Pushkin. I'm at Jack White's house in Detroit. There's over a dozen of us there. Jack's eighty eight year old mom is in the front room, greeting everyone as they come in. His older brothers there too, sawars, some folks from the Third Man record label, Jack Runs, Malcolm Gladwell and I are sitting in amazement. The Rack and Tours, Patrick Keeler, Jack, Lawrence, Brendan Benson, Jack White are hanging on Jack's sun porch, warming up, playing the blues of the thirty or so number one Billboard albums. This year, only four have been rock albums, and one was The Rack and Tours Help a Stranger. Jack and Malcolm first met in Nashville to talk about Elvis for Malcolm's other podcast, Revisionist History. Malcolm got the grand tour of Jackson State in Tennessee, where he and most of the band live now full time. After that, Malcolm would jump at any chance to hang with Jack. So when the invite came to tape a broken record episode with the band in their native Detroit, we leaped at it. Even Rick Rubin phoned in for it. You'll hear him turn up a few minutes into the conversation. This is a fun one. This is Broken Record Season three. Liner notes for the Digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Just a quick note here. You can listen to all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist, which you can find a link to in the show notes for licensing reasons, each time a song is referenced in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect. All right, enjoy the episode. Before Malcolm and Rick's conversation with the Rack and tours, the band kick things off with a great cover of Donovan's Hey Jip Dig the Slowness. Wait, that's the one where you thought of swapping out Cadillac for Tesla. Yeah, we were talking about it. I want don't we modernize if we're doing the cover of this. You know, all the old songs, the rock and roll and blue songs are always Cadillac, this and that. So this this song had Cadillac and Chevrolet and the original head I think the Mustang was a Memphis Mini song. I think he was taking his thing from and we're talking about Donovan, and so we thought, why don't we modernize, Let's let's put it in something like But we're like, oh, this just sounds silly. And then we just brought up this whole conversation of why why is it such a hard thing to interject modern technology into the lyrics of rock and roll or blue songs? Because hip hop and country can do it and I and they're expected to almost expected to you, like in modern countries. I mean, I don't know, you could look some up or something, because I don't really I'm not that familiar with modern country lyrics. But when I'm listening to the radio Nashville, it's always like something like you know all that shit, and like, yeah, I hope so, because that's a that's a hit, that's a hit. We laugh, But that actually, you know what I mean, like why are they? And then hip hop it's you can drop any modern reference and you're expected to its supposed to like whatever's hip this week, you know, let alone, uh not twenty nineteen. So but when rock and roll, if you do it, it's kind of it's kind of goofy. I mean, it brings up the idea, like I was talking sending you the idea of this phonograph lyrics, you know, hello, hello, oh Rick, oh hey Rick, Hello, Hello, how are you? We're all good? We're sitting here with the Rack on tours. Hey, Rick, Hey, Rick, Hey, what's happening? They just played a it's an old Donovan song which references I'll buy you a Cadillac, and we were asking the question why can't it be updated to I'll buy you a Tesla AX? And why why is it you can't? Why is it you can do modern references in country songs but not in rock and roll songs. That was the question on the table. I think you can know. I would love to. I would love to hear Jack singing about the Tesla AX. Yeah. I'm gonna give you example. I'm gonna do uh, just a second of a Phonograph blues, Robert Johnson Phonograph Blues. So we got like a But if that was a hip hop track, I'm sure you know this Rick better than the most you could say that if you put the right new beat on it, not only is it gonna work, it's actually expected. But there's something about rock and roll and blues to me. I always feel like, if you can't there has to be a mechanical thing to have it have romance to it, Like if it doesn't have if it's if you yeah, everybody's still singing about trains, and even guys never even seen a train in their life can write a song and put a train in there. But if you say mono rail people mover or whatever, and if that doesn't make any sense, it's not romantic. If you we're talking about electric car set of an old Cadillac, all of a sudden, it's not romantic. But then ultimately you limit the rock and roll vocabulary to that. I don't think. I don't think agree with you. I think that's a that's a self imposed limitation that maybe that's what it's gonna take. Maybe that's what the reinvention of rock and roll sounds like. It's modern references. I don't know, Almo, I think rock and roll has this like lyric Lyrically, it's always been mysterious. I think, you know, like almost like a I mean, even the Blues they were like speaking like you know, such slang. I mean, it was like, you know, you couldn't easily understand what they're talking about. And it's continued on, like what's Mick Jagger mean by that? But if Robert Johnson is when he's saying, Beatrice, I love your phonograph or whatever he's talking that was a modern thing right then and there. That was a hot thing to have. A lot only rich people had record players in a lot of prices. Maybe more than that, maybe it was, like you know, in that day, a way of saying, you know, I don't know, like secretly I'm in love with you, or I don't know. Maybe it meant even more like it was. I'm just I'm talking about just the literal reference of he's referencing a modern technological device a phonograph right at that time. If you wrote a blue song quote unquote right now and you mentioned iPod or listening to streaming service on your I phone, that's not romantic. It's just it's kind of sounds silly, and if you and maybe it's something to contextualize with rock and rolls place in culture now in twenty nineteen, compared to hip hop or or country music or modern country music, which I don't really think is even even is country music really anymore, But the fact that they're expected to make really current modern references in country music for it to be a hit song, it's expectation. But those guys, I think Williams wouldn't been caught dead not singing out of Cadillac or something, you know like that. It is this a problem for that kind you're talking about? Sort of the rock and roll vernacular has a set of very specific reference. Is that a problem that you can't kind of updated easily? You did put clicking and swiping into a rock Yeah, we can't be done. We had a song on there was said Brendan actually came up with lyricists, don't bother me. It's so but that's that's what was in there. And he came up he said that though clicking and swiping, And I thought that was funny because it had like multiple meanings. It's not pointing to a specific cultural artifact. If you're playing with words, you're winking. Yeah, I did. I did a bid women sound song few years ago called three Women, and his was like and when I did it was I got three women red, Blondie and Brunette and I when I went to the five, I said, and I got away with it there that was a blue song done in sort of like a funky way. And I said digital photograph And I was purposely trying to break this idea in might have but let's go back to he made that comment just now, Jack that yeah, and a lot of