A little Help Us Stranger can cure what ails ya

Photo courtesy of Shane Devon

Bechet could not dream of having a public worthier of his genius than the dark-faced woman in the white apron who appears from time to time at a little door behind the platform. She's probably the cook, a stout woman in her 40s with a tired face but big, avid eyes. With her hands resting flat on her stomach, she leans toward the music with a religious ardor. Gradually, her worn face is transfigured, her body moves to a dance rhythm; she dances while standing still, and peace and joy have descended on her. 
She has cares, and she's had troubles, but she forgets... 

Without a past or future she is completely happy: the music justifies her difficult life, and the world is justified for her.

Those are the words of Simone de Beauvoir describing a performance by Jazz clarinetist Sidney Bechet, as quoted by Joel Dinerstein in his book, The Origins of Cool in Postwar America. I identify intensely with that woman and her response to Bechet's playing, and I hope that people reading this are able to understand it, too. Because that's what music can do, and has so often done for me.

I don't know about you, but life in Icky Trump-era America is wringing me out, leaving me exhausted and depressed and cynically demoralized.  Throw some family issues on top of that and I just find it so hard to summon up joy and excitement over anything anymore. Last fall's announcement of a new record from the Raconteurs should've, a few years ago would've, had me bouncing off the walls and posting countdowns on Facebook.  But it didn't and the fact that it didn't made me even more sad.  I know, first world problems...
 
But thank God or god or whatever's above, Help Us Stranger came out on Friday and it's exactly the medicine I needed.  I downloaded it from Amazon at 6:00am so I could listen in the car on the way to work and my commute was filled with tears, laughter, and much beating on the steering wheel in time with the drums.  First time I've ever wished for more traffic to slow down the drive. 

I'm going to insert here the same disclaimer from an early post I wrote about Jack White's last album, Boarding House Reach:  "I am not a critic and this is not a review. I am a fan. As such, I can sometimes be critical, but I am not a critic. Because my attachment to the music I love springs from emotional, visceral responses, I don't write "reviews". I can make objective judgements, but for the most part my descriptions of new music are purely an expression of my impressions, feelings, and thoughts."  So let's press on with the impressions, shall we?

Right off the bat, I have to say that the Raconteurs did the same thing with this album that Jack did with Boarding House Reach-- They chose the least interesting songs on the record to release as singles.  Not one of those songs is bad, let me clarify that, they're all hook-laden ear-worms that I listened to on repeat for days. Sunday Driver has nifty guitar squawls and boisterous vocals from Jack White. Now That You're Gone is Brendan Benson's slow-burning, easy-to-sing-along-with exploration of romantic desertion.  Help Me Stranger opens with solo vocals from Jack Lawrence that've been equalizer-tweaked to sound like an old cowboy song, before launching into a bouncy duet between Jack and Brendan.  And their cover of Donovan's Hey Gyp is just plain fun, with Brendan's harmonica and Patrick Keeler's propulsive drums. 

And yet... Sunday Driver kept reverberating in my brain like a mash-up of Hold Up and Five On The Five from Consolers of the Lonely.  Help Me Stranger and Hey Gyp reminded me of the back and forth I love from Level, off of Broken Boy Soldiers. And Now That You're Gone could've slid right into Consolers as if it'd been written 11 years ago.  As I listened to these songs over and over, I began to wonder, even worry a bit, if the band was going to give us anything new, or just essentially re-hashes of what they'd done before.  That would've been enough for a lot of fans, I think, especially the ones that were aghast and turned off by Jack's experimentation with Boarding House Reach. I could easily imagine him going back to basics, as it were, in an attempt to appease and win back some of those fans. Though I hoped to hell he wouldn't. It didn't seem in his wheelhouse to do something so... expected. 

And that's one of the main things I love about him-- He does what's unexpected.  The stuff that's likely to appeal to the masses are generally not the songs that will end up on my list of favorites.  I want stuff that surprises me, that makes me scratch my head and wonder what the heck? at the same time that I'm grinning in amazement.  So I was thrilled when, just like BHR, the songs on Help Us Stranger that I had not yet heard were the ones that blew the top of my head off as I listened to the full album for the first time.
 
The only song on the record that gives me any sort of pause is the one that leads it off, Bored and Razed.  Brendan Benson himself nailed my issue with it in an interview with Zan Rowe of Double J when he said he was conflicted about his part because he felt his entrance into the song was weak.  Jack's lyrics are so biting and manic and full of word-play ("Rolling a juke joint box in the corner") that they emphasize that weakness, they completely overpower Brendan's fluffy lines about missing a girl. The Racs have made disparate lyrics work before, as in Consoler of the Lonely, but to my ears this song should be more Salute Your Solution than Consoler.  That aside, the rollicking musical pace sets a great tone for what's to come.

Lyrically, pseudo-title track Help Me Stranger is like a comforting, reassuring arm around the shoulder compared to some of the other tunes on the album. This record is full bitterness, agitation, loneliness, and bewilderment.  So that first line in Help Me, "If you call me I'll come running/And you can call me anytime", is the one to come back to when lines in other songs hit too close to home. 

Brendan and Jack each have a pair of subdued, pensive tracks on the album, starting with Brendan's Only Child.  "Only child, the prodigal son/Has come back home again to get his laundry done." It's a lovely and yearning, softly acoustic song... until a buzzing synthesizer slides into the bridge to give it a jarring electronic tone that you might think would be completely out of place but instead elevates the song into something... unexpected.  There we go!  And then it's back to loveliness with a short finishing interlude of drums and piano.

