Jack White – the Workaholic.

Jack White designed a green, doublecut Gretsch guitar with a retractable bullet harmonica mike built into the body. Check out this video for a killer guitar solo, and go to 3:35 to see him use the harmonica mike.

In my last post on Jack White I asked the question, “Jack, is there anything you can’t do”.

It seems I must be forced to answer this question with a resounding NO. Front man to grunge blues-rock legends The White Stripes, and current bands The Dead Weather, The Raconteurs, and his solo mission, he currently has three bands on the go. White also has two children (Scarlet and Henry) and runs a recording studio/live venue/record store/lounge in Nashville, Tennessee called Third Man Records. He produces many well-known artists including Wanda Jackson, Laura Marling, Tom Jones, Beck, The Black Lips, Cold War Kids, Reggie Watts, and Alabama Shakes. An impressive line up for anyone’s standards. In the music industry, White is notoriously known as a workaholic, and no wonder. White grew up the youngest of ten, and as you may hypothesize, this means standards are high. For more details on his childhood and life, check out this article by the Georgia Straight entitled “Jack White’s got something left to prove”.

Article link: http://www.straight.com/music/jack-whites-got-something-left-prove

Third Man Records: http://thirdmanrecords.com/

As you can see if you even just glanced at the front opening page of the website, it has colour and class. But the yellow and black colour scheme of Third Man Records is not new by any means. After an apprenticeship with an upholstery at age 15, White formed his own upholstery company named Third Man Upholstery. His tools were yellow, his van was yellow, and he wore yellow and black to every job. At one time, he and another upholsterer (Brian Muldoon) formed a band called “the Upholsterers”. They pressed one hundred copies of a single and hid them inside furniture they were restoring! “Not one’s been found yet,” Jack chuckles. “They were on clear vinyl with transparency covers, so even if you x-rayed the furniture you wouldn’t be able to find them. I know where a couple of them might be, but it’s very funny in that sense” (Georgia Straight article link above).

This is typical of White, always creative, and mindful of detail and design. His live performances run in a similar vein. I had the pleasure of seeing him headline at Sasquatch Music Festival in 2012 where, with Washington’s The Gorge in the background, he played a mix of tracks from all four of his bands. White showed impressive stage set up. A colour theme of white and blue dominated overall. White himself wore in a dark blue pinstriped suit while a white stand-up piano radiated from centre stage. The stage itself was layered in white fabric, and two twenty-foot tall white retro stage lights cast a blue hue down on the band. It was unforgettable.

Jack White’s favorite song: “Grinnin’ in Your Face” – Sun House.