what passes for country today, he said, isn't really country. Yeah, talk a little bit about the distinction, you see. You seem to say that there are some rules that apply to country. That yeah, you can talk specifically. I think someone who's in a country artist might be able to tell you better than I would have. But I think they'd also be afraid to say it because they're very I think they live in fear in that world because they only have one radio format, it's country, and if they don't stick to the formula, they will not get radio airplay if they try to do like if a modern country artist without naming any names whatever, were to do like a record an album as the same way Hank Williams or Loretta Lynn had done in the sixties or fifties, then they would call it roots rock or Americana and it would never get played and it would never get played on the radio, and it would become Okay, he's trying to go roots you now, and it would be a failure, I think, And I think that's the scares them. They have to use really computerized they're adapting, they're adapting really quickly. They're evolving, you know, Like I mean, the country music itself is changing. I mean has been changing for so for so long now, and finally it's become anything goes. It's pop, it's rap, it's whatever, heavy metal, so I mean it's I mean, maybe it's kind of evolving for that read out of necessity because there's only there. They only have this corner of the market or whatever, you know, so in order to survive country music. Well that's how big. That's how why Taylor's swift got so more it's more gigantic as distanced away from country and became more pop and succeeded in doing so. Which is I mean, you're talking about the most loyal fan base, and think in all the genres is country music fans. I mean, if they like you for one day, they like you to the day they die. And the worst star where we came from the garage rock hipsters who like you this week and don't like you next week. Yeah, and that idea of that you toggle back and forth between Nashville and Detroit is really interesting. I'm just curious about how that affects the way you make music. I think one thing that happens is you know, there's a lot. Yeah, I've met a lot more fiddle players, you know, like since I've been living there, or steel players, and invariably you invite one of them some you know, just as a I mean, you just get to know these people. They're cool, so you invite them down to play, and soon they're appearing on your record. And then people are saying, you know, you've I see how you've you know, you've taken on this kind of Nashville sound or whatever, and it's like, well, actually this person I mean, yes, I guess maybe you could say that, but uh but in reality, it was just this guy's so cool and I'm in all of his skills. I love his He's like he's crazy good, and it's I want to be around that, you know. To add to add to that, though, if you went nobody wants to be boxed in in any case. So if you were say we did all move to Nashville and we actually became country singers because of the environment, we would probably be prone to not admit it. We'd probably be prone when asked to say, oh no, that's has nothing to do with this. We'd like country music back when we live in Detroit, We're not being pushed around or influenced by our environment or whatever. But I think wherever you go, it's not like when we were in Detroit. It's not like we like the Stooges because we're walking down the street we like the Stooges. It's because the people were hanging out with like the Stooges, and we like them too, and not just means a cultural thing. In this area the country, we're more prone to like the gorries of Stooges, Detroit, Cobras, whatever. And if you're down in Nashville, you're more prone to like Laretta Lynn and Tammy Laynette. Would you say that since moving to Nashville forgetting the making of music, has your taste changed at all? That's a great question. Rick. I'm gonna say I've been I've been exposed more to country, kind of pop country by my wife, and she's like that stuff, and so I think my I think I've come around slightly to some of it, you know, just seeing I can see some good and I'm not sure it's changed my taste, but maybe it's broadened my horizons a little bit. You know. Have you written I have an appreciation. So I have a very large appreciation and respect for some of those writers. I think they're super clever and you know what I mean, And that's sort of been country music for a long time, kind of witty and clever. And that could be like Florida Georgia line that has a line maybe that's just like, oh, that's good, that's good. You know, I appreciate that kind of stuff. My appreciation goes to, like I like the cleverness of the monster mash and the cleverness of uh, you know, uh, the novelty songs. And if you there's is when you're a songwriter and you're and you're thinking of something clever, like I think this last record, Druis album, we stayed away from clever in a lot of ways. It's it's tempting to want to come up with a clever lyric, but then you also can go pass that line into novelty, well then into not no emotion, no emotion, no feeling, because it's that clever is kind of like it's this Nie slapper or it's like a jeez, I mean not it's actually I take that back. I mean sometimes it's just just so good it's and I'm trying. I can't think of, you know, any great examples right now. Is there a song on this on this most recent record, she thinks I still love her, you know, or something like that. You know that song, Yeah, she thinks I still care? I mean, it's the whole song is or the whole song is kind of just this witty it's so heavy. It's almost like in Loretta Lindos at all the time, like there's a throwaway that's the novelty hook to get you involved. But the metaphors once you get in there are so heavy and deep that makes you giggle for a second kind of smile, but then you're like, oh, whoa wait a minute, Yeah, I think I think she thinks I still care is one of the most amazing metaphors ever written. As from a songwriting standpoint, everyone can relate to that, like, yeah, you know, but you could laugh forget her, forget him, you know, like I need him, you know. It's just classic man and then summed up so perfectly in that song. But it's because he's he does still care, right, that's the whole point of that song. I remember there's a Conway twitty song that begins with all the things he has to do now that his woman has left him. Yeah, I remember I've canceled my subscription to the whole Ladies Turn. And it's like totally gimmicky, and then you start to realize, oh my god, yeah, this guy's truly truly Yeah, you know. It's what's interesting about it is it's really sarcasm. Yeah, and it's not unusual to hear sarcasm. Let's saying a Bob Dylan song, but lines might be sarcastic, it would, the premise of the song is almost never. I can't think of an example where the premise of the song is based on sarcasm. Right, you're right, right, it's hook lines to hook you in with sarcasm. But the deeper meaning of it is actually But I go so far as to say that that's the all great songs are like that, that that the story is what you're trying to convey. You're communicating a story. The music, the melody, all of it's a trick. It's all of a way to trick you into the story. Well, hopefully there are many levels too, Right, there's to trick you in, to get you. The beat is a trick. The title the song's a trick, that the melody is a trick. And I don't mean that in an insulting sense a way. It's there's nothing wrong with that. That's great, and I think that's when. But it's just to manipulate