And then comes Don't Bother Me. I immediately sat up in the car and began grinning like a loon.  Now this was more like it!  It's angry and biting and rampaging and seems to speak directly to exactly that thing that's been a weight on all our lives for the last two years. 

The way you look in the mirror
You're your biggest admirer
All your clicking and swiping
All your groping and griping

In another time, it'd just be directed to annoying narcissistic assholes in general, but right now, it's a raging fuck you to snarl along and head-bang with in cathartic glee.  The only problem with this song is that, even when turned up to full volume, it's not loud enough.

The opening Oooohs and piano of Shine The Light On Me sound more Queen than Raconteurs and coming on the tail of Don't Bother Me it made my head spin a little bit.  And then Jack comes in with his most plaintive voice, singing of trying to understand the frustrating mysteries of love and life.  "But we don't need to know why the flowers grow/Let's just be happy they can".  This was the moment when my eyes filled with tears while still grinning ear to ear.  By this point it was clear that this album was not going to be a repeat of anything, that it was going to be full of new and different.  And I got so excited.
   
In a time when it feels like there's a concerted effort being made to diminish the stigma of depression, Brendan's Somedays (I Don't Feel Like Trying) could easily become a rallying cry for those who suffer.  It's so tear-jerkingly relateable, and yet ends with such determined strength.  As a Raconteurs song, it's got a familiar feel, and yet has brand new guitar tones and, like Shine The Light, goes in a lyrical direction the band has not explored before. There's no metaphor or pop cleverness here, instead it's direct and candid and moving. 

And then come Hey Gyp, Sunday Driver, and Now That You're Gone, all of which I'd come to know so well over the last handful of months.  Of the original two singles, I initially preferred the music of Jack's Sunday Driver and the lyrics of Brendan's Now That You're Gone. That took me aback a bit, as Jack's lyrics were what got me into him in the first place, and the lyrics on Brendan's solo records have never grabbed me much at all. And this was a surprise through the whole album--  Jack's contributions to Help Us Stranger excite the hell out of me, the unusual sounds and instruments that seem to be carry-overs from the experimentation of Boarding House Reach, the variety of his vocal deliveries from soft to soaring to spitting, the wit and word-play I've always loved.  But Brendan steps out of from behind the glare of Jack's shadow and holds his own in a way that he did not on the first two Raconteurs albums.  That alone makes me listen to this album carefully, to hear him in a way that I haven't before.

Live A Lie is two minutes, twenty seconds of the sort of bouncy pop-punk I rocked out to in high school, and would be a perfect cover song for one of my favorite new bands, Radkey.  It's going to be a blast to hear live.  And What's Yours Is Mine almost sounds as if it's the Raconteurs covering the Dead Weather-- I can easily hear Alison Mosshart in my head, sparring with Jack on Brendan's parts.  This song could have come straight off the Dead Weather's Sea of Cowards, and the fact that the Racs did it instead is completely quirky and yet even more effective. 

This band knows how to end an album dramatically, first with Blue Veins on Broken Boy Soldiers and then Carolina Drama on Consolers of the Lonely.  They do it again with Thoughts and Prayers, which takes its wandering time, as if the painful ideas Jack sings so softly about are exploring an old house full of rooms of different kinds of music, trying to find bits and pieces to accompany them on their journey. There's duetting acoustic guitars, mandolin, fiddle, synthesizer and, most affecting, a B-bender guitar, Jack's latest musical toy.  It's a gorgeous mish-mash of a song that grabs my heart and mind in a velvet-gloved iron grip.

I used to look up at the sky
Up at the beautiful blue sky
But now the earth has turned to grey
There's got to be a better way
To contact God and hear her say
There are reasons why it is this way

And the theme of that song speaks to an overriding element of this album-- It reflects the maturity of a band 11 years older than when they last recorded together.  The music is more confident, but the lyrics are lonelier and more contemplative, even searching.  The members of the band are close to middle age and as a middle aged fan, it makes these songs speak to me in a way the last two albums didn't.  Not better, just different.  They're more reflective of where I'm at in my own life. 


In a few interviews leading up to the release, Jack confessed to feeling a Lennon-McCartney vibe in his and Brendan's song-writing together.  As is so often the case with him, this was a hint leading to a bit of hilarious humor and brilliant trickery-- Hidden behind its lenticular version of the regular album cover, the Vault subscription copy of Help Us Stranger contains an easter egg of a Beatles "Butcher Cover" parody (pictured at the top of the post).  Of course, Brendan is Lennon and Jack is McCartney.  When news of this popped up on social media within hours of people receiving the record on Friday, I began giggling at my desk at work and could not stop.  I was just so goddamned happy, and grateful to be happy.  I should've known that I can always count on Jack (and Brendan, LJ, and Patrick) to give me what I needed.

Icky Trump is not an Intimate Secretary

Image via Third Man Records

 I've been trying to write this post for months. I started it in the aftermath of the white supremacist march in Charlottesville and Trump's comments about that event, and have re-started it a handful of times since then. There's almost too much to say, there's too much opportunity for digression and maybe the main point hasn't been firm enough in my mind. This introduction is a digression in itself. But after having a bit of an existential crisis this weekend that probably made some of my friends think I was going off the deep end, I'm giving it another go. 

