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March 19, 2011

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South by Southwest is about music, lots and lots of it: 2,000-plus bands over six days.

But partly as a result of there being so much music, the festival is also about attention-getting stunts: bands playing up to a dozen gigs in unusual spaces, announcing last-minute performances on Twitter, teasing crowds with “TBA’s” on schedules.

This year Jack White, formerly of the White Stripes, has one of the

better stunts, a yellow and black truck representing his Nashville-based record label and studio, Third Man.

Docked at various spots throughout Austin this week, the truck will sell some of Third Man’s lovingly produced products, much of it in elaborately designed limited editions, like the “tricolor” records pressed on a symmetrical pattern of white, yellow and black vinyl. After South by Southwest, the truck will continue on a national tour.

But the really big stunt was that for its debut in a downtown parking lot on Wednesday morning, Mr. White himself was hiding out in the truck. As a crew dressed in bumblebee colors buzzed around the vehicle — Mr. White himself was all in Johnny Cash black save for his scuffed tan boots — he stepped outside to briefly perform for a crowd of about 300 fans, journalists and social-media documenters.

Introduced as “Third Man Records recording artist Jack White,” he played Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” (“a Texas song,” he called it) and the White Stripes’ “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground.” Less than six minutes later he was back inside the truck.

Shortly before his performance, he gave me a brief tour of the vehicle, showing off the Third Man albums and 45’s that lined the back in specially designed racks. And with a sound system playing Chuck Berry and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins overhead, he chatted about South by Southwest and why digital music will never have the romance of a tangible record. Here are some excerpts from that conversation.

How long have you been on the road with this?

This is our maiden voyage. The idea was, there are a couple clubs across the street from Third Man’s headquarters in Nashville, and I thought, those guys stand in line for shows for a couple hours sometimes — we should set up a table some time and sell records over there, play music for them while they’re in line. And if we do that, we can do it other places too. What if we do that on a truck?

We’re selling almost our whole catalog. These carts are designed to slide right into the wall; they don’t rattle when you’re driving. It’s temperature controlled so we can leave it overnight right here. So if it’s 100 degrees, the vinyl is not going to melt.

And you’re not worried about people throwing a brick through the window and walking out with some Wanda Jackson records?

I’m from Detroit — of course I’m worried about that! [Laughs.] People keep talking about the hood ornament. But that’s O.K.; I think sometimes when you see something really beautiful you might not scratch it as much.

What’s your feeling about digital music generally? Was it a mistake altogether, or is it a matter of convenience?

I don’t think it’s a mistake. I think it’s just overused for its convenience. It’s sort of like, isn’t it sad when families take their kids to McDonald’s every day? But you can’t really blame them because it’s easy and it’s cheap, and it’s over within two seconds.

The reason the music industry is the way it is, is because of technology. I firmly believe in that. And that goes several different ways: the style of how it’s recorded, and how it’s promoted digitally. It’s what’s tearing it apart. There’s no doubt about it.

When do people start saying that, in general, the sound of music started to degrade? It was the 1980s. That was the advent of digital technology in recording studios: gated reverb, really plastic-sounding stuff. And then you have these bursts of reality, like roots music in country, or punk rock will come back every 10 years, or garage rock. And people say, “Oh yeah, that’s right, that’s how things really sound.” And then we sort of forget about it, and then 10 years later it comes back again.

You played South by Southwest in the early days of the White Stripes. Was your intention then to get seen by the business, to get signed?

It’s a funny story. I swore never to play South by Southwest coming out as a teenager. But we got offered $3,000 to play a party, in 2000 or 2001. And we said, we’ve got to do it. That was the most money we’d had ever heard of in our lives. About a week before we got down they said, “Oh, you also have to play the festival because it’s illegal for us to have you if you’re not part of the festival.” So we had to do it. But it ended up being really good timing for the band. It really broke the band in a bigger level. So it was like, O.K., maybe I shouldn’t have been so hard about it.

When you announced that the White Stripes were officially breaking up, you said, “The White Stripes do not belong to Jack and Meg anymore. The White Stripes belong to you now, and you can do with it whatever you want.” What did you mean by that?

People say, “Why didn’t you do this? Why didn’t you do that?” Or, “Don’t you owe something to somebody, or to yourselves?” All those questions.

That line was the idea of explaining to them that at a certain point as an artist, you paint your painting, you do your sculpture or your music, and you release it into the world. You don’t own it anymore. You have no control over it. You put it out there to share with other people. You can only hope for the best.

Were you thinking literally, that people would take White Stripes tracks, remix them and say, “O.K., they said it doesn’t belong to them anymore.”

It was a side comment in a funny way about the way things are done now with that. But I meant in a more romantic sense.

Other than digital music, one of the big buzzwords here is social media. What’s your feeling about all of that?

It’s got its place. Checking your Facebook 15 times a day seems pretty boring to me. But today we’re having Seasick Steve perform on the side of the truck, and we’re going to announce it on Twitter 20 minutes before it happens.

That’s a great use of that tool. But what’s good about it is that people are actually going to show up and be present with their physical bodies, with other human beings, and make contact. And that has romance to it. Texting to people and never speaking face to face has no romance to it.

What’s the usual process for making a Third Man 45? Do you bang it out in an afternoon, or take more time?

Take Pokey LaFarge. I heard this guy on Thanksgiving, playing his song “Sweet Potato Blues.” I loved his voice, so I looked him up the next day and said, “Do you ever come through Nashville? Can we do a single together?” So they came, and I got some other guys come in: a fluegelhorn, a clarinet, things they hadn’t had in the mix before. We took photos the next day and they left town. This record was mixed a month and a half ago and now it’s for sale today.

We have this new slogan here, “TCD,” which are the three formats we release music on: tangible, collectible and digital. Every release we’ve put out — we’re on our 95th now in two years — we do a collectible version, sometimes 100 copies, 10 copies, 1,000 copies.

Sounds expensive. Do you make any money on it?

No, but it’s part of that idea of tangible, collectible things. I like the idea that if you were a record collector, you could never collect every Third Man record, no matter how long you tried. There’s so many, and they’re strangely put out. We release them in different towns, sneak them into racks, do scavenger hunts.

All these things people might think are novelties or gimmicks, but I don’t care. Anything to get anyone excited about music you can hold in your hand is worth it. This truck alone, you might say, “Oh, what a gimmick.” But at the same time I hope there’s a teenager in that line who is really excited about music because of this, and he might buy a record today might lead him down different path. Pokey LaFarge could lead him to Charlie Poole or Jelly Roll Morton. That’s really important.

If we can do it in YouTube and we can do it in the digital world, learning about new things, then we can do it with records too, and still keep it romantic.

Thanks for sharing that interview. I bet Jack White is sick to death of talking about the White Stripes

Jack and Jay Z have done a tune together, it will be very interesting to hear what it sounds like. I hope theyve put a different spin on it and not made it like a Jay Z and Linkin Park thing.