your feeling and your emotions and to make you sad, make you cry like this, this feels you know, this is great? Or this you know, you make some sort of sound that sounds you know, whatever the decord, you know, the ultimate? Do you do it? Do you would you say you do that consciously? I do sometimes I think so yeah, and and probably fail most of those times. I'm conscious of it. And then other times, you know, I mean, songs kind of creep up on me later, much later, and I think, wow, man, I you know that's cool. That's really deep, you know, it's it moves me in a different way. Maybe it hits me differently, and I think, oh, okay, I think that was a successful song. You know, is there a song on the latest album that strikes you in retrospect as a Nashville song, a song you would would only have written because you moved to Nashville. Maybe thoughts and prayers and thoughts and prayers as Yeah, that's the last song on the record, kind of has that vibe to it. Can you pay a little bit and then explain what sort of Nashville about it? Let's discover maybe we can discover the way I love that song. Wait, can that song get played on country radio? No? Absolutely, you know, it's really it's really more it's more Southern rock than it is kind I think you're right, Rick, Yeah, yeah, it has that feeling to it. It's sort of like those incorporations of those sort of luck that kind of cowboy Yeah, it makes me think more of like Leonard Skinner and Molly Hatchett than it does country music. You know. Yeah, So like on paper, if you were going to write a story about a garage rock band from Detroit then moved to Nashville who has songwriting sensibilities, you might say that they're gonna turn into fuckinglerd Skinner. I don't know. You are Southern rock not necessarily not necessarily a bad thing. Yeah, not a bad Wait. Can you can you talk a little bit about how that song came about? It was like a little demo I did it. I thought maybe it wasn't really that interesting, but Brendan kind of heard something in it, and we were testing it out. It was more minor key, I think, wasn't it all minor? And then we changed you changed it to major D and brought some sort of my brightness too? So is that all you began with or did you beat? Yeah? And I had that was like I was trying to write lyrics like I wouldn't normally write, trying to like pretend I was a different songwriter writing those lyrics. I would never write, why why does the grim Reaper creep? How does the Grim Reaper creep? If he doesn't really have the time? I mean, that's me. When I wrote that down was to trying to be ridiculous to myself, like what another songwriter would write, like why no? Cross that out? I was trying to go into that territory or Joe, trying to shake myself up a little bit. And I had heard I had heard a pick. What's that? Did you pick? Did you pick a character for that songwriter? Or was it just not you? Was it rooted in either anyone you love or a combination or a fictional character? What's the character? Actually? It's a It's like I won't say the name. But I heard I heard a reference on the radio, driving in the car, heard a reference in the radio that pissed me off so much. It was a reference in a song that was someone trying to be clever and modern. And I won't say what it was, but to me, that made me write this line of I wrote a letter down to you like I'm Sullivan Blue. I was trying to say, like if I had took this goofy song writer and said, hey, listen, why don't you instead of that reference, why don't you reference something that actually has some staying power, some longevity to it, instead of saying that person's name, Why don't you say Sullivan Blue and let people go and learn about Sullivan Blue in the letter he wrote in the Civil War and maybe that. So it's almost like I was pretending to workshop with this songwriter kid who doesn't know what he's doing. You know. It's kind of a strange, crazy, off the left field thing to do. But so you're literally driving down the road. Had you heard that song before, No, so you're hearing it for the first time, and then you the song makes a reference and you're like, oh, yeah, you can do better than that. Yeah, it's I think you should care enough. I think a lot of people don't say that I'm dumb enough to say that in interviews and stuff, you know, Like they say like that that that that's you know enough. I can hear that and it pisces me off. But I think that you should care enough about your craft. If you're an architect and you drive it down the street and you see some ridiculously built, constructed house in a neighborhood where it doesn't belong you, you have two rules of all. You can be like, oh, hey, I'm easy going man, everything's cool, sure man, whatever you want, you know, or you'll be like no, rid absolutely, you're like you know. Frank Windwright used to call all the glass building architects the glass box Boys, which always thought would be a great name for a band. But it's great, but his his his love of the craft. You when you're turned angry at times by your love of the craft, When you see someone getting away with something ridiculous, I think it should anger you a little bit because it makes you love what you're doing all that much more. I love the idea that you could be inspired by something that you don't like to make something better and new that you wouldn't do otherwise. That's really interesting. Yeah, I think I always just feel like I learned more from what not to do than what to do. And there's these moments where I think I just popped in my head talking about modern country, like when we when the Grammys were on last year, like Brandy Carlisle, when she's saying I was like, oh my god, that's how it's done. That should be country music right now. That should be what all country music writing should strive for. Is what she just did on Alive on the air. What was it specifically about what she was doing that you that you would drive I believed her. Yeah, it was beautiful. It was like undeniably beautiful. You don't have to be country, you know, a country fan or a fan of hers even to know that that was gorgeous. But voices other world Ye, yes, yes, but you gotta want to know. You gotta want to You know, there's there's artists out there. You hear them sing, and they could do a beautiful job and sing gorgeously, but I don't believe them. If I don't believe them and I don't trust them, then I don't care about their songs. How do you, I mean, is that something that you worry about with your own music? Yeah, be believable. Well, the dream would be it would just be great to just be put out because all the people that we look well, I can I can speak for everyone in the band, but I can assume but that the people that we love and admire and idolize, the songwriters and the musicians throughout history are the ones we don't know much about. I don't really know that much about Hank Grahams, I don't know that much about Robert Johnson. We grasp at little crumbs to learn about them. But I'm glad we kind of don't have that many photographs of Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson because I think we'd probably destroy the mythology and you wouldn't just be in love with that stuff as much. And nowadays you see everything of everybody's life all day long and there's no mystery at all. So in order to be a believable character like oh, like say Brandy Carlisle, I do trust her and I believe in her. I still don't know that much about her, but from first impression I trust her, you know, isn't it interesting that the better the singer, the harder it is to trust them. Do you get that? Do you feel that experience at