This post is not about Donald Trump. If you want to read about him, you've got your choice of hundreds of articles in a multitude of media sources, not to mention his own shit-show of a Twitter feed. I'm not going to waste my words on him. No, this post is a reaction to Donald Trump and the effect he's had on many of our psyches.  Or at least on my own psyche. Because I don't know about you, but I've been so much angrier than usual for the last year and a half. A fair amount has been written about "Trump Fatigue Syndrome" (each of those three words links to a different article) and I believe the stress of it is real.

Image from the Augusta Chronicle, via the Denver Post

Added to the regular stresses of things like work, commuting, paying bills, dealing with our own health issues and those of family members, and, in my case, a hereditary irascibility, TFS ain't no joke. It's something to take seriously. Because it can turn you into someone you don't want to be, someone who is angry all of the time, and/or depressed all of the time, and/or who withdraws into avoidance.  It can lead to combativeness.  It can lead to cynicism.  

But the anger and frustration in response to what's happening these days is justified. And anger can be productive. Professional athletes talk about using anger to push themselves, to give them an edge over their competitors. But is that wise in day-to-day interactions, or in the realm of politics? When you have a bunch of people voicing their anger together, in a crowd or on social media, it begins to breed the sort of negativity that can so easily turn to exactly what we're seeing too much of in the world these days-- combativeness. We have so much to battle against these days-- Racism, classism, and other bigotries, a patriarchy that feels it's under threat, and all the effects of living in a kakistocracy that embraces willful ignorance.  But do we want to battle effectively, or do we want to live in a combat zone?  It's important to choose how anger is channeled, because there's a distinct difference between rage and outrage.

Rage is ugly, it's destructive, it breeds hatred and, when impotent, turns into cynicism.  But outrage says "No, this is wrong. This must change".  Rage accomplishes nothing. It amplifies and destroys and leaves a metaphorical scorched earth in its wake. Outrage, on the other hand, can be the impetus for productive action, for activism and the sort of destruction that leads to positive change.

In the week following Charlottesville, one of the most helpful things I came across were these words from Van Jones in an interview at NPR--

"People say, 'Oh Van, when you go out there and talk to those Trump people, does it change any of their minds?' That's not my job. I'm not trying to convince Trump people to be better people. I'm trying to prevent the Trump era from making me a worse person. I do not want to become somebody who is so hard-hearted that I can only see the worst in my opponent. Dr. King said you should never let a man drive you so low as to hate him."

That's it, right there. We can give vent to rage and hatred for the people we view as our opponents in this situation that more and more is coming to feel like a war. Or we can be outraged and battle for change without losing sight of our own moral compass.  For anyone feeling the way I've been feeling, I highly recommend learning more about Van Jones and the Love Army.

Another thing that helped me was a bit unexpected and I've been meaning to get back to it after the initial discovery.  Way back in May 2017, I joined the hosts of the Third Men podcast to talk about the use of Masonic references in the Raconteurs song, Intimate Secretary, which was released back in 2006.  I'd seen mention of those references at one of the Jack White message boards, but for the podcast discussion I did some actual research and what I found was both compelling and startlingly timely. Here are the lyrics, along with some of my notes about the words and possible meanings--

I've got a rabbit, it likes to hop 
I've got a girl and she likes to shop 
The other foot looks like it won't drop [things won’t be so bad after all]
I had an uncle and he got shot [oops, maybe they will]

Is this greeting the type that's meant for me? [Masonic ceremonial hand-shake &/or greeting]
Are you part of this kakistocracy? [government by the least qualified]

This ringing in my ears won't stop [stress and fatigue from shit show going on in the world today]
I've got a red Japanese tea-pot 
I've got a pen but I lost the top 
I've got so many things you haven't got [but do they really amount to anything?]

A fellow's craft is just not for sharing 
He's not an intimate secretary! [he's not qualified to be one, doesn’t understand principles of reason, love, faith, duty, etc]

I've got a rabbit it likes to hop 
I've got a girl and she likes to shop 
The other foot looks like it won't drop 
I had an uncle but he got shot 

Venerable obscurist malarkey [general stereotypical perception of Masonry as hallowed mysterious bullshit?]
A doulocracy ecclesiarchy [government of slaves defining heresy?]
A fellow's craft is just not for sharing 
He's not an intimate secretary! 

The exarchy's inspector inquisitor 
I dare mock an illustrious master 
Are you part of this kakistocracy? 
Is this greeting the type that's meant for me? [do I have the qualities of an Intimate Secretary?]
 
What I knew:  Jack's apparently got a deep connection to the Masonic Temple in Detroit-- He attended Cass Technical High School right down the street, his mother worked there as an usher, and the Gold Dollar and Magic Stick venues are only a few blocks away.  He's performed in both theaters in the Temple, and paid off their back taxes a few years ago. Wouldn't surprise me at all if his father or other family members were/are Masons.  And so Intimate Secretary is laced with references to titles of various degrees of study in Masonry-- Fellowcraft ("a fellow's craft"), Intimate Secretary (obviously), Inspector Inquisitor, and Illustrious Master.

From Freemasonrywatch.org

What I learned:  The pages and pages I read the on the internet were like reliving my 20s and early 30s, when I was deep into philosophy and classic literature, devouring writings by and about Thoreau and the Transcendentalists, Goethe, Kant, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and the Stoics. The beliefs of the Freemasons are built on the same sort of weird mix of transcendentalism, esoterica, and reason. But underneath the mystery and esoterica, under the stuff that's bred so many jokes and conspiracy theories, lie a framework of symbols and allegories with the specific purpose of developing a spiritual and moral compass.

