Jack White: Music Business Maven or Artist On The Run

Well, speaking of that, before you moved here, as an introduction to Nashville in a way, you produced a Loretta Lynn record, which everyone loved, and it did very well. I have to imagine some people approached you after that, wanting to get that treatment or do that similar kind of thing. Have you had people approaching you to revive another older country artist or to do a different kind of record for a current artist?

Yeah, I can’t remember any specific ones, but a lot of things came out and were coming out even before that record. I think that when there are producers out there, when people are working on projects, peoples’ names get thrown out to see if it makes any sense. I’ve gotten asked to do several ideas that I didn’t have time to do, but I’d kick myself if I didn’t have time to do them. Then sometimes there were some that were so ridiculous I can’t even say them out loud. But yeah luckily, I’ve been able to do the ones so far that made sense to me. I wish I had more time to do that, but I think that’s what’s led to, in the last 6 months, the singles idea. The idea of recording a single for vinyl and for iTunes with one or two songs for an artist, where they come in and I can produce that. I have time to do that. I can do a lot of different projects. This is what I’ve found to be the bridge.

As far as Third Man goes, is it strictly gonna be a singles label or are you thinking about signing people?

Right now I’m gonna be doing mostly singles, yeah. And there’s a couple of albums in the works and there’s also albums that I’m a part of that maybe we’ll be doing the vinyl for, but they won’t record that at my place. We’ll get a lot of different things kinda coming through which work, but I would say mostly it’s gonna be singles, 7-inches and MP3s.

I know that everybody asks you about the White Stripes and you’ve been on record as far as what lies ahead for that, new record next year etc., but I haven’t actually seen anything about the Raconteurs. Obviously I’m assuming it’d be next year before you’d even think about it?

We did a lot of work last year with that Consolers record. We put a lot of work into making it. I spent a lot of time on it. I was working probably about 15 hours a day on that for a while. Then we went out and toured it as much as we could. But I got injured at the end of the last tour, which is great because it ended up resulting in the Dead Weather because I couldn’t go anywhere. And that also spread into the studio work, which is kinda what we are talking about now. So, yeah, little things that kinda have a time of their own. They sorta tell you when they want to come and do something. Icky Thump was happening a few years ago and I said to the Raconteurs, “You know, I’m sorry, Meg and I are starting to record. It’s making sense and we’re going to finish this record and I’ll see you guys when I see you.” And we went back to recording and Brendan [Benson] went out to London to start recording his solo album, which is, I guess gonna come out soon. He’s gonna go promote that and tour that for awhile so it’s good timing actually. ‘Cause we’ll be doing the Dead Weather and I’ll be doing the Third Man activities. I don’t know, maybe… if it was something, it’d have to be a ways away.

Now that you have all these different outlets, when you’re writing, as an idea is taking shape, are you compartmentalizing them? Or do you just follow the idea and it kinda finds its own way?

Well, you just help wherever you can help, you know, and try to get people around you that are talented and can help the process along as well. You can micromanage, you can be OCD about anything or you can know when to lay off, when to just look and watch and let it tell you what to do. It’s tricky, but it’s all creativity. So in the end, it’s all good, I think. Sometimes you overwork on something; sometimes you don’t put enough into it; sometimes they’re disastrous; sometimes they’re masterpieces. I mean, the good thing is you just keep doing it and once in awhile something will click with you, the artist and the listener. Everybody will share in something. That’s success, you know.