all? Yeah? They can kind of They can fool you, can't they They can trick you. Yeah. Well, you could have, like say, at national level studio session with a bunch of musicians, and there'll be a couple of like virtuosos there who are maybe like school taught or union or whatever kind of things like that, and after a minute you kind of get that vibe like mm, too too good, too clean, too too nice enough, not enough kind of soul. We'll be back with more from Jack White and Brendan Benson after the break, We're back with more of Malcolm and Rick's conversation with the Rack and Tours The Good. I'm interested this notion of imperfection being somehow appealing and perfection being seeming phony. Is there a really good imperfect song, A Rack and Tours song, that good imperfect song that you like, that you love because of it's of it's how rough it is, or how imperfect it is, or how kind of They're all a little bit like that in various forms. You know. I think I not to say where you were you like, but I think I bring maybe bring that to that. That's what I bring to the table for you. That's what makes what what the songwriting you do in your own world where you are are. He's a song craftsman, and I'm not really that. I'm not good at that. He's very good at crafting the song perfectly, and I'm more. My talents lie more and very being very rough from perfectly and and I think that's where the matchup is cool. If we are both rough guys or both craftsman, I don't think it would work. So I think it's two different looks at you. Does that cause problems sometimes? No? Because I want it. I mean I think that I can benefit from more of that in my writing, like you know, I've always thought that, And I benefit from your craftsmanship and wanting to do I think it's because we both want to do what each other's doing a song and driving to write the perfect song. You know, can you illustrate what you're talking about with a with a snippet of a song? Caroline and drama is good because that's a that's more like I would never have done that kind of songwriting a song and the Life Stripes for example, like that kind of storytelling songwriting song. With that kind of arrangement that we did, it would have been turned into more like a slide blue song. I think if I had done it in no Oystripes, I think, dude, little, give me a little taste of that, and then like, could you have about a few minutes of coming, I think we should tune up. Yeah, yeah, that's what I meant to say earlier. Let me give you this, I mean, tune in real quick and sat tune. I wondered if I wanted to talk to you guys about maybe doing that. I just thought that was kind of imperfection. It made for great music. Well, yeah, you know, this is being Yeah, this is me and him. I wouldn't have said that, but he would. And neither one or bad. Yeah, neither one or bad. And now the drummer quit, right, But that's kind of true. Well, okay, another not not an example of between Jack and myself, but myself and someone else who shall remain nameless, a producer and I was playing guitar in the control room with with the producer there, and it was kind of a really exciting part of the song, almost like a who part, and I was, I was way up here and I was, you know, playing like on an electric guitar, and that's pretty damn well in tune. But the guitar was usually, you know, on the twelfth fret or whatever they're it's really hard to keep it in tune. In fact, that's probably why Pete Town didn't liked to play those chords because they're exciting, because they're dissonant and you know, but he had me tune the chord up on the twelfth fret rick are you listening? He had he had me tune that fretted chord. So then later, I don't know, I'm screaming. Later, when the record was being mixed by by Dave Sarty, whose name can be mentioned here, he said, I said, what's going on with this song? Man? It's doesn't have this doesn't have any power to it. And he said, your guitars or everything's tuo in tune, and if you want, I can put a guitar on it that's slightly out of tune. And he did, and the song just came to life. Came to life. That's almost that's just sad. It is, I mean, it is, it was it made me very sad and I didn't have a very fun time making that record. Needless to say, well this you can transfer this over to our talk about modern country. When we did the second Racing Ters album at Blackbird Studio, which is the big studio in Nashville, most of the big country records were being recorded there, especially at the time, and they were explaining to us how they were doing the songs in the next studio over, like we were recording a drum track and a bass guitar and the band would play live together and then we would start building on it, like, oh, hey, that's two vocals. The live track was the song. That was it. It was done, and they were saying, oh, you know, at this point, we would just be getting the kick drum already in the in the over in this country album we're working on, they would do a drum beat. You'll play a drum beat, put it up on pro tools, put it on a grid so that every kick and snare is perfectly in time, and then they switch out the kick samples of the snare drum that they think is a good sounding snare drum sample, So every snare drum sounds basically exactly the same hit it exactly perfect time. There's no soul left in the recording at all. Even that's how you get played on country music radio. You have to do that stuff to this song, take all the thought of it. And it's sort of like, man, can you imagine if even the Beatles had been recorded that way? And there even hip hop those guys, those beats, guys are going, you know, going so far to make the beats imperfect, to make them nowadays we make them like swing and do weird not even in time. Sometimes it's awesome, you know. Yeah, But that's Jay Dillock who's the maybe maybe the one of the first to do that where they're really just kind of playing it off time and yeah and uh and uh and makeing it have some swing to it, you know what I mean. I mean they're trying, they're trying to go the other way with it, like they want this drum machine to sound like imperfect. You know, yeah, that's better. What's striving that? Is it? Is it being driven from the audience level or is it just driven or is it just a kind of thoughtless extension of expertise that I can because I can make a perfect day, will in my opinion, be a bad domino effect of what's selling, what's working, and all that one worked because we use this algorithm type thing and we put everything up on a grid and made everything that OCD. Two man people OCD in the business honestly thinking like you know, the engineer like I can't stand the bleed or I can't stand this this this snare is just kind of out of phase a little bit. You know, I want to replace it, and no one says anything. No one says no stop, no one ever. Everybody want to also describe it as a misuse of technology. Yeah, I agree, Rick, And it's like you can use like you know, nothing can be firm. If I say I've I've gotten punished a lot for being like this anti technology guy, I'm really not. And the point being is I think people misunderstand like I'm not saying, like if you record on computer or you're a lifeless piece of shit. It's like, no, you can record on potos and do some really beautiful things and you can use it properly if you all. But if you plug in and everything no one's playing in a room live together. Everything is a track individually. Everything has been has sixteen plugins and emulations on it of reverb with digital emulators, and on and on and on. You've you've clicked your mouse three million times before this song is