Whether you take the mysteries surrounding the organization seriously or consider it a bunch of Illuminati hoo-ha, their message is one this world needs right now. The degree of Intimate Secretary, in particular, is strikingly relevant.  A few pertinent excerpts from the description of it at the Freemason Information website--

You are especially taught in this Degree to be zealous and faithful; to be disinterested [as in, minding your own business] and benevolent; and to act the peace-maker, in case of dissensions, disputes, and quarrels among the brethren...

The generous man cannot but regret to see dissensions and disputes among his brethren. Only the base and ungenerous delight in discord. It is the poorest occupation of humanity to labor to make men think worse of each other, as the press, and too commonly the pulpit, changing places with the hustings and the tribune, do. The duty of the Mason is to endeavor to make man think better of his neighbor; to quiet, instead of aggravating difficulties; to bring together those who are severed or estranged; to keep friends from becoming foes, and to persuade foes to become friends. To do this, he must needs control his own passions, and be not rash and hasty, nor swift to take offence, nor easy to be angered. 

For anger is a professed enemy to counsel. It is a direct storm, in which no man can be heard to speak or call from without; for if you counsel gently, you are disregarded; if you urge it and be vehement, you provoke it more. It is neither manly nor ingenuous. It makes marriage to be a necessary and unavoidable trouble; friendships and societies and familiarities, to be intolerable. It multiplies the evils of drunkenness, and makes the levities of wine to run into madness. It makes innocent jesting to be the beginning of tragedies. It terns friendship into hatred; it makes a man lose himself, and his reason and his argument, in disputation. It turns the desires of knowledge into an itch of wrangling. It adds insolency to power. It turns justice into cruelty, and judgment into oppression. It changes discipline into tediousness and hatred of liberal institution. It makes a prosperous man to be envied, and the unfortunate to be unpitied. 

 See, therefore, that first controlling your own temper, and governing your own passions, you fit yourself to keep peace and harmony among other men, and especially the brethren. Above all remember that Masonry is the realm of peace, and that “among Masons there must be no dissension, but only that noble emulation, which can best work and best agree.” Wherever there is strife and hatred among the brethren, there is no Masonry; for Masonry is Peace, and Brotherly Love, and Concord. 

Icky Trump is definitely not an Intimate Secretary. (If you agree, maybe go buy a t-shirt to show your feelings?) 

Finally, a Facebook friend posted this quote a while back that really resonated with me--

Found via Pinterest, I'd credit the image creator if I could.

I think I'm going to print that and tape it to my bathroom mirror. And I'm also going to bookmark a few pages of Masonic texts and refer to them frequently, when I need to bolster my own character and get back on track.  Like Van Jones, I don't want feelings of rage over what's happening to bring me down to the level of Trump and his ilk.  

I want to be an outraged Intimate Secretary.


 

Christmas road-trip, Md to Fla 2015: Coming back

Started the drive home with the Danger episode of Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio, then set the flashdrive back to shuffle. Ended up with a great assortment of tunes along the way, so this road-trip tale is gonna be as much music as babbling...

And of course I found the historic Ocala cemetery when passing through to get from route 75 to 301. Of course I did. That’s what I do, I find cemeteries. Driving along, I glance down a side street and, boom, I see headstones a couple blocks away. This was an interesting one, too, decrepit and falling apart, but relatively well groomed. Wandered around it accompanied by songs blasting from an oldies radio station playing all the way across a field on the other side the road at what looked like a lumberyard. Since I’d not brought my camera on this trip, I had to take photos with my tablet, first time I’ve attempted that. The shots came out tolerably well, despite being barely able to see what I was shooting because of glare on the screen. Made them somewhat serendipitous.  Though I always feel that cemetery photos should be black and white, so after some internal debate I ended up editing them before uploading.

A little ways beyond the sprawling horse farms north of Ocala, I passed both The Orange Shop and a turnoff to the site of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park. Decided a few miles further on that those were stops I had to make, so I whipped a quick'n'vicious U-turn and headed back to check out both. 


 
What better souvenir of Florida than fresh-squeezed-on-site orange juice? And The Orange Shop itself looked to have been around way back when Hank Williams recorded what may've been his only political song-- 


 
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ homestead was definitely worth the prolonged stop. You have to squint a bit to block out the highway you’ve just turned off of, and the two-lane blacktop leading back to the park, and the park and boat ramp next to the homestead, in order to get a feel for the wilderness Rawlings moved to in 1928. Just inside the old gate at the entrance is a sign that helps. It reads “It is necessary to leave the impersonal highway, to step inside the rusty gate and close it behind. One is now inside the orange grove, out of one world and in the mysterious heart of another. And after long years of spiritual homelessness, of nostalgia, here is that mystic loveliness of childhood. Here is home.” And down the path is exactly what she describes, as you come around a slight curve into an opening that was once her orange grove. There are only a few more than a dozen trees now, but enough to give a feeling of what it was like, what with the old barn and big glossy chickens strutting around and roosting in the low branches of the orange trees. And Rawlings’ house beyond, maintained by staffers in period clothing. It wasn’t open this day, but I was able to walk around and peek in the windows, and wander the short trail through what’s left of the wilderness. I wondered as I walked what she meant by “here is home”. Literally, her home? Or a spiritual home that she felt all who entered the place would arrive at? The house appeared cozy enough, but the woods… not so much. They’re compelling, though, and certainly mysterious. The alien-ness of hanging mosses, strangling figs, palms that grow like ferns, and cypress knees creates a definite enchantment. But there’s also something forbidding in their mystery, in the way sandy soil gives way to springy marshiness, and then to swamp. What threats are hidden behind the fans of palm and in those clumps of Spanish moss? In my childhood, I saw the film of Rawlings’ book The Yearling, which makes the place seem innocent enough, despite the difficulty of life there. But I also saw Frogs and had nightmares about Spanish moss, so there you go. 

