Jack White: New Band, New Studio

Garage-rock’s new power couple? Jack White and the Kills’ Alison Mosshart.


Last night, the two indie-rock titans debuted their new band the Dead Weather at the grand opening of White’s Third Man Studio in Nashville. (His “new bear cave,” as he described it.)

The Sound: Psychedelic garage-rock, with heavily distorted guitar-grind from Dean Fertita (the Raconteurs, Queens of the Stone Age), bash-and-crash drumming from Black, and bluesy funk basslines from Jack Lawrence (the Raconteurs, the Greenhornes), topped by Mosshart’s raw, pack-of-Menthols growl.

The Look: Biker chic — black leather jackets, black jeans, artfully greasy hair.

The Crowd: 200 invited guests, including Meg White, Sheryl Crow and Martina McBride, as well as White’s wife Karen Elson and fellow Racounteur Brendan Benson. And Blender, of course.

The Encore: Dylan’s “New Pony,” from 1978’s Street Legal

The Gift: A limited-edition 7-inch vinyl copy of the Dead Weather's debut single "Hang You From The Heavens" (b/w a stealth cover of Gary Numan's "Are Friends Electric?"). Each sleeve was hand-painted by the band with its own unique design, and each one had a different photo-booth strip of the band inside.

The Idea: Third Man will be a vinyl-centric music factory. “This is the first band to come out of this studio,” White says proudly of the place, which he designed himself around a black and yellow motif. “We can record here, take our band photos here, develop them in the dark room, take our music across the street [to United Record Pressing] to have it pressed, and within three weeks, we’ll have 1000 copies.”

The Album: Horehound, due in June. Meanwhile, the first single is up on iTunes, and streaming on the band’s site, thedeadweather.com.

Horehound Tracklist:

1.     Hang You From the Heavens
2.     I Cut Like a Buffalo
3.     So Far From Your Weapon
4.     Treat Me Like Your Mother
5.     Rocking Horse
6.     New Pony
7.     Bone House
8.     Three Birds
9.     No Hassle Night
10.   Will There Be Enough Water?