quote unquote finished. Are you me? There's no way that's going to have any solar life to it. And if you took your favorite recordings of Otis Redding or the Beatles or whatever and tried to have do it in that same fashion, I don't think people would like the results. But that doesn't mean that you could. You can't use that technology and come up with beautiful things. You definitely can't, but you gotta be very diligent, I think, and what like what Rick said, that you can misuse any of that technology. It's a lot easier to misuse this technology now than it was when it was just tape machines. It was a lot harder to mess absolutely, you know absolutely, because you have more you have more control, which can be a dangerous thing. And there's no undo. There's no apple Z. You know, there wasn't no, I mean, there was no it was apple Z. So you had to commit. You had to commit, well, you guys are to play something well example, yeah, oh okay, So this was a song called Caroline and Drama that we mean, but it worked on my on my porch in Nashville when we're in our second album, and it became a sort of like a story telling song. We won't play the whole thing, it's a little bit long, but we'll play a little bit of it. And it was really us working together. I mean when this song probably would have been more of like a slide open slide, very trashy kind of song if I had done it in my other band, The White Stripes at the time, But when we did it together, it sort of turned into a storytelling kind of song. You're grateful for that, and it ways you don't, yes, because I didn't want the Rock and Tours to sound anything like The White Stripes. I want if we were going to start a new band, I don't want to sound anything like it. And then when I do solo record, I don't want it to sound anything like the Rock and Tours. And so anytime you do a project, you don't want it to have any real similarities. And I think maybe that's a little bit what's what's tough for anybody who's been in a band that connected with people in the mainstream especially, you know, I always think about that. Like, we toured with Robert Plant in South America, and I just love what he was doing solo, and you just get that vibe in the room that people just want to hear that led Zepplin song next. And it's a little bit that's a kind of curse of bands too, you know, beloved bands as a unit they liked. It's like, I don't know, it's like maybe even part of a fantasy thing, like oh, I wish I was on the road with my four friends or something in a van or something. I don't know. Maybe there's some appeal of that, but there's this idea that this gang of guys or girls is up there against all odds, traveling in the country and and and and coming up these songs together. And when you're solo, it's almost like you're, oh, this is like an em Why why don't you just do the white stripes? Why don't want you just do that? That's what we want you to do. You know, why doesn't Robert Plant just reform led Zeppelin? Because that's what you want you to do. But I think people don't realize that it's not what the artists want. There are doesn't want to keep repeating them, says, can you imagine if Robert Denier had to keep playing Travis Bickle from textra Driver in every film for the rest of his life? I mean liked should that should be like that? It can't be in a band for more than five years. Five years actually be pretty good. Yeah, it's not bad. You want to try it. Yeah, it's Carolina and drama. It's not it's total Southern Gothic. It doesn't. But this, you know, this reminds me of the last time we chatted for that podcast episode on Elvis. You were talking about how the first time you went to Memphis he reminded you of Detroit, and then you had that whole thing about how Detroit is southern town. Yeah, maybe it's not a stretch that you end up writing Southern gothic. Why Detroit a bunch of guys who right end up writting Southern gothic rock. Yeah, there's something about it, there's something there where there is a kind of literal connection. It does when you're in Memphis. I feel very much like it's like Detroit, New Orleans, Memphis, Detroit sort of have something straight down the country, some kind of blood vein going on. Yes, so you're painting the picture. We just played that song. It sounds very southern and we wrote it on a southern front porch in my house in Nashville. Well, why aren't we writing Stooges sounding heavy rock number? Maybe because we have acoustic guitars and we're sitting on a veranda or something. I don't know, but it might be that sometimes these environments saying you know that your environment influences you don't really know specifically what it is, but you know it's it's being influenced. I guess that song was written from beginning to end on your front porch and basically, yeah, for the most part, How does it when you guys write together? Is it? How does it work? Well? It's been different, like so this record, I think we did a lot of impromptu on the microphone, like just going out there and just kind of riffing, you know, just vocalizing I don't know, on a song and then picking out parts like oh that sounds nice or whatever. I'm specific I'm specifically remembering now Caroline Ramon will recept there, and it was it was sort of like say, we started off with Billy woke up in the back of his truck and I was like, Billy, that's a stupid name to put in there. I'm like, well, we'll find something else later. And and you know, I remember, actually Bob Dylan had come by the house a few months later. I have to read recorded and I played him that song and I was actually saying, hey, man, do you think it's actually went with an infigram may I You've used Billy in the song Tom Petty has in fifteen other songs. Off the top of my head, Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the tallatte Bridge. I was like, I'm trying to think of something different, but I can't think of a two syllable name. And he's like, He's like, I don't see a problem with that, and this has been validated, so okay. And then I was like, okay, then we're fine. Let's move on. And you've become friends with Dylan. We are we are he's well, he's he's my dad, he's he's my mentor. So I I don't insulted by saying we're friends, you know, in the state as if I'm anywhere near uh, but but he he uh, yeah, we do have a pretty nice relationship. He's nice to be able to play something like that and get it get feedback. But but yeah, but to talk about the Brendan and I like song right anyway? In that song, for example, I say, I go that one one thing was the name, and I okay, we'll think of something later. But then he's like, he will say, well, what's he gonna do now? You know? Okay, Well he just woke up in his truck and he went and saw, Oh there's a priest in his house. Now we're now we're feeding off each what's the priest doing? Oh, well, maybe he's fighting with someone else. There's a boyfriend there who was described by his boyfriend. How do you describe these people? Sum up their whole lives in one sentence? And I thought something like, oh he's got some blue tattoos that were given to him and hears young, Like maybe he's been in prison since he was a kid. Was a one way of saying he sent a rough life. It's hard to do that though. It's hard to sum up someone's life in a sound bite, but you kind of have to do that as a song. You have to come with these you have to make these concessions, you know, especially if you're talking about characters like that. But I think those things come out of me and him bouncing it off of each other. If I had been sitting there by myself, the song would have came out totally different