As I was coming back through the grove from the trail through the woods, the gentleman working there invited me to pick a few oranges to take with me. Take my word for it, the taste of historically significant oranges has a noticeable edge over anything you'll get in the grocery store. 

Was a bit jarring to have this come up immediately when I turned the key in the ignition, but the two that followed brought me back to a more appropriate mood.







The rest of the way up 301 to route 10 to the Jacksonville beltway and then onto 95 was swift despite construction squashing three lanes worth of traffic into two. The shuffling stereo got caught in a blue mood… 






 
But somewhere in the midst of Georgia, it brought up an appropriate tune (despite the fact that 95 runs by Savannah rather than Atlanta)- 


 
And then, as twilight ended, up came Blind Willie Johnson and some gospel… 





As I passed the exit for Effingham (which made me chuckle because I once passed another Effingham in another state and the same lame joke crossed my mind then), it was back to some roadtrip-appropriate hard stuff… 



Got off at an exit with three motels only to find that none of them had any available rooms. Decided to cross over the highway to see if there were more options on the other side, but what I thought was a road to somewhere suddenly turned into an exit that dumped me back onto 95 heading southbound, which was not what I wanted. When you’re hauling ass along a dark highway trying to get to the next exit to get back in the right direction, you could do a lot worse than My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult… 



That next exit back was for a town called Coosawhatchie. Instead of looping across the overpass to get back on the highway going north, I decided I had to see what Coosawhatchie looked like, even in the dark, so I headed in the direction the sign pointed. Either it wasn’t much of a town or I missed a turnoff to it, but I suddenly realized the dark road I was heading along was running parallel to the highway going north. Sure enough, it came back up to the previous exit where I’d had no luck getting a room. So I got back on 95 going in the right direction and high-tailed it some more to an exit with more hotel options, where it took three stops to finally get one of apparently the last five rooms around.

A room that, even after turning on the air conditioner, had a decidedly muggy, clammy feel to it. Floor, sheets, pillows, even my clothes the next morning felt ever so slightly damp. Plus, no wi-fi. Tossed all night, and did not sleep late the next morning. Got out of damp Dodge as quick as I could, with the Captain and Seu Jorge setting the tone for the morning. 





Stopped two exits down for breakfast at the Olde House Café, because “Country cookin’ makes you good lookin’”. We’ll see. 

Made serious time through the rest of S.C. and into N.C. thanks to another woman driving a red car. Can’t recall who initially caught up with whom, but we leap-frogged a few times, I ended up following her for a while, then got in front of her and maintained the lead for a long time. Then we got caught behind a slow pickup truck. When I was finally able to whip around and get ahead of him, I looked back and saw her roll down her window and throw a gesture of some sort at him as she passed. After that, it wasn’t so much fun having her follow me, so I put a little more pressure on the gas pedal and took it up to a speed she wasn’t as comfortable at. Though every now and again, when I’d get caught behind slower cars, I’d look back and see a red car coming around the side of the cars way back behind, as if she were trying to catch up. But once I was in the clear again, I’d step down and lose sight of her again. And then suddenly I didn’t see her no mo’.  Which was a bit of a relief, but also left me feeling a little bit lonely. Just a very little bit, though.

Along the way, just shy of Florence, I noticed that all the trees that weren’t pine were no longer covered with either Spanish moss or leaves. Though still down south, that made me suddenly feel like I was already back up north. 

Made a stop in Smithfield, NC to visit the Ava Gardner Museum. Don't  have much profound to say about her other than that what I learned at the museum put her right up there with Elizabeth Taylor in the list of women I admire.  Stunningly gorgeous, yet apparently a strong, down-to-earth broad through and through. Definitely need to see more of her films.

The skies began pouring down a monsoon rain as I pulled onto the highway from Smithfield. Obligingly, the stereo shuffled up an appropriate tune for what was ahead, again from Hank.



Because the rain just would not let up.  Other cars on the road became just pairs of barely visible red lights, until I came right up on them and got a glimpse of a vaguely car-shaped mass ahead or next to me.  I passed so many lakes alongside the highway that would have been fields on any other day, to the point that I was less concerned about having an accident with another car and more about coming upon a flood across the road. Especially when the stereo began shuffling up a string of damned fine driving tunes and I just could not speed up...







And this one, highly apropos to Ava Gardner's love of bullfighting and bullfighters...




Finally stopped for dinner somewhere in Virginia and came across this great quote in the most recent music issue of Oxford American, about why so much great music is made in Georgia: "Because of the humidity that surrounds us.  You lose your stinking mind and have to go crazy to remain sane!  Things are so backwards here. Frontwords is backwards. You know? One and one is two, but what's one?  Southern people are fucking crazy. And if you're not crazy, you're driven crazy. And if you don't have that crazy in you, you're not any good." 


It ain't the humidity, it's all that scratchy pine and swampy water, I know it is.

And the second truism of the road is... a rainy highway is a rainy highway is a rainy highway.  Fortunately, the car stereo was yet again in tune with the drive and shuffled up a couple different versions of this one over the last hundred or so miles home...







Because if you're not in tune with your car, you just can't have a good road trip.

A White weekend: Five year anniversary

Wish me a happy anniversary, it's been five years since my first White weekend. Between that and a bunch of recent shows, this be-log's been a little inundated by Jack White the last couple of days (weeks, months, whatever).  Might need to take a break and try to write about other things for a while, even I'm beginning to need a little relief from the addiction (just a very little).  But before I do that, I'm gonna reminisce over how it all began and then draw a parallel.  

So it's been five years since my epiphany but, really, it's been longer than that since I first began trying to get into Jack's music.  I heard of the White Stripes on the message board for another band I was into at the time, where people were discussing the Stripes' tour of Canada for Icky Thump.  The crazy b-shows they were playing struck my fancy and I began paying attention to conversation about the band.  But I didn't go looking for their music, not yet.  I was just fascinated by the idea of what they were doing up there in Canada and the whole nothing but drums'n'guitar, brother'n'sister thing.  It wasn't until an October night in Baltimore that I heard their music. 

Some friends and I were in B'more for the annual Fells Point Festival, one of the largest, longest-running festivals on the east coast.  For lunch, we escaped the crowds by ducking into the restaurant upstairs at Sláinte, where we ended up with an especially flirtatious waiter. Yeah, I know this seems like quite a digression, but this guy is The One Behind It All. He told us he was tending the bar downstairs that evening and that we should come back later to see him. How could three single women resist an invitation like that?  So we finished lunch and headed back out to wander the festival until evening.  

The bar was packed when we came back. And our buddy the waiter was now a very harried bartender, with people placing food orders in addition to drinks and no one from the restaurant upstairs bussing for him. There were stacks of plates and cutlery all over the floor behind the bar. He was pissed as hell about it and acting out his anger in an alarmingly maniacal manner.  He flirted up a storm with us again as he took our orders, then headed to the other end of the bar, cussing out loud and kicking plates along the way.  But we settled in and after a while he brought our drinks.  By that time, I'd been struck by the music playing in the bar and asked him who it was. He said it was the White Stripes.  Ok, I was finally hearing this band I'd heard so much about.  A few songs later, I was still digging the mix and when he waded through the debris of dishes down to our end of the bar, I asked him again "What's this song?"  Again, he said it was such-and-such song from such-and-such album by the Stripes.  Then he picked up a glass from behind the bar and, while looking me straight in the eye, threw it over his shoulder where it smashed into a pile of plates.  The dude was insane, but I was seriously excited about his choice in music. This went on and on, every single song I asked about was the White Stripes and he finally said that was all he was playing, just their six cds on rotation. I asked which of their records I should start with and he told me the later ones were best because Meg finally learned how to keep time (if I'd known more about the band at that point, I might've chastised him for dissing her. Meg was integral to the band whether she kept proper time or no.).  By that point we'd finished our drinks and realized he was keeping us hostage by not bringing our check, so I headed upstairs to find a manager and get us out of the line of flying glassware.  I hope to this day that I didn't get the guy in trouble, because I owe him a huge debt of gratitude, crazy as he was.

It was still a while before I picked up any of the band's records, though. Dunno what held me back.  And when I did finally get ahold of a copy of Icky Thump, I was held back again. The music was immediately appealing, and I was struck hard by Jack's lyrics.  Four songs on the album resonated with me especially-- 300mph Torrential Outpour Blues ("I'm getting hard on myself, sitting in my easy chair".  The simple profundity of that line was like a punch in the sternum. To this day, if you held a gun to my head and forced me to name a favorite White Stripes song, this would be it.), Little Cream Soda, Rag and Bone, and Martyr For My Love For You.  The word-play in all was so witty and clever and the sardonic angst expressed in them was something I related to strongly.  But then there was Jack's voice, so high-pitched and nasal and unpolished compared to singers like Chris Cornell and Maynard James Keenan, who I was heavily into at the time.  I just couldn't connect with it. 





 



For almost two years I kept coming back to Icky Thump, knowing there was something there that I should be into, but unable to make it click.  Finally my buddy Leo told me that if I was interested in Jack's music, I should check out one of his other bands that she'd seen at Lollapalooza a couple years before, the Raconteurs.  We just happened to be in a record store as she told me this, and that record store just happened to have a copy of the first Raconteurs record, Broken Boy Soldiers, on cd. So I bought it. But I didn't listen to it that day.  No, it wasn't until a week later, on a bright, clear, cold day at the end of January, when I was out driving the curvy backroads along the border of Maryland and West Virginia, that I popped that cd in and gave it a go.  Like Icky, the music struck me as appealing, but it was just that-- appealing. Not profound or astonishing.  Until Blue Veins came up.  

You know how sometimes things happen to you and you know that you will never, ever forget where you were at that moment?  I feel like I'll go to my grave still seeing that bright blue winter sky through the windshield of the car, that I'll always remember the exact spot along the road paralleling the Potomac River when Jack sang the final line of that song and the lightning bolt came down from heaven and I finally... got it.  The combination of intensity and delicacy in his voice in those final few words was exactly what I needed to hear and changed everything. 



I feel like I've learned a lot about Jack since then, and I don't mean personal, gossipy, trivia shit.  I mean about his art and his philosophy.  I've been accused of "verbosity and mind-numbing analysis of... mundane detail" but, for crying out loud, when something moves you in such a way why shouldn't you throw yourself into it deeply and express the things it makes you think and feel?  To that end, I'm going to explore a little parallel before wrapping this up.
 
Around this time last year, I decided to finally get into Elvis Presley's music and went down a similar rabbit-hole to the one I went down with Jack, though not quite to the same degree.  A few months later, Jack covered Elvis's Power of My Love as a b-side to the World's Fastest Record.  To my knowledge, it was the first time he'd covered an Elvis tune and I was struck by the synchronicity (or was my brain just looking for patterns?).  Since then, I and other folks have been seeing what seem to be little nods to Elvis from Jack. Some of the parallels are superficial, such as Jack's recent pompadour haircut. Others are more profound, as in the way both blurred genre lines to make their music appeal to a widely diverse audience and to introduce that audience to styles of music they might otherwise have remained ignorant of. And there's no denying that both have (had) the same intense magnetism, the ability to hold crowds large or small in the palm of their hand. But there's one way in which Jack will presumably always differ from Elvis and it's a vital difference-- Where Elvis allowed decisions to be taken out of his hands by his manager, Colonel Parker, Jack has from the very beginning exerted a strong effort to protect his music. Third Man Records, his headquarters in Nashville (record label, venue, storefront, distribution warehouse) was created for just that purpose, to allow him to maintain control of his art. He will always do what inspires him and just hope that people dig it. So far, his instincts, much like Elvis's in the very beginning, have proven pretty much infallible. It's a sad shame that Elvis didn't have Jack's confidence and strength of will. He seemed to crave love, acceptance, and fame too much, whereas Jack may want those things (it's obvious he gets intense fulfillment from connecting with an audience and his ambition is palpable) but doesn't seem to need them the way Elvis did.

I read this the other day in Greil Marcus's Mystery Train--

"...When an artist gives an all-encompassing Yes to his audience (and Elvis's Yes implicitly includes everyone, not just those who say Yes to him), there is nothing more he can tell his audience, nothing he can really do for them, except maybe throw them a kiss.

Only the man who says No is free, Melville once wrote. We don't expect such a stance in popular culture, and those who do might best be advised to take their trade somewhere else. But the refusal that lurks on the margins of the affirmation of American popular culture... is what gives the Yes of our culture its vitality and its kick. Elvis's Yes is the grandest of all, his presentation of mastery the grandest fantasy of freedom, but it is finally a counterfeit of freedom: it takes place in a world that for all its openness (Everybody Welcome!) is aesthetically closed, where nothing is left to be mastered, where there is only more to accept. For all its irresistible excitement and enthusiasm, this freedom is complacent, and so the music that it produces is empty of real emotion-- there is nothing this freedom could be for, nothing to be won or lost." 

For all the little signs over the past year that Jack seems to be channeling Elvis, the thing that will always set them apart (or that I assume and hope will always set them apart) is that Jack will never give that all-encompassing Yes to his audience. He constantly walks the line between Yes and a hint, or threat, if you will, of No. The "are you with me or against me?" question at so many shows on the Lazaretto tour, voiced so vehemently recently in Austin and New York, the immediate switch from semi-scripted arena shows in New York and Nashville to spontaneity in Ohio, and to lecture/complaint and willfulness at shows after that in the southwest, are indications that the No will always lurk on the edge of Jack's art. He will never succumb to the complacence that Elvis did. He can pay all the homage in the world with his cover of Power of My Love, his pompadour, playing the stages Elvis played... Hell, tell me that hair, shiny jacket and open collar, and even some of the motions of his recent performance on The Tonight Show don't call to mind the King's early days--

Update 3/14/2017: Thanks for taking this down, NBC. Y'all reading this are just going to have to take my word for it.
 
He could even hit the stage in a rhinestone-emblazoned white jumpsuit, but he will never become what Elvis became. He will always make demands of his audience. One of the best reviews I've read of one of his shows included this line that's become my signature at the two Jack-related message boards--  
 
"And the message is clear: if we want Jack White as our hero, he will entertain, but not pander. We have to accept all his flaws, whims, caprices and manias as a critical, sometimes uncomfortable, part of the contract."

In other words, he will sometimes tell us No. And, as Greil Marcus put it, that is exactly what gives his Yes such vitality and kick.  After five years of addiction to that vitality and kick, I still crave it as much as I did from the very beginning.  And, heaven help me, I hope to still be verbosely expressing mind-numbing analysis of every mundane detail of Jack's art five years from now.  



And is it just my brain looking for patterns again when I notice that this post about my 5 year anniversary is the 55th in which I've written about Jack?  It ain't 3s, but hmmmm... 
 

Confessions of a Jack White junkie, part 10: The Jack'n'Loretta Love Fest

Photo by David James Swanson

 It's been a while since I've anticipated a Jack White show as much as I anticipated this one. Things have changed, the Lazaretto tour hasn't had the innocent excitement of 2012's Blunderbuss tour, there's been so much angst involved that the old butterflies in the stomach feeling hasn't overtaken me leading up to shows the way it did then. That doesn't mean I haven't had the same excitement during shows, no sirree Bob, it's just made the in-between-show experience different. But this one... Once Loretta Lynn was announced as the opening act, I knew this one was going to be special and I had moments during the days leading up to it when I wanted to just clap my hands and bounce around like a little kid. 

Jack and Loretta's love affair began back in 2003. The story goes that he and Meg used to listen to her music in their van, driving around from gig to gig in the early days of the White Stripes. They dedicated their third album, White Blood Cells, to her. She responded by inviting them over for dinner and then opening for one of their shows at the Hammerstein Ballroom. When she mentioned working on a new album, Jack asked if she'd consider letting him produce it. The result was Van Lear Rose, which won two of the five Grammys it was nominated for, helped introduce Loretta to a younger generation, and  showed anyone paying attention that Jack had as formidable instincts as a producer as he does as a musician.



 And that love and respect was still on display years later when Jack participated in a Grammy event honoring Loretta--



So here they were, a whole decade later, about to share a stage again.  It was gonna be a love fest and there was no way I was gonna miss it.  So determined was I that, despite a very generous new friend inviting me to be her plus-one when she won the early entry lottery in the Third Man Records Vault, I spent more hours in line for this show than for any other I've been to yet and was damned glad I did.

Loretta's opening set was preceded by a local Nashville guitar player named William Tyler, who's as good an example as any other contemporary young musician of the variety of directions the music in Nashville is going these days.  His set was totally unexpected and refreshing, just him and a guitar and a small pedal board. No singing, no words. Just really fascinating sounds.  I don't know how it played out towards the back of the arena, but from the front it was mesmerizing. A little taste from an in-store performance at Grimey's Records--



And then it was Loretta's turn. Unfortunately, there's only one video of her set on YouTube. But if you know anything about her, you can imagine the rest for yourself. Both the woman and her songs just as straightforward as can be.  She must've had a cold or something because she kept wiping her nose with a tissue, finally mentioning that she was sorry but her nose was "running like a freight train".  Totally disarming and charming.  And she sounded wonderful.  Her 45 minute set was over way too quickly, but I think everyone in the audience knew we were going to see her again that night.




Jack hit the stage with a triple punch of Dead Leaves, High Ball Stepper, and Lazaretto. He was immediately full of smiles. Over the crowd response?  Over having Loretta in the house?  All of the above?  A couple songs in, he stood briefly at the mic and just laughed out loud to himself.  At another point early on, he walked to the front of the stage near us and began to do the posturing thing I talked about from the Austin show, but he couldn't hold the deadpan stare, the corner of his mouth came up into a smirk that made it apparent he just couldn't contain his glee.  It was fucking adorable and highly infectious.













After a nicely balanced, high energy first set, the blue curtains were pulled shut to give us a break, though no one took a rest, we cheered our asses off for him to come back out even though we knew full well he was going to.  We knew that not only was he going to come back, but that Loretta was gonna come out at some point, too.  But I don't know anyone who was at this show who was prepared for the surprise we got when Jack's tour manager Lalo Medina stepped through the curtains again, just like he does at the beginning of every show to exhort the crowd to keep their phones in their (damn) pockets.  So what the heck was up now?  

Rather than a reprimand or chastisement, he instead announced that we should all "give it up for THE RACONTEURS!!!"  Talk about freaking the fuck out.  That entire crowd roared as the blue curtains swept open to reveal the stage bathed in a golden glow instead of the usual cool blue, with Brendon Benson to Jack's left and Little Jack Lawrence plucking bass next to Daru Jones on the drums (Patrick Keeler presumably wasn't available for drum duty because he's touring with the Afghan Whigs).  For two full songs, we were stunned and ecstatic at the same time. 






And then came the second surprise, the one that really wasn't a surprise at all because anyone who knows anything would have been anticipating it for weeks-- Loretta came out along with Brendon, Little Jack, and Jack's full band for a duet on Portland, Oregon and Whispering Seas, which was the b-side to her first single and a song she apparently never performed live. It's a song that Jack once told John Peel he loved, so for her to perform it with him had to have been a dream come true for him.  Leading into it, he told a story about calling her up to ask if she'd perform with him, impersonating her disguising her voice on the phone and how she called him "baby". 









It was so very sweet and funny to watch them together, her seemingly hesitant to get close to him for fear he'd knock her over with his bouncing about, and him wanting her close to sing with him and so he could hug her and kiss her forehead. Then Jack praised her as the most important female song-writer of the 20th century and Brendon Benson held out his arm to squire her off the stage.  Before she was even completely off, Jack maniacally launched into Black Bat Licorice and my brain exploded completely (and, boy, do I wish there was video of that).  




After Sixteen Saltines and then Ball'n'Biscuit, he surprised me yet again by having his tech bring out the Kay, which is normally the signal for Seven Nation Army and the end of the night.  It seemed so unusual for him to be done right after B'n'B, that song's usually used mid-set to amp the crowd up. But no, he was just teasing and gave us a heavy cover of Stones In My Passway, then handed the Kay back for two more songs before bringing it out again to finally, triumphantly, call it a night.




 This was the only show that's come close to being anywhere near as powerful for me as the one at the Masonic Temple in Detroit last summer.  And I'm not referring to what happened to me at that show, I'm talking about the whole thing, the energy the Detroit crowd fed to him, the joyfully ferocious way he responded to that energy, the surprises that night...  This one may even have surpassed that show, as I couldn't help but be empathetically proud for him when he announced at the end that the night had been one of his best moments yet in Nashville. As my pal Helen put it, "...by far my most lasting impression will be that everybody deserves, at least once, to look as happy as Jack looked tonight. It was one of the most touching things I've ever seen."   I'm still smiling over it now, almost a week later. 



Up next, Madison Square Garden and more surprises.  But here's where we've been so far.