Jack White interview on Pitchfork (SXSW2011)

[trickster]

http://pitchfork.com/news/41925-jack-wh ... ipes-more/

Inside the Third Man Rolling Record Store, White chats about his label, music plans, collaborations with Jay-Z and Bob Dylan, and the breakup of the White Stripes

Jack White Talks Third Man, White Stripes, More

Photos by Amy Phillips

Like a new father showing off his newborn child, Jack White was all smiles as he lead me on a tour of the Third Man Rolling Record Store, his Third Man label's new vinyl-selling emporium on wheels. Making its public debut at SXSW, the Rolling Record Store was parked in a parking lot at the corner of 4th and Colorado in downtown Austin, with a line around the block to check it out. Inside, White demonstrated the sturdiness of the vinyl racks, pointed out the industrial-strength air conditioning system and tin ceiling, beamed at the rows of swag (buttons, stickers, coasters, koozies, shot glasses, air freshener, bottle openers, slipmats, etc.), and marveled at the custom-made caution tape, bearing the Third Man logo.

White had every right to be proud: the truck was pretty damn cool. And it was even cooler when White plugged into the truck's sound system to play two solo acoustic songs: Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" and the White Stripes' "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground". But before that, White and I sat in the Rolling Record Store's black leather front seats for a chat. We discussed the truck, White's future plans for his label and his music career, his collaborations with Jay-Z and Bob Dylan, and, of course, the breakup of the White Stripes.


Pitchfork: Where else are you planning on taking the Third Man Rolling Record Store?

Jack White: We want to send it out all the time. We want to send it to Bonnaroo, to car shows, state fairs, to Coachella. We just want to send it everywhere. I went to a couple of hot rod car shows with my son a couple months ago, and it was like, if you had a truck here selling records, if I were here, I'd go up and check it out.

There's a club across the street in Nashville called the Cannery and I though we could use them as a partner, drive up and sell records to the people waiting in line and play music.

Pitchfork: What releases do you have in the pipeline? Can you talk about any of those?

JW: Well, our big announcement today is that Seasick Steve just signed for his new album, so we're really excited, and he's going to perform here. He's a great guy, we get along great. He signed the table, too-- his contract is the table in my office.

Watch Jack White and Seasick Steve perform at the opening of the Third Man Rolling Record Store, via NPR:

Pitchfork: Speaking of tables, I read in a recent interview with NPR that Third Man Upholstery, your business before the White Stripes took off, might be reborn. Is that true?

JW: Oh yeah, I built my shop again last year. I had all my stuff in storage and I finally had the chance to build it back up again. I built the shop better than it ever was before.

Pitchfork: Are you planning on doing anything else with that?

JW: I'm just going to upholster in my spare time. It's always good to have something to fall back on.

Pitchfork: You have spare time?!

JW: [Laughs]

The Third Man Rolling Record Store:



Pitchfork: Third Man recently released two new green series spoken word singles, featuring auctioneer Jerry King and impressionist Amy Walker. Are there any more off-the-wall green series singles planned?

JW: Nothing that I can tell you about. That's more of the direction that those kinds of things are going to go in. And not just that, it'll be several, hundreds of new directions. It's such an open field. I love it, because it doesn't matter if it sells 300 copies or 3,000, it's just something really great to put out for posterity. You know, there are certain interesting things that people are involved in, and a lot of times, you're going to be in a modern record business deal and it'll be like, what are you doing to do? You wouldn't put out an album or a CD with someone like that, but it's great to make a 45 and two tracks. It's sort of perfect, like, what can you tell us in five to eight minutes?

Pitchfork: Third Man has been really focused on vinyl, and you release everything digitally. What do you think about the whole cassette tape revival? Any plans to release anything on cassette?

JW: This is our new slogan I came up with: Tangible, Collectible, Digital, TCD, the three formats we release music in. But yeah, tangible means anything, you know, vinyl, cassettes, eight-tracks, whatever you want. I think if people want something in a format, then why not? They should get it. We never want to dictate to people. Ever since we opened, it wasn't like, no, we're only making vinyl, this is what you should be listening to. That's our favorite, of course, and a lot of people out there as well, but never.

Pitchfork: How many records do you think you own, personally?

JW: I don't own a huge massive collection because as a songwriter, I made a rule for myself in my early 20s not to become a record collector in the sense that I reference all my old records. I can't live like that. I'd just be trapped in comparison, trying to emulate something, so I made a rule to just buy what I need, just the records I need. I like the idea of strange vinyls of different colors and strange records, and we do a lot of it, the collectible stuff, so there's that element to everything we make. The collectible merchandise that we put out-- you'll never be able to all of it. I don't even have it. But that's the beauty, that you can keep searching for it.

Pitchfork: You were recently involved in a controversy over Third Man selling its own items on eBay, to combat "flippers" who buy your limited edition records for the sole purpose of re-selling them for a process.

JW: It's not really that big of a deal. We have subscription service called the Vault, and you can talk to the fans and each other - and I was talking to all of them and saying, you know, the collectible stuff is really cool, but remember the music that's on those, that's what it's really about. You know, you'd get a line at the store and about 80 percent of those people were just going to put it on eBay. So it was like, do you guys want us to do this or not? So we've done it in a lot of different ways. We've sent records to the cities and towns the bands were from, surprise things like that. We're going to do more in the future, things like scavenger hunts, to break it up all the time, so it's never the same thing.

Hood ornament on the front of the Third Man Rolling Record Store:



Pitchfork: What have you been working on lately in terms of music?

JW: I've been working on a lot of things. Mostly, I'm producing 45s with people. For the last two years, it's been my biggest passion. And the two Dead Weather albums. But I have so many ideas for 45s, and I just don't have enough time to do them all... The 45s are great, because people come in through town, and we don't force anything, but if they are coming through town, we'll call them and say, hey, would you like to come in and do two tracks? I get a lot of offers to produce, but I don't have time to do a whole lot with people. A single is really right.

People's attention spans are changing along those ways, too. I think that people should get more involved with the single again. We lost that in America. England is still holding tightly on to it. When the White Stripes broke over there, I loved that you could get singles, that people bought singles at K-Mart or Tesco.

Pitchfork: The MP3 has kind of brought that back in a way.

JW: Yeah, exactly, that's one of the marriages to come out of that. People like the MP3, people like the single. I guess that's why you see more Rihanna songs sold than her album has sold, or something. Which is fine, that's how it was in the 50s and even in the 60s. You've got to merge the tangible aspects of it, too. You know, even if it's just a CD single. I don't know how that slipped away, but they should just price it accordingly and bring it back.

Pitchfork: There has been all kind of rumors about you working with Jay-Z and Bob Dylan. Can you tell us anything about those sessions? Will we ever hear any of it?

JW: I don't know. I can't decide for those guys, that's their world. There's a lot of projects like that that have come through. And a lot of artists do that. You'll go to someone's studio and you'll see on the wall a lot of projects that they've worked on with people that nobody knows about, and it's like "Wow... if people knew about that..." If it's not meant to be, it's just not meant to be. I hope they will.

Third Man Rolling Record Store introduction video:


Pitchfork: Can you talk at all about the White Stripes' breakup?

JW: Well, you know, I think we said everything we could in that press statement. We said, let's say everything we want right now. We went through it over and over again and that's all we could really think to say.

Pitchfork: Why did you decide to make the announcement now, rather than earlier? It had been several years since the White Stripes had released new music or toured.

JW: Well, Under Great White Northern Lights, that box set and movie, that took a lot of time. People don't really know how much time that stuff takes. More than albums, I mean, albums we make in two weeks, but films and editing and box sets and premieres and all that, that was a long project. We had thousands of hours of footage that we went through. Any time I wasn't working with the Raconteurs or Dead Weather, that's what I worked on. So that swallowed up a whole lot of time. So it kind of seemed like we hadn't done anything in a couple years.
but that took a lot.

Pitchfork: So when that project wound down, that was the end of the White Stripes?

JW: Yeah, everything has to have an end.

Pitchfork: What's Meg up to? Is she going to do music again?

JW: I don't know. I've never known. [Laughs]

[love_islander]

I wish these people who have the opportunity to interview wouldn't continue to ask the same questions that don't get answered...