and the characters would have done different things. How often are the songs that you write about a fictional character. Brendan is different, and he can tell you a different story about his own, But I almost never try to write about myself because it's just so it's too boring for me. I feel it's like it's boring, and also if it's I'm gonna end up probably writing about something negative or sad, and I don't want to keep reliving that for rest of my life. Every time I played this song live, it just seems like And then also I think it's too overdone. Nowadays. I think everyone sort of expects that the new Taylor Swift song is going to be about her dating John Mayer or something like that, and I think maybe it'd be better if people wrote about something different. I read in the book something very interesting. It was like if you had asked kids in high school one hundred years ago to write a song who knew nothing about writing music, that ninety percent of them or ninety five percent of them would have written about the Titanic or a mining disaster or something big that was to the community. But if you wrote asked a hundred high school kids right now to write a song who nothing about music or songwriting, they would all one writes songs about themselves. And that's something that I don't really have an opinion on about what that means about how culture has changed, but I'm sure everybody listening to that statement could probably infer lots of narcissism and things that to do with how we attack technology with social media and now these days, et cetera, et cetera. Whereas before a hundred years ago, and most people hadn't even been more than five miles from their own home, they would assume that there was this grandiose life outside of their small town that they know very little about. It seems very exotic, but that's all at our fingertips. Now. I want to dwell on this remote because it's super interesting, this idea of the of this switch. From one hundred years ago, the kids would have written narratives about some world event, and today would be about themselves, because I was just thinking as you were saying that, was there a one hundred years ago, you know, after Katrina there would have been a top ten song equivalent or about Katrina or about you know, we would all know someone would have memorialized nine eleven or I was thinking, you know, all these that wave of police shootings over there, you know there is one, there's one, there's that genomen a song. But but the idea that you know, hip hop could be a another version of hip hop is would be this would be a genre full of social protests. Yeah. I tried to work with Jay Z on a hip hop version of stagger Lee, which I thought I was telling Jay like and I wish you could have helped me with this riction make this actually come alive. But it never worked. It never happened. But I was trying to say, you know, Jay, this this is a song about a guy who was killed over a five dollar hat. And these are mythical folk heroes that should be mythical hip hop. Uh heroes, Where are where are the mythical hip hop characters? There's a lot of people in hip hop who talk about themselves. Most of it is the MC talking from his own point of view. Nothing wrong with that, But wouldn't it be awesome if there was also mythical hip hop characters? And I thought, God, stagger Lee is just it's just waiting to be done in a hip hop style. You know that, it's it's got everything, It's got everything that's talked about in modern hip hop, and say, all you gotta do is modernize it. Take us full circle to modernizing all things. But and he was interested in for a second, we just didn't never got I got to come together and finish it. I ended up doing on my band The Dead Weathers Out, and I I ended up doing a version called three Dollar Hat off of it because I didn't want to see the music go to waste. I'm curious about you guys, to talk a little bit more about the you know, you're talking about the music that you grew up with. I'm curious about the music that net that at the specific point you are in your career, that really affects you and moves you. I mean, I like to pick up on a little moments you're like, oh that was like, say I heard Billy Billie Eilish song on our day. The I don't know the name of the type, but I think it's a we're when we go to sleep, when we all falls it, where do we go? I think? And what I liked was the way she recorded the vocals, and to me, like that was some great use of technology. However she recorded her vocals, I'm assuming it's approach tools thing that it was like, oh man, beautiful way that it sounds like a synthesizer. But it's also sort of like four of her singing layered together, very very cool, very well done, impressive, And you remember those kind of things, like the tone of something, and that's what bums you out. It's like when everything is electronic or electric that you don't know. People used to say, Wow, how did they make the sound? How did the Beatles make that sound at that one part in the song? Are they playing? I think that's backwards guitar or whatever it was at that time, some technique that or say, like in a movie, like how did they force that horse carriage off a cliff? Did they really kill those horses in that movie? You know? But now it's just a one sentence thing. It was done on the computer. Hey Jack, how do you feel about the Donna summer song, I feel love, I love it. I love it, and as I read more about it and I think what is it? Brian Eno brought it into the studio and said de Bowie that this is the future of music, and it was. There was no what was the first song? It was all completely electronic, right, Rick, Yes, yes, And again to speak to what you said before, Rick, a good use of technology versus bad use of technology? That yes, Usually when the song something's the first, that's time has ever done. First time they built a Fender telecaster or a or a Fender or a reverb amp, like the first out of the gate is usually the best, and that that was one of those first out of the gate moments, like oh wow, look what you could do with electronic music or craft work and all the things that came throughout that scenario of there's some amazing things going to be done. And then but that's the same thing with you know, say, like a grunge movement comes out, all the dirty kind of raw signing rock and roll comes out, and then you've got to listen to seven years of the imitators kind of watering it down. No big deal. That's how music has always gone it's always gone up in hills and valleys like that. There should be a there should you know the Germans words for everything. There should be a German word for the person who comes after the originator and does a bad version of the things. Yeah, we'll be back with more from the Rack and Tours after the break. We're back with more from the Rack and tours. But can you talk a little bit about and I'd love if you paid a little bit of it. This song I don't feel like trying sometimes or some days. Some days I don't feel like trying on some days it seems like the most personal song on Neil. Yeah it is. I didn't. I didn't think much of it when I was writing. I mean, I didn't think that it was necessarily so personal. I mean I think there's kind of let me just be clear, I think I don't. I don't write strictly autobiographically. I mean I think I I tell stories as well. They're not they're not stories with you know, necessarily there are lots of different characters, and the characters maybe morph into other characters, and I take liberties and artistic license and you know, So that being said, I mean, yeah, I think I think I