we got told what to do.

What stood out for me most was Pat’s drumming, which sounds so much different than how he’s played before. Tight is really the only word to describe it.
Yeah, there are parts that are super-tight. I think he was trying more stuff on this one than he has on any of our other albums, which is really cool.

As you said, you made the record while you were still on tour, so is it fair to say that all of the time you’d spent on the road played a role in how it turned out?
I definitely think it did. We’d become so used to playing the more up-tempo songs from Brothers; we didn’t really play the quiet ones. I wouldn’t say that our set is aggro, but it’s pretty rockin’, so that was our general mindset in the studio each day. Along with all of that music we were listening to that I already mentioned, it all just sort of happened without too much discussion. One thing I can say is that after we finished the fifth or sixth song we realized that we were getting into this real up-tempo groove, so we just let it be and didn’t really worry about it too much. Some of our records have had a lot of variation on them, in terms of tempos and a mix of loud and quiet songs, but we just let this one be what it was going to be.

It is notable that there aren’t any ballads.
Yeah, I guess the closest thing is the beginning of “Little Black Submarines,” but that goes away pretty quickly. I mean, we didn’t feel like we had to do a ballad. I think people know by now that we can play quietly if we want to, judging by our other records.

Since you mention “Little Black Submarines,” that really is the song that stands out from the rest. You must have had a good time doing that one, with the big riff and the guitar solo.
Yeah, that was my jock-rock moment. We actually did that song in two versions, an acoustic one and an electric one and spliced them together. I think that the electric half of that song is the closest representation of our live show than anything we’ve done before, and that’s more of the way Pat drums.

I also appreciated how you stuck to your R&B roots in songs like “Run Right Back.” I guess that will never leave you guys?
I don’t think so; it’s kind of ingrained in our brains. That’s what originally got us together: a mutual love of Stax Records, and hip-hop that was sampling Stax Records. That’s our foundation and I’m not sure we could shake that even if we tried.

I picked up on possibly a few Phil Spector-ish things too, or was that more Brian’s input?
I wasn’t listening to any Phil Spector, but I can say that I was listening to Duane Eddy and other kinds of ’50s stuff with that heavy reverb, which I guess is kind of Spector-ish.

The first single, “Lonely Boy,” is already all over radio in Canada, and I think that speaks to how much people here embraced you with Brothers.
Yeah, Canada was where it first really blew up.

It led to the extensive cross-country tour you did here earlier this year. What was that like for you?
A lot of miles and a lot of poutine. Seriously, it was amazing. The crowds were so much fun. A lot of times you’ll play in a big city and people will just stand around. That always seems to be the thing. You’ll go to L.A. or NYC and people will just stand there. You have to go to, like, Middle America to find people who want to go crazy. But it seemed it was like that in every place we played in Canada. There was such a great energy in every audience and that makes it so much more fun for us. It was basically show after show of that feeling.

From the first time I heard Brothers, there was something special about it, and I was really happy that it became as popular as it did. Did you have any sense while you were making it that that was the case?
I think it was a surprise; we didn’t go into it trying to make a commercial success. It didn’t necessarily sound like anything on the radio. It just sort of connected with people and there was no way we could have predicted that, to be honest. But I have to say that it is a beautiful thing to have had the success we’ve had and still be in complete control of every artistic step of the process. Ever since day one, we’ve made every call, not just musically, but with the artwork and the videos, everything. So whether it turned out to be a win or a loss, it was always on our shoulders.

I suppose that explains why El Camino is coming out in what seems like such a short time after the biggest record you’ve had so far. Most bands or labels nowadays would want to take at least two or three years to follow up an album like that.
Yeah, we don’t get that. We’ve been doing things our own way for ten years now, to the point where, honestly, we don’t relate to other bands. We didn’t start using a producer until our fifth record, or even record in a proper studio. We’re completely self-taught ― our whole idea of what it means to be a band is different from everybody else’s. I think being from the Midwest, we knew that we really had to work for it if we wanted it, you know? We didn’t even have a club to play when we started; we had to drive an hour north to Cleveland to play shows. I’d say it’s the work ethic we have, combined with good luck and timing that’s made it happen for us.

You expanded the band with Brothers without tampering with that foundation of you and Patrick. Are you planning on going further with that when you hit the road for El Camino?
Definitely. The new songs are, for the most part, based around a quartet concept ― guitar, bass, drums and keyboard ― and I don’t think I’d feel right playing them without having those parts there from the record.