kind of felt, you know, I was just kind of feeling at a having a bad day, you know, maybe more than just a bad day. But and I started to write this song, and then and then of course it's it's good to embellish and make things just get just twist the knife even more. And you know, so I I kind of I feel like I just take liberties and songs like maybe try to make it more shocking or more sad, or more this or that, and then it people are asking me about it, you know, like you know, it's it's wow, it's really sounds almost suicidal if you really wanted to throw it. When you're in a band like this, where there's two singers and two songwriters, you can really throw a spanner in the works. And you'd have me sing it if it's that personal, right, and then see what happens there. That could be an interesting twist. Maybe we should have done that. Yeah, And we've talked, we've always talked about doing that. We just never got around to doing that. Just singing each other's songs, like you know, I mean singing singing each other's lyrics. Will you play a little bit of that song some days? Yeah, whoa have. Have either of you written a song before where it's two distinct parts like that, where it's almost like the second half of the song answers the first half and the whole feeling of the song changes. Are there any others like that in either of your catalogs? I think I do that a lot. It's kind of a little go to of mine, like a big outro, big like you know, but he means that that that was an answer, well answer, yeah. I don't remember doing that before. Maybe maybe yeah, maybe not direct directly like an answer thing, But I do like it interesting that it's like the first half of the song is that, you know, I don't care and I'm wallowing, and then the second half of the song is but and it's it's the second half is we shall overcome. It's interesting to have both of those in the same song. It is I don't know. It just might be the first only time that you are I've ever done that. Did you start by thinking you're gonna have the answer or did you write the first half? I think it needs an answer that was written. The second half was written on the spot spontaneously, which I thought it was getting too I thought it was getting too bummed out, like we were all recording it. It was it wasn't. It also wasn't coming very easily for us all, you know, So I was and I was getting nervous that maybe people were losing interest in this song that I had such high hopes for and blah blah blah. So I think that just after a take that didn't go so well, I think I said here right now, not did yet. That just came out of nowhere yeah yet, And then they started playing along not dead yet, dear right now, I'm not by the end, we're singing dear right now and I'm not dead yet. So we were like, whoa, let's you know, we got to use that. That's great. Yeah, And I was glad because it's a happy ending, you know. But these are things that would not happen. I don't know. If I wouldn't, I wouldn't invite yourself recording your own solo stuff, you wouldn't do. Those things wouldn't have happened. No, or if I had written it, it it would become a part that would be you know, just yeah, it's funny how the last I mean, this is gonna like a totally tried observation. But I've always been fascinated by it. You could have a song like that, the bulk of which is this dense downer, and then you stick the little thing on the end and all of that is forgotten exactly the end you know. I was class was Yeah, you know, it's almost like it just gets you, it gets erased. The emotional arc of music is so fascinating that you can you can kind of rescue, you can take somewhere to the band's melody. Yeah, it's with that melody, you can do that. I mean, I can do that right now. Just just bummed it out right. But let's give me all right, So there's like that's the most basic trick ever. But you know it's all in there. It's great. I mean, Mozart knew it, you know, they all knew it how to just pull the heart strings. And it was just kind of just popped in my head. Was that, you know, speaking of like novelty songs and uh with deeper metaphors so hidden back there and changing things again. But just thinking of Loretta Linton's songs called Fist City. If you know this song and to the choruses, I don't know the chors exactly, but his chorus is, uh, and if you don't want to go to Fist City, you better detour around my town because I'll grab you by the hair of the head and I'll lift you off of the ground, just like a novelty thing, like oh, okay, you're gonna I'm gonna kick your ass if you mess around with man. But then she says like this double chorus, which is she's so brillian. Now she goes, I ain't saying my baby's a saint because of hate, and Nettie won't get around with a giddy. But I'm here to tell you, Galt, you better watch your your faces. You stay away from my man if you don't want to go to fist City. So uh, it's like she admits, Yeah, I know he's screwing around and I'm should be mad at him, but yeah, I'm gonna talk about that right now, we're talking about you. That's brilliant songwriting. Yeah, so good. I'm curious about all of you. Are have lived through a period where the way in which people experienced music has your audience experiences music has changed fundamentally, spanning quite a Yeah, like in twenty years we've gone from buying the album and listening to it from the game to end, yeah to to I'm assuming most it's almost all spot you know, streaming and individual streaming and vinyls. How does how has that affected? Has it affected you? Has it affected the way audiences react to your music when you play live? We thought, we thought, say, like when we're like, say, when the Patrick and Jack ran the Green Horns, I was in a way straps on the Detroit garage rock scene was cooking that that. We thought we had this problem of what they call Golden age, thinking that everything was always better in the past. Oh god, the bands in the sixties they had it so good, and it's like, wow, wouldn't it be great to be from that period? Then this lay mass eighties and nineties blah blah blah digital crap that we had to grow up in. And then you been like, we thought that was bad. Jesus man, there's nobody's nobody's sitting down running a song anymore, you know, with a with a piano. And then we're gonna say, like, you see something like a Brandy Carlisle on the on the ground, He's like, oh thank god, you know, and you know, what it is you see finally is talent. I mean, I think you finally see somebody who's truly gifted, and you're like alone to pieces because what we're used to is mediocrity. I mean just you know, whatever's sort of viral and popular on the internet, which is always just so lame, you know, nothing to do with skill or creation or art or you want to say, like, I want someone to sit down and love their craft and love their work and their art form, and they're expressing it in a way where they can figure out how to blow your mind. With the tools that they're using. It doesn't matter if they're analog or digital or not. Can they blow their mind? Billy I. The way she recorded her vocals on that song on her the year she blew My mind, The way she record your vocals. She used it technology to her advantage and did something beautiful, and she's trying to blow your mind. Yeah, but there's not enough of that. Feels like maybe maybe when you look back and say, oh god, it seems like every time someone turned their head in the sixties, someone was might know some amazing song that we had greatness to it and would last forever. Maybe though that we're only remembering the good stuff. I don't know that's we're definitely remembering the good stuff. And the bar to get in the game in the sixties was much higher, Yeah, because the cost it took to make a record to get signed. Yeah, you had to really be good just to get signed. Yeah. And if you got to really have your you had to have your act together by the time you got to see like a guys, we got one chance. We better rehearse the ship and have it done right. And if you're gonna sing, you're gonna sing from the heart, and you're gonna or really impress them because there's only this one moment. You don't have all we can go back and overdub and fix it and click and click whatever. The beas recorded the first album in nine hours. You know that was it. Yeah, let's up in first album thirty six hours, blacks I was first album twenty four hours, students first, on and on and on and on all that. The other side of it is that because the entry bar is low, now, yes, there may be more noise and more not good stuff, but you might hear something that you might not have heard that wouldn't have made the bar on a technical level, but it's a different kind of talent. Like when I when I hear someone like young Thug, it's really exciting to me. In the old days, someone who you couldn't understand what they were saying, or maybe they don't even know what they're saying, might not get it, you know, might not get to record. That sounds like you, young Thug, and you evokes an idea that you trust him and you believe him. Right, Yes, well, that's that's what I'm sings is when you when you believe somebody, however, whatever tricks they're using to make you think that they're believable and should be trusted, or if they actually are trustable, whatever it is, you trust Young Doug, and now you're ready to open the door and listen. Listen to anything else he has to say. If someone comes out of gate and I like, I don't trust them, I kind of almost ex them out and I'm never going to really dig what they're doing, no matter what they do, no matter how beautiful it is, it's coming from somebody I don't trust. So okay, on the on the trust front, we mentioned earlier that people who are technically great are harder to trust because there's so much craft in it, it's harder to believe them. Who are the people who you think of as technically great, yet you still trust them? That's a great question. Let me think for two beyond Brandy Carlisle, because she's right. Yeah, I think Paul McCartney maybe, I think, you know, he's famously the technic, the more technical one guy my favorite beatle, But what's my favorite beatle? No doubt Paul, But I believe him with all my heart. I mean and and a lot of times I think I'm just interested in the way that an artist evolves, even when they're older, and how they get sort of sort of lame. It's still kind of like Paul McCarney, Like I still want to hear what he's up to, what he's doing. You know, I might include Simon and Garfuncle, even though Garfuncle is the voice you think of more in Simon and Garfuncle, the more recognizable voice, Yeah is Garfuncles. Paul's harmony is incredible, and Paul's songs are incredible. But when I listened to those records, I believe those words, like I I go with them. Yeah, there was almost these phenominalies like that that kind of started off like acts that didn't really know what they wanted to do. They knew they love music, but they didn't know what exactly their voice was, and they found their voice like I think Dylan. If folk music hadn't been happening, and the same thing with the Paul Simon and Garfuncle, both those acts. If folk music hadn't been the hot thing at that moment, they could have easily if they'd been ten years before, they would have been rock and rollers like Little Richard and Jean Vincent. I mean a matter of fact, what they were called Sumon Garf were called Tom and Jerry when they first came out, and they became because the folk moment. They became believable and down to earth and soulful folks, singers that you believed what they were saying, that they had knowledge, they were experts about something that you didn't know about. You had that that trust in this person who's communicating to you through music. You trust them and you believe that they know something that you don't know. And by that and the sign of that trust is for Simon and Garfunkel is by kind of the middle of their career. Of his career, Simon Foots gotten album called Grace Landing, which he takes you to South Africa and writ it's about essentially people from New York City. I mean, it's the most hilarious, brilliant you know, left hand turn, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it totally works. It's probably one of the greatest albums ever made, really Graceland and and I have. I listened to it a few months ago and realize, oh my god, there's not There's also a Zaidiko song on here, there's a Los Lobos is playing on here. It's not just African, It's like all kinds of music going on that record. I'm like, well, I didn't even remember that being part of that record. I thought it was all just so Lady Smith, Black Mumbazo and that. But there's really a lot going on, and there's a lot of New York going on in there. And on top of it, you name the album Grace Awesome. There's a girl from New York City who calls himself the Human Trampoline. That's that's the one from Christ's like I had a I had I had like an ignorant, naive revelation in that uh, the Mississippi Delta was shining like a national guitar. I've been singing that line walking around the house for thirty years or whatever, and it was like about two three years ago, like, oh shit, a national guitar. That's a name brand of a silver dough bro which is shiny. I thought he meant, like the big picture of the royal a national guitar. We were all playing this giantantic guitar together as the nation. That reference was made for you exactly exactly, and I blew it. I'm middle it. Should we do one? Should we do one more song? How about an only child? Kind of feeling child? Pretty cool? Yeah, this feels like a mixture of what Brendan was talking about, the personal thing, but mixed with us writing together and and it becoming a bigger song than it started as. Maybe let me start together? Right? Yeah? I wanted to and this is my favorite lyrics. Sorry no, but I can't. We're gonna do that. I can't do the solo? And would you would you say that you care that you give extra emphasis or extra care to the vocal line that brings in the solo? Is that a thing like the last vocal line? Right? Before the solo happens. Yeah, Yeah, because you're sort of like, uh, you've got to set it up. Yeah, because it's uh, I think that's cool. I like to do that live, Like it's kind of it's kind of like that old school thing, like you know, it's come back home again to get his laundry done. Look out, look out, now go go you know you know how that used to do that? Or you know I can play? Is that Stevie Wonder my favorite? Go Blue Caps? Go go say the name of the band. Can you imagine like Bober Plancard go, let's up and goes. Thanks to Jack White, Brendan Benson, and the rest of the Rack and Tours for hanging out and playing with us, and a special thanks to engineers this episode two, Bill Skibby and Detroit and Leonardo Beccafici aka Fresco in Italy. On the next episode, Rick talks with Tyler the creator about his new album Igor. Broken Record is produced with help from Jason Gambrell and Milo Bell for pushkin in the streets is it Broken Record podcast dot com for playlists from every episode and follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record. Our theme music is by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond,