That time I interviewed Jack White’s band

Back in 2015, Jack White brought his Lazaretto tour to Brazil — only the third time he’d been in the country, and his first since he started performing as a solo act. For that particular tour, he traveled with a five-piece band, consisting of Dominic Davis, Lillie Mae Rische, Fats Kaplin and Daru Jones, along with Dean Fertita, who was filling in for the recently deceased Ikey Owens. I was lucky enough to interview two of the band members at the hotel they were staying, and two others over the phone. Later, I was also able to reach former band members Cory Younts and Ruby Amanfu, who were kind enough to answer a few questions, even though they were no longer with the band.

The result was a fairly long stretch of text that was handily edited and split into four (thematic) parts, which were then posted elsewhere. While the text survives in its edited format, I had yet to release the full transcript of the interviews anywhere. As this may contain relevant information for fans, I figured it’d be nice to finally put everything out, somewhere. What follows is a transcript of all the interviews I conducted for that four-part piece, with only slight edits for cohesion and readability. First off, my chat with Fats Kaplin and Dominic Davis.

Dominic Davis and Fats Kaplin

The setting couldn’t have been nicer. Though I had to take a nearly 2-hour bus + train ride just to get to the right part of the city, I arrived at the luxury hotel where the band was staying, on a sunny day. First I met Kaplin, and we were soon joined by Davis. We sat at a table by the pool, and talked for an hour.

Had you ever imagined that Robert Plant would be playing and hanging out with you?

Fats: I guess not, really. I’ve met him before, at a festival in San Francisco called Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a huge festival at the Golden Gate Park. He was there, and Buddy Miller was in his band, in Band of Joy, and I’ve worked with Buddy Miller quite often. And I was there with a group called Kane Welsh Chapels, a three-piece that has played that festival every year for 13 years. Buddy brought Robert Plant over to hear us. Having breakfast with Robert Plant every morning [laughs], he’s a really great guy.

So you’ve been staying at the same hotels then?

Fats: Yes we have.

When you performed with Robert Plant in Argentina, did you rehearse before the gig?

Fats: No, and in fact… with Jack, there’s no setlist, ever, and you have no idea what’s gonna happen from song to song, in what order, what it is. Sometimes he’ll even point me to a different instrument than you would usually play. And because of that… we got off stage, and I didn’t see Robert Plant then. We were going back for the encore, and Jack said “Icky Thump”. We went back out, we started playing [E?], and then Jack just started playing and Robert walked out, we had no idea he was going to do that. And we had never played the full song before, and that’s typical.

That’s amazing.

Fats: It is! [laughs]

You also performed with Q-Tip a while ago. Was that also off the cuff?

Fats: Well that we actually did rehearse. We got into New York City, we came in the night before and rehearsed those two songs. Which for Jack is very unusual. Because it was a big deal, it was Madison Square Garden, so I guess he wanted to rehearse it.

Going back a bit, what kind of musical background do you come from?

Fats: I grew up in New York City. I come from the folk world, really. Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, the folk scene in New York City was very big. I was ten or eleven, playing banjo to Pete Seeger.

Do you think that’s why… did you audition for the band? Were there auditions at all?

Fats: No, I didn’t audition. And Jack would never have that. He would just know somebody was [the right player]. I started working with Karen Elson, Jack’s ex-wife. And I got called by Lalo, the tour manager, to do some shows and go to Europe with her. They needed someone to play steel guitar and fiddle. So I went to Europe with her, a number of years ago, and when we were rehearsing all that I met Jack. When I came back, Jack called me, he was doing one of the Blue Series singles, and he called me to go up there. I think it was First Aid Kit, two girls from Sweden, so I went in and played pedal steel on that. Soon after that I got another call, and I started working all the time at the studio, doing these TMR singles. And Jack was doing a lot of producing of the singles at that point. And then we started recording, slowly, bits and pieces of what was to become Blunderbuss. So I became part of a small group of players who would get called for sessions.

So is it true that when you started recording there was no solid idea of what the album would be? Just a few songs here and there.

Fats: Yeah… I think so, because it was done in all these different bits and pieces, then Jack put it together. But it was probably a lot more obvious to him about what it was than to us. He’s great in the studio. When I first started recording and working with Jack, he would do things… he’s very… what’s the right word… he’s very confident, he knows, he’ll just say, “let’s do that”, he’ll immediately pick up on something and go “ok, let’s go with that”. And he’s constructing it. And in the early days of recording, I’d sit there going, “really? Is this gonna work?”. Like, it would sound really strange for me. And then you’d hear it later after it was mixed, and it would be like, “ah, I couldn’t hear it, but it’s there now, it’s perfect”. A lot of that.

What do you think you add to the band, specifically?

Fats: Playing a lot of different instruments, I can kinda play whatever needs to be played, live or in the studio. Also, I come from… there’s a lot of… how… Jack’s sensibility, a lot of his sensibility about things, early blues, stuff like that, weird, old recordings. We have a lot of the same sensibility, I love the same stuff. Even though he comes more from a rock’n’roll world, and garage bands, and I come from the folk world, there’s a lot of the same relationship. With Jack, either you get it or you don’t. It’s not really discussed, you’re either doing it or you’re not doing it.

[Dominic enters]

[Lillie Mae has got some other stuff going on, can’t be there]

Where do you come from?

Dominic: I’m from Detroit, so I met Jack when we were kids, and we kinda learned how to play music together. My family wasn’t musical, his family was. All of his older brothers were in bands, and they had a lot of equipment at the house, so that’s sorta where we started playing. For him and I, we kinda speak the same language in music.

What kind of bands did you play in before?

Dominic: I’ve played in a lot of folk bands, acoustic ones. A lot of blues. My wife is a singer-songwriter, so we did the folk circuit. Usually some mics on the stage, playing acoustically.

Did you all get together at the same time to record Blunderbuss, or was it separately?

Dominic: I had worked on a bunch of stuff before. I think the first thing I did was the Hank Williams thing, and then I played on Wanda Jackson’s album. But then I wasn’t down there for a while, and Fats started recording.

Fats: I met you on the first rehearsal for the Blunderbuss tour, when we knew we were going to tour.

So, you were both from similar backgrounds. What kind of different music were you exposed to when you joined the band?

Fats: I have been exposed to a lot of Detroit garage rock, from Jack, that I had not heard that much.

He talks a lot about a hip-hop influence, especially on the new record. Do you get that in the studio, that you want to go in a direction that’s different from the usual? Or is it just flowing naturally.

Fats: I think it sorta flows naturally, one of those cases where you don’t… he doesn’t really carefully explain it.

Dominic: And if you look at Lazaretto, the song, which is probably the most hip-hop thing he’s ever done, we did it and didn’t spend that long on it, and it didn’t even have lyrics. We finished it, and I kinda thought it was just an idea or an exercise, maybe he would chop the tape up later. […] It could’ve gone a million different ways (without him doing what he did lyrically on it). It wasn’t until maybe a year later that he put the lyrics on it.

So what was the timeline like for Lazaretto, how long did you spend making it?

Dominic: About a year and a half. The thing is, we had both bands, during the Blunderbuss tour, and here and there, two days off, the girls went in. Two other days, the guys went in. A lot of the songs, like Temporary Ground or Just One Drink, those were finished when he came in. But a bunch of other ones were kind of experiments. But it was pieced together. When we recorded it, we recorded quick, but in the timeframe of it, it was about a year, a year and a half.

Did you do any single takes?

Dominic: Not very many, probably three, tops. I think the first thing we did was Three Women. And that was pretty much done when Jack brought it in. The way he records though, there’s not a lot of multitracking, a lot of things are sharing tracks. So it kinda has to be quick, you can’t really change it.

Fats: You can’t really isolate certain things, everything is bleeding in.

Dominic: There’s no computer, we have 16 inputs to plug in, and only 8 tracks.

So all the mastering for CD, that happens outside of TMR?

Dominic: They’ll master it there somehow. But more than that, the bass and the drums are sharing a track, and you can’t change either one. We do that a lot.

What about Would You Fight For My Love? Weren’t the Peacocks and the Buzzards playing on the same track in different spots of the song?

Dominic: When it starts out, in the very beginning, it’s the Peacocks, but we wound up bowing, we were the string section. Basically the Peacocks had recorded it a long time ago, maybe even when Blunderbuss was being recorded. It was really old. Jack liked it, but it sorta had just one section. So we made a verse, I think, and it’s the big punch where the chorus starts, that’s where the Buzzards come in. But it’s amazing how you can do that, you would think you’d be able to hear the difference. We did a band punch, which could’ve gone really bad, because there’s nothing backed up. You’re playing along and you hit record in one spot, and if you mess it up, that’s it. We also did a tape splice in there, I can’t remember what. But it goes from the Peacocks to the Buzzards, and I think back to the Peacocks.

I can’t notice the difference, even trying to hear for it.

Dominic: Well the thing is, certain things are going through the whole song. So Ruby’s singing is going through everything, so I think that kinda ties it all together. So that was another one where we did all the edits, and we didn’t hear the lyrics for another year or so.

Is that how he usually writes, first the music then the lyrics?

Dominic: No, this is new. This started with the Rome album, the Danger Mouse record. I think he had a little recorder and sang over the full tracks. He’s just kinda problem-solving like that. We had eight songs that were done, then four or five that were experiments.

Fats: It’s not like a… he doesn’t do things “this way”, it’s not “a way”. It could be this or that.

So, you had two bands. Maybe this is a silly question, but did you travel in different tour buses?

Fats: No, all of us in the same bus.

That’s a bunch of people.

Dominic: Normally you only have so many bunks in a bus, and normally you have a couple of extras to put things on. But we had 12 people in twelve bunks, so… I think that was good though. At first, it was a little strange not playing every night, but being able to be together made it seem more like one band.

How did Jack trim it down to one band?

Dominic: I think, honestly, it was just the people that could do it, because everybody else has so much going on. Ruby [Amanfu] was singing with Hozier, Brooke [Waggoner] just had a baby, Carla [Azar] was in that movie Frank, Cory [Younts] is playing with Old Crow Medicine Show. It was very last minute that we found out we were going out. Maybe in March last year. I think he might’ve wanted to do both bands again, but it just couldn’t happen.

Logistically, it sounds like a nightmare, so many people with that much equipment. One cool thing I saw was that sometimes Jack played an acoustic song in the middle of the set, while the stage was being set for the second band to play.

Fats: We actually didn’t do that switch very often, though.

Dominic: We were going to do that more often and share a lot more gear, but pedal steels can’t really be shared, and the drum kits were so particular that we also wound up not sharing them. So once we had two kits, they decided to change everything for each band. And I think at some point they had the switch down to three minutes, but we didn’t have both bands on that often.

When you’re playing with Jack, who challenges whom more often? Is it him challenging you or the other way around?

Fats: [laughs]

Dominic: I think he probably challenges us more often. Although it’s funny, we’re always guessing, nobody knows what’s going on. Sometimes he’s leading the whole thing, but sometimes one of us will do something and he’ll run with that. Fats we’ll play something on the steel and Jack will turn it into something.

Fats: It goes back and forth a lot. He’s certainly leading it. We’ve all played with him for years now, but to watch him onstage… we’ve got to a point where he’ll hit certain chords and you kinda know it might be this or that. But then again there’s times he starts playing and you’re like, “what the hell?”

Dominic: And I know most of the White Stripes material, because I’ve been around for all of it. Sometimes Jack will play something I know we haven’t played, Jack the Ripper or some other song, and I wonder if it’s gonna keep going, because I’m sure no one else in the band knows it. Like, Little Bird, I don’t think we’ve ever rehearsed that. We just started playing it.

Did you play it all the way through?

Dominic: We have done it all the way through. But Astro, we never rehearsed, we just started doing it. I mean, he’s really good at leading a band, but usually, if he even teases something, then I’ll send it to everybody. There’s a list that’s pretty big, probably 80 songs, and you can’t really learn it all.

Fats: That’s the whole thing, he’s challenging. Before we went out on tour the first time, he said, “I’d rather go out onstage and suck, but trying to do something, than to do the same every night”.

Fats: The thing is, if people only knew what a tightrope Jack is walking on. People wouldn’t believe that he’s playing Lollapalooza, and performing a song we’ve never played before…

Dominic: Or just making up a song, that happens a lot.

Fats: He’ll start just making up a song on the spot. People would say that it’s impossible, that no one would ever do that at a big festival, but he does it all the time.

Dominic: We did some shows with Robert Plant, and their band… when we say we don’t use a setlist, a lot of people think we don’t stick to the setlist, but we don’t even know the first song we’re playing when we get on stage. And people can’t believe that.

The first gig I saw was The White Stripes, here, 10 years ago.

Dominic: They played that festival?

No, their own gig. So, this is really special for me. When you see The White Stripes, and you see how those two people were going up on stage and playing with no setlist, you know it’s not impossible to do it. The way the show flowed, not many people can do that, but they had that chemistry.

Dominic: Yeah.

How much time did you spend on rehearsals before your first tour?

Dominic: 2 months. But it was just him coming in and starting a song, it wasn’t like, “let’s do this, let’s do that”. He tried to run a rehearsal like he would play a show. When he first called me to do the whole thing, he said that with The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather they had to be a little more structured, they’re bands with more than one songwriter, and he was hoping he could do with a full band what he did with The White Stripes. He asked me if I thought he could do it, and I said, “yeah, we just need to work on it”. It took a little while to figure it out, you don’t always jump in. Sometimes when he starts something, you gotta see which way it’s going, or see who else is gonna jump in. I think the first couple runs on the Blunderbuss tour, we were so eager to play.

The first time you got on stage, what was it like? Were you tense?

Dominic: I don’t get nervous playing, especially with him, because we’ve been playing for so long. And I had played shows with him before. My first gigs as a teenager were with him.

So, two months rehearsing.

Dominic: Well, a lot of other stuff was going on too, we can’t just rehearse, we need to rehearse with the stage techs and do other things. We didn’t have to just learn all the Blunderbuss material, we had to learn everything. So we were learning all the White Stripes songs, everything.

Did you have to study parts in your spare time?

Dominic: Yeah, they sent us 60 or 70 songs. So yeah, it’s a lot of learning to do, especially when you’re playing someone else’s parts. And with the WS material it’s really hard because there’s no parts.

That’s one other thing I was going to ask. How do you fill in the gaps when there’s no parts?

Fats: You have to figure out what works. A lot of times I’m playing the steel, playing it kinda like a rhythm for the guitar player, giving Jack a little more freedom to do stuff. And basing a lot of that off of sacred steel players. You what I’m talking about? In the States? The sacred steel tradition?

I don’t know what that is, sorry [laughs].

Fats: Ok.

Dominic: They played in churches.

Fats: Yeah, it’s a really strange… It’s a black Pentecostal church music where the steel guitar first… like, lap steel, but then pedal steel, became the main instrument with drums and bass, but the main lead instrument of call & response in this Pentecostal black church was the steel guitar. It sounds really strange, but it started in Florida, and then these people migrated to other places like Detroit. It’s a very… it’s hard to explain, actually, and why steel guitar was used, but it’s a vocal, like you can imitate vocally the preacher, like [voices the sounds]. So I love that style, and I base a lot of playing off of that.

So, it sounds like a lot of songs, like Seven Nation Army, have everyone playing similar parts.

Dominic: Exactly, yeah, the ones that are more simple, but Jack really arranged them pretty well. Certain ones we would be doing exactly what he was doing, and certain ones we would… like, Top Yourself, I don’t play very much on it, and we’re kinda like, you know, we each have our spots here and there. It was hard for some of those songs to be done with a six-piece band, there’s a lot of people laying out [?]. Or doubling him. Like, The Hardest Button to Button, Jack and I are doing the exact same thing. It sounds huge.

Then there’s songs like Hello Operator, with the harmonica solo…

Dominic: Yeah, Fats plays that.

That really comes to life with the six-piece. Because when Jack played it with The White Stripes, it was sorta missing that harmonica part. But with you guys, it’s like the definitive version of the song. Also, with I’m Slowly Turning Into You and the violin solo, that’s perfect.

Dominic: Yeah, and that one had organ on it. So a lot of the songs, when we start listening to them, there’s keys on more than you think. I’m Slowly Turning Into You has a big organ part. There aren’t too many that were hard to find spots for. Some of them he’ll do by himself, like We’re Going to Be Friends, or something we’ve never played before. He did Same Boy You’ve Always Known by himself a couple of shows ago. And then there was another one where something was going on with his guitar, and he just didn’t play at all on Same Boy You’ve Always Known, so we kinda picked it up.

Has there ever been a time you were completely lost?

Fats: Oh yeah.

Dominic: That happens kind of a lot. At Fenway Park, he called me up to the front of the stage, and he played a Bob Dylan song, and I can’t remember exactly what it was. Waiting Around to Die, or Fixin’ to Die or something like that. But I couldn’t get a handle on it. I hadn’t played it yet, so I just felt like I was chasing him the whole time, and then it was over, and I didn’t get a chance to catch up. But even that, listening back to it, it’d probably be better than if I had known the song, maybe.

What about the gear you use, is it new or vintage?

Dominic: We all use Fender amps. It’s a mix, it’s hard to use just old gear on the road. His amps are old school sound systems, though, like school PA systems. It’s a lot of stuff up there.

What about the actual instruments?

Dominic: My bass is old.

Fats: My steel guitar is a 1975 […], it’s relatively old. My fiddle and Lillie Mae’s fiddle are old, these are all…

Dominic: Jack’s playing the Kay from the White Stripes.

Is it the same then?

Dominic: Yeah.

So it’s a Telecaster, the Kay…

Dominic: And then he had a Gretsch Triple Jet, which Randy made for him. And then he’s got a Bo Diddley guitar, a Gretsch, but that’s sort of the backup. He’s got two acoustics, Army Navy and L1.

Fats: Which are almost the same thing. Old Gibson acoustic guitars, unusual, you don’t see many people using them. They’re hard to play, with big, fat necks, and stuff like that. But he’s actually… it’s funny, you would think Jack… He started playing that Telecaster, and it’s just a basic Telecaster that happened to be the right color. He doesn’t… he’s not a big guitar… I mean, he likes the instruments, but if people saw how few guitars there are on the road, for a tour like this, it’s really almost nothing. He just uses the same… he can flip between two electric guitars.

Dominic: It basically depends on whether it’s on tune or not. He plays so hard that if one gets knocked out of tune, he just grabs another one.

Do you need different tunings for your instruments? Do you need a separate instrument?

Dominic: No. Some tunes, I really wanna play the upright bass. We dropped down to D for High Ball Stepper, we’d never done that before. His slide guitar is tuned open, Muddy Waters-style, it’s an open A chord.

And you’ve got the chrome instruments, those are new, right?

Dominic: Yeah, we had them at the end of Blunderbuss. Those are from the 1920s. Alcoa, the Aluminum Company of America, makes those. For the upright bass, it’s an instrument that wants to feed back [?], so with that chrome bass it’s really stable, you can get it loud without feeding back [?].

How do you feel about the press surrounding the tour? Sometimes there’s really cool stuff, sometimes unnecessary and negative stuff. Do you pay any attention to it?

Fats: I try not to.

Dominic: It’s hard… as ridiculous as the whole guacamole thing was, it’s hard to pay it any mind. You just wonder why people pick so much on Jack.

Fats: It’s the nature of how they follow someone who’s that famous. It’s like, let’s pick on something negative and run with it. People take the most not true. ridiculous thing, and suddenly it goes viral. But it’s over nothing.

Dominic: I think things have changed so much now with journalists, because of blogs and the internet. There used to be an editorial stage. Now I feel that the standards journalists are held to are lower. It’s easier for all that stuff to come out, I think.

Whenever they get called out on something, they say, “oh, I’m not even a journalist, I’m a blogger, you don’t get to call me out”.

Dominic: Yeah, but the thing is, it’s printed words on a page, or on a screen. We’ve been talking a lot about this, especially with the internet and people making comments. Everyone is anonymous, it’s so hard now. We’ve done so many cool things this year. We played a lot of TV shows. In the last month we’ve had Loretta Lynn, Q-Tip and Robert Plant play with us, and that’s all amazing stuff.

I think there’s a few people who the journalists know will get the pageviews they want. So whatever they do, it’s news. Ahead of Jack, maybe just Dave Grohl. Everything they do is news. I saw a website with a headline, “Jack White Doesn’t Look Like Johnny Depp Anymore”, because he got a new haircut, and that was the story. I think it’s really sad because […] Some people figured out the formula of what gets shared the most…

Dominic: Yeah, we call it clickbait. And it’s never an article, you have to click through them. 12 Top Whatever. If you were a Disney Character, which one would you be? It’s interesting, but we try not to pay attention to press. We’re glad when we get press and there’s a lot of reviews and stuff, but sometimes they’re all saying the exact same thing. They usually say something about Lalo coming out and talking about not taking pictures.

The last gig you made, Brazilians on Twitter were reading about that and taking it as Jack White prohibiting cell phones at his concerts.

Dominic: But it’s really hard, if you go to a concert now…

Fats: People are holding up iPads now. But Jack does something almost in Don Quixote-like fashion, he’s trying to make something mysterious or challenging or interesting, even when it’s almost impossible to do it, because he believes that’s the way it should be.

The press will try to paint him as extravagant…

Dominic: I mean, it’s daring to tell people to do that. We go out of our way to do it, we bring a photographer of our own on tour, he puts pictures up every day. But then again, on the other hand, I’m glad people in the crowd were filming when we had Robert Plant on stage with us, because that’s the only video we have. It’s interesting.

So, what’s next after Coachella?

Dominic: I think we’re close to being done. I mean, we’ve been playing for a year now, they call it an “album cycle”. After Coachella, that might be it. The last time, Jack took a good year off the road. He doesn’t want to plan things too much, so we usually don’t know.

Do you see yourselves going back on the road with this?

Dominic: I would love to, but he wouldn’t just do it. He would probably make another album. With Blunderbuss, we made the album, toured for a year, then we didn’t play any shows. He wouldn’t just go out for a weekend here and there, it’s very deliberate. But he does so much other stuff in the studio, I’m sure we’ll do something.

Fats: He’ll just go onto the next project, whatever’s coming up next.

Do you feel flattered playing places like MSG?

Fats: For me, that was one of the last big venues in NY that I’d never played. Selling out MSG, that’s big. And it’s great, wow. Some of the best shows we’ve done were also… like Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is like an old-time dance place, famous, but not MSG. But it’s great, fabulous.

Do you ever feel like the crowd response is not as good as you hoped?

Dominic: Not really. Sometimes there is an element of awe, some people haven’t seen him before, so they kinda don’t know what to think. Some arenas, it can be really hard to reach everybody.

Fats: Or like a seated theater, Jack really avoids playing seated theaters. He thinks it’s too restraining for the people.

Dominic: But arenas, especially for what we do, it’s so crazy. It would be more foolproof if we had a clicktrack and had all the lights synced to the track. Nowadays, bands are playing along to the clicktracks, and everything is automated.

I think it’s really boring most times…

Dominic: Yeah, but when you’re playing to 20 thousand people, it’s also, you can reach more people. I see it both ways. And all these bands at festivals, I don’t know how many of them just go out and play. We played the Corona Capital festival in Mexico City, and lightning struck very close to the stage, so they shut the power down for the stage for two hours. And there were all these other bands, and they didn’t know who was gonna play next. I think we were the only band who would just go up and play. Everybody else had to reboot computers and get the sequence going.

Fats: [laughs]

Dominic: So we wound up playing, and there were bands that I didn’t think would do that, but that’s just how they do it. They’re not necessarily playing to tracks that you’re hearing, but they’re playing to a click, and everything is automated with that click.

They say that if David Guetta’s hard drive crashes, the show is off.

Dominic: I think almost everybody is like that, especially… we don’t use digital boards either. I mean, Robert Plant is probably the only thing I’ve seen recently where it isn’t like that.

[Something about sound mix being done by Hutch, but he was with Queens of the Stone Age, then they were sort of sharing a crew with Queens, and it was working out really well, then it overlapped]

The last thing I wanna ask you is about Ikey. Do you have any favorite memories of Ikey, something that you treasure the most?

Dominic: There’s a lot of them.

Fats: He was a really unique and amazing person. He was somebody who also… you realize it when he’s gone. The things that he added. We’d always played with him, so you don’t think about it, you almost take it for granted. Dean is great, but Ikey was the pepper saucer or seasoning of the band. Because everybody has certain things that they’ve gotta do, Jack has freedom, but Ikey was the one person who could do some truly insane psychedelic stuff on stage, that was his feel.

Dominic: We’re saying it all the time, “Man, Ikey would’ve loved that”.

Fats: Yes, all the time. Like, being in South America, going to certain places.

Dominic: Or Q-Tip sitting in with us, Ikey would’ve flipped out.

Fats: We miss him a lot.

[Question about band losing a member, how it all seems fun and games until something serious happens]

Dominic: We’re a pretty serious bunch. We have a really good time but we’re always looking out for each other. Ikey was allergic to a lot of things. His body was very fragile, so he had serious allergies to fish and peanuts and all these things. He was always very careful, but sometimes you just don’t know what you’re eating or what you’re putting in your body. So…

Daru Jones

I tried my absolute best to get to meet Daru Jones and talk to him in person, on the same day I met Davis and Kaplin in São Paulo. It didn’t work out, but Jones did talk to me over Skype, a couple of weeks after the gig I saw. He was using his phone, and had his camera on. I was using my computer, and did not have a camera installed at all. As I recall, I had a pretty bad case of the flu that day, and Daru even asked if I would like to postpone the interview. Considering how hard it had been to actually get ahold of him, my answer was a definite no, and we talked for around 20 minutes. Thankfully, I recorded the audio, because I was in such a feverish state that I could barely remember what had happened after it was done.

I’m actually kind of sick now, so if my voice sounds weird, that’s why.

Daru: Oh, I’m sorry man, you wanna do this another time?

Nah, I’m ok. So, where are you now.

Daru: I’m in Nashville right now.

Taking care of business?

Daru: Yeah.

What’s your musical background, where do you come from?

Daru: That’s kind of a trick question. You mean where I grew up?

Yeah, where you grew up and and what you started playing.

Daru: I grew up in Michigan. I started playing drums at the age of 4, that’s how I got my start. My mom and dad are both musicians, organ and piano players. I basically got my start in church. Yup.

And what was your first professional gig?

Daru: That’s a good question. [laughs] I cut a professional gig when I was a teenager, around 15 or 16, I had joined a gospel jazz trio. We were the backing band for this stage play. […]

And how did you meet Jack White?

Daru: I met Jack through a hip-hop situation, an artist I was touring with, Black Milk, from Detroit. Black had this project called Album of the Year, which I played drums on, and there’s a track on it called Deadly Medley, which has a rock guitar sample. Jack had started doing these collaborations for TMR, and from what I was told, he was big on hip-hop and he heard this song, and he got excited. So he reached out to Black Milk’s management, if he wanted to do a collaboration. So I guess when they were talking about him coming to Nashville, I think Jack offered to use people from Nashville for the show, but Black Milk said he had his own guys that he takes on the road. We flew down to Nashville, we did a session for TMR, with Jack. And we also had a performance at TMR. I knew Jack was a drummer. And there’s a song on the set called Losing Out, and I have a drum solo on it. Basically, after I did the drum solo, Jack was in the back of the room, he ran to the front and he got excited like, “yeah!”. Anyway, I went back home to New York, and a few months later his team reached out to me about coming to Nashville, he was doing a collaboration with RZA from Wu-Tang Clan, one of my favorite producers. So I flied out to Nashville, and right as I get in the studio, RZA cancels the session. So it’s kinda heartbreaking. Anyway, Jack felt bad, he said, “I’ve got some songs I’ve been working on, maybe we can try those out?” From what I was told, those songs that we tracked ended up starting Blunderbuss. It turned out to be a blessing. So that’s how all of that got started.

When you guys were traveling together, did you listen to music together, did you hang out?

Daru: Yeah. If we go on stage, we listen to rock or hip-hop or whatever, getting amped up for the show. He’s not one of those artists [?]. We hang out together, he’s very generous and likes to be in the mix.

Any new kinds of music that you were exposed to after you joined the band?

Daru: Yeah, a lot of rock bands and people that I’d never heard of, because coming into the rock world, that was a whole new world for me. Of course, being a drummer, there were some rock drummers I admired, but there’s a lot of groups and stuff that I didn’t know about until I got into this situation. It was cool. I always like to expand my vocabulary, to be educated, get a feel for what I was going to get myself into, so that was cool.

So, when you’re recording, how much does Jack direct the drum sound, versus you coming up with it yourself? What happens more often?

Daru: Well, you know, I don’t wanna give away his secrets of what he does. Basically, I think he hired me because he liked what I do, he wanted to bring my style to the table. Basically, when I go into the studio, I am allowed to have my creative vibe, but of course he has a certain way he likes to do things. I’m a producer as well, so when I come into any situation, I come into it thinking as a producer, so I feel like he […] I think my ideals are respected, and I think that’s why he hired me for this situation. That’s pretty much all I can say.

Your style on the last album reminds me a bit of Head Hunters, by Herbie Hancock.

Daru: Oh wow. That’s a cool compliment, thank you. I mean, there’s a lot of experimentation going on with us. I heard some artists that I like and I admire, some of their songs came from just a jam session, you know, the people just recorded those ideas. There was a lot of experimenting going on. Sometimes he would have songs and try to figure out a way to put them in a full band scenario, because you gotta remember, when he was with TWS, it was just him and a drummer. So now it’s like, we’re taking it further, adding more pieces. Of course, he had other bands like The Raconteurs, which involved bigger pieces, but, you know, when the artist brings pre-recorded music to a session, it’s always a challenge to try to have it transposed. If that makes any sense.

You’ve been touring with him for over two years now, right?

Daru: Yeah, I’ve been touring with him since 2012.

Is it still a challenge for you? Or does it come naturally by now?

Daru: Yeah it’s natural by now, we’ve been doing this for a while. The only challenge is, when we go onstage, we don’t have a setlist, so every night we’re on a journey, on a roller-coaster, just like the audience, we don’t know what’s gonna happen. It’s not a bad challenge, it makes it interesting, because every night is different.

The gig I saw was one of the best gigs I ever saw at a festival.

Daru: Thank you.

So, how do you feel when you go to Glastonbury and you’re playing between Robert Plant and Metallica?

Daru: It’s such an honor to be on that same stage, and when it’s over, they come say kind words to us, it’s flattering. It’s a good feeling, I guess I’m on the right track. And my hard work hasn’t been in vain. It’s cool to get those shout-outs. Those guys paved the way for us. It’s great.

How do you feel about the press surrounding the tour? Do you pay attention to it, or do you stay away from it?

Daru: Sometimes I check it out, sometimes I get Google Alerts when my name gets mentioned. For the most part, if it’s positive I’ll check it out, if it’s negative I’ll try to stay away from it. Because I know how much work we put into this, and sometimes people don’t understand. It’s not just us getting on stage, there’s a whole crew working, a lot of preparation going on before the show. So it’s like, all the hard work that we do, sometimes people don’t appreciate it. And when people have negative things to say, I just don’t get it. Sometimes we’ll have bad nights, everybody does, but we try to give our best, and it’s frustrating when we do that and people come out with negative things to say, I think that’s unappreciative. What Jack is doing is revolutionary. He’s bringing some freshness to the game, and people don’t appreciate it.

How do you feel about Tidal?

Daru: I think it’s cool, I’m still trying to grasp what it’s really all about. From what I can understand, it sounds cool, because one of the main goals is to have the artists benefit from the proceeds. To separate the middle-man. Because with services like Spotify, there’s somebody getting paid. […] I don’t know all the benefits from it, but it looks cool so far.

You have Coachella soon, and after that, what’s next?

Daru: As of right now, I think we’re wrapping things up. […] We’ve been out for a year now. One of the things I can talk about is my own band, Ruff Pack, a jazz/hip-hop instrumental trio. […] I want people to know I’m a producer, not just a drummer. I’m hoping to produce more.

Do you have any favorite memories of Ikey, something that really sticks out to you?

Daru: Yeah, one of the things I can remember now, the night before he passed away. We were in the dressing room, and before the show we change into our dressier gig attire. When we got in the room, Ikey had a full suit with a tie, and he was all, “I haven’t dressed like this since I was Jehovah’s witness!” He looked really nice. Then, as we went back on before our encore, he did a full cartwheel in a suit. Like, what is up with this dude? What made him do that? Just out of nowhere. Just a lot of cool and strange events that happened that day and before his passing. I thought that was really cool, I’ll never forget that. Someone dressing up in a suit to do a cartwheel. I really miss that brother, I’m really saddened by his loss, it’s definitely been a traumatic experience. I just found out that his brother also passed away a couple of days ago, so my prayers to his mom and family. All his brothers were musicians. So my heart goes out to them.

Do you think you’ll ever come across a group of musicians like this again? Or another one just as good?

Daru: Who knows? It’s been great, everybody’s nice. I’ve been in a lot of situations. […] It feels like a family, we’re all close, and it shows on stage. This has been my first time in this kind of situation. And it was a lot more different in 2012 when we had the two bands. That was definitely an experience. [laughs]

I was asking Dominic and Fats about the tour bus, and how crowded it must’ve been.

Daru: Woo, it was crazy. [laughs] But we made it. But at the end of the day, I’m grateful, just to have a job and pay my bills. […] Gotta keep it moving.

Cory Younts

After talking to three of the current members, I continued on my mission to reach the other two, as well as to talk to previous members, who were mostly present during the Blunderbuss tour. Unfortunately, I couldn’t talk to most of those — some said “no”, other said nothing. One person who did agree, however, was Cory Younts. It was a fairly brief conversation over Facebook, punctuated by the question he replied to by sending me a photo.

How did you first meet Jack, and how did you get involved with the band?

Cory: I met Jack Lawrence first at a bar that I was playing piano at. 2004 I think. He mentioned me to Jack White and I met him at a Time Jumpers show. He was leaving as I was walking in. We talked for a minute. I must’ve given him my number. He then called me a few months later. I think my first session was The Smoke Fairies. I then went on to do more sessions over the years for Third Man. Then in January of 2012 I got the call to be in his band touring the Blunderbuss album.

What were the rehearsals like for the first tour? Did it feel like you had something special going on?

Cory: Well. The rest of the Buzzards (the guy band) already had rehearsed for about a month and I was the last to get hired. I was a little nervous cause I hadn’t played rock n roll in a band for several years. But all the rest of the guys were so great that we seemed to all fall in with each other and the outcome was great.

How much trust did Jack White put into the musicians, as far as improvising and leading the band?

Cory: Well Dominic Davis was the band leader. But Jack seemed to have full confidence in all of us. He’s always been one to allow his musicians to do their thing and add their two cents to the song. Especially when playing live shows. But at the same time we had to know anything and everything that he might go into. Whether it be his solo stuff or White Stripes or Racs or Dead Weather.

Dominic mentioned to me that you were told about around 80 songs to prepare for the tour. Were there any White Stripes songs that you knew you certainly wouldn’t play?

Cory: No. Pretty much had to know them all. Not perfectly but needed to be familiar with all them.

Were you still in the band when the Lazaretto tour started? What made you not stay in the band?

Cory: Well the Lazaretto songs (a lot of them) were recorded on time off between tours during the Blunderbuss tour. Jack had ideas for the songs and we would record the music. The lyrics were added later. I went back to my band Old Crow Medicine Show who also recorded a new album in 2013. It was a hard toss up. Jack or Old Crow Medicine Show. I still am recording with Jack though. We recently just did the Blue Light, Red Light (Someone’s There) song.

Do you see the Peacocks and the Buzzards going on tour again? Or do you think that show is now over and he’s moving onto something else?

Cory: I have a feeling that he’ll move on to something else. But who knows? Only Jack.

Any favorite memories you have of Ikey Owens? Anything that stands out?

Cory:

Ya know, Ikey and I were very close. He had just moved here to Nashville right down the street from me. I remember one night on stage as Jack was playing the intro to Two Against One, and Ikey fell off his piano bench and caught himself by slamming his whole arm down on the piano keys. Jack didn’t know why he had done that, but thought it sounded great. We all saw it and were all laughing so hard on the inside. Miss him just about every day.

Ruby Amanfu

Considering how many women had performed with Jack White on the Blunderbuss tour, I was getting a bit desperate that I wouldn’t have any female presence on this interview at all. Fortunately, former singer Ruby Amanfu agreed to an email interview, and answered (just) a few of my questions. Far from ideal, but I did get a cool Ikey Owens story out of it.

How did you first met Jack White, and get invited to join his band?

Ruby: I got the call to come in to his studio to meet him one morning in January of 2011. He was putting together the touring band for Wanda Jackson’s promo run for her new album. I went to his studio and they happened to be working on Chris Thile and Michael Daves’ Blue Series that day. He ended up calling me into the tracking room with the band and put me on percussion for the B-side track, “Blue Night” and backing vocals for their single, “The Man in The Middle”. That was a fun way to be introduced! So some weeks after that, I ended up doing the promo tour with Jack and Wanda. From that point on, we had a nice flow and I ended up singing on various projects Jack was producing like for Seasick Steve, and any number of tunes of his own. The rest happened naturally.

How did you feel about not playing some nights, when the Buzzards were the chosen band?

Ruby: They are my brothers so I felt proud. I was dancing alongside stage.

Do you have any favorite memories of Ikey Owens?

Ruby: Ikey was a true gentleman whose mother, Sylvia, raised him to be really chivalrous and he loved being so. He would always offer me his arm when we walked. Sometimes we would go find oysters and champagne when we had days off on tour. He would say, “What can I say; I have expensive taste!” I do, too…so we meshed well.

Are you preparing a solo record of yours?

I have a solo record coming out later this year on Thirty Tigers label. I will be touring this Summer and Fall in support of it and I am really excited about that.

Lillie Mae Rische

Finally. A full month after the gig in São Paulo, after several failed attempts and postponings, I was able to talk to Lillie Mae. She was amazing, worth all the effort it took to finally get her on the phone. Being able to get her word was worth every “no” I received from other members of the band, either past or current. We talked through Skype, for around 90 minutes. We did go off topic for a moment or two, so I’ll try to stick to the most relevant bits here:

So, the tour’s over, are you home relaxing?

Lillie: I’m not really relaxing, but I’m with my dogs, which is good.

So, those final acoustic gigs that you did, were they different?

Lillie: It was totally different. It was really awesome, really cool to do a stripped-down acoustic thing. For me, I grew up doing stuff like that. I grew up in a bluegrass family band, so, you know. Not that I’ve done it lately, but it’s always fun to go back and do it. It’s also really cool to see Jack in that different setting, it was really nice, very personal. He does very good in settings like that, I guess. Musically, it was really fun. There’s nothing to hide behind, it’s right up there, up front. Mess-ups and everything.

I think it was really cool that they broadcast the final gig, that was really generous.

Lillie: It was unexpected for everyone. They just came up with it like the day before, and decided to do it.

I’m glad because most people obviously didn’t get the chance to see that show.

Lillie: It’s true. I’m glad they did it too. Although it made me a little nervous. My aunt and uncle were there though, it was awesome.

You’ve been on television many times by now, is it still different when you know there’s cameras in front of you?

Lillie: It’s different, especially in a small setting like that, because it’s like, “Shit, now I have to actually pay attention”. And you’re not quite as free. But the festivals and stuff, that doesn’t faze me. But when it was like, there’s a camera really close and it’s going back and forth across the theater, it’s like, “ugh”. [laughs] I cried on that show, and I was like, “Great, now my crying is on television or whatever”. [laughs] Something that nobody else would’ve ever known. Oh well.

I honestly didn’t notice you crying. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention, but I was watching with a friend and she didn’t notice either.

Lillie: Good, I’m glad! [laughs] I hope so.

How long before those gigs did you know that you were going to travel and do those five dates?

Lillie: Well, I didn’t know the five states until right before we went there. Maybe the week of. I had heard talk that we might possibly do it. But we found out around Coachella. We were already on tour when we found out, and they were seeing if we could add on that extra week. And I’m really glad we did.

Going back a little, how did you first get involved with Jack White’s band?

Lillie: I was called for a session, Jack was doing a soundtrack for The Lone Ranger, which he ended up backing out of, but that was when they first called me and my friend Josh Smith, who is Jack’s engineer and also a tech on the road. He recommended me and they just kept calling me. I played on one song on Blunderbuss, the first recording I did with Jack.

How old were you then?

Lillie: 18 or 19.

19, wow. They say you start feeling old when your favorite band has younger people than you.

Lillie: [laughs] Well, all my favorite bands, everyone in them is dead, so I’m just shit out of luck.

Speaking of which, traveling around and playing festivals, did you get a chance to see anyone playing that you didn’t think you would?

Lillie: Not really. I’m not really in the loop, as far as modern music goes. [inaudible] I’ve kept myself sheltered musically, unfortunately, I don’t know very much modern music. I don’t really listen to a lot of new stuff. I need to branch out more. I listen to a lot of my friends’ records a lot though. The Howling Brothers, I don’t know if you’ve heard them or not.

Not really.

Lillie: They’re incredible, you should check them out. They’re badass.

I will.

Lillie: Yeah, I’ve played on their records and stuff.

So, the first time you got onstage with the Peacocks, what did it feel like?

Lillie: Uh, the first show we played, at Third Man, I don’t really remember it well. It was different, I’d never played rock’n’roll before, just bluegrass and country. So it was quite different for me.

When he was putting the band and the album together, were there any times when you felt like, “I don’t know if this is gonna work or not”?

Lillie: Absolutely. I almost didn’t take the gig in the first place. I’m glad I did, but I had my family band that had just broke up, and had it not broken up, I wouldn’t have taken the gig. Because I was fully dedicated to my own project, you know. But I’m very glad I took the gig, I met some amazing people and friends for a lifetime, and got to play some really cool music and it’s been a really good experience for me, as far as branching out of my small world, musically. It’s been awesome. I’ve been turned on to all different kinds of stuff.

It seems that on the last tour you took on a much bigger role.

Lillie: Well, I got to sing. I didn’t sing on Blunderbuss; Ruby Amanfu sang, she was the singer. I don’t think Jack even knew I sang when we started playing. But the second time around, he asked me to sing, so that was awesome, and I don’t know if it is a bigger role, but… they put me up front too, which makes a big difference.

Do you feel like he put more trust into the musicians on this tour than on the previous one?

Lillie: No, not at all. It’s absolutely equal. He’s always been the absolute coolest about all that. He’s always given everyone a lot of freedom to do what they want musically, and he’s always put a lot of trust in everybody, since day one. He definitely wants to hear your opinion, or lets you do whatever you want, more than almost anyone I worked with — which is really cool for somebody at that level, you know.

The more I hear about the story of this band, the more it sounds like the knights of the round table coming together or something.

Lillie: That’s awesome. I wish it wasn’t over. I may never get to play with any of these guys again, it sucks.

Well, would you, if you had the chance?

Lillie: Absolutely, in a heartbeat.

The way that he’s wording the statement about break, it seems like it’s for real.

Lillie: It is. I didn’t even read the statement, I’m not even going to, but I know that he’s definitely gonna take a break. He’s gonna focus on some other things for a while. And that’s good. Everybody needs to follow their heart, regardless of who you are.

I guess this is not even a question for you, but people are wondering if there will even be a Dead Weather tour when the new album comes out or not.

Lillie: I have no idea. I have not heard a thing about it. But I’m not close with any of them either, so. I hope so.

So, everyone else told me that you really never have a setlist. But when you did television performances, did you know what you were going to play beforehand?

Lillie: Absolutely not. [laughs]

Not even that?

Lillie: No. No, sir, never.

That’s even cooler, I guess.

Lillie: Yup. It’s good.

I noticed how much he gestures to you as well.

Lillie: Yeah. [pause] Yeah, sure, sorry. [laughs] All I take out of that is, he does put trust in himself, number one, but in his musicians, he trusts that people aren’t gonna fuck up. And that’s really cool. It’s a good feeling when people actually do that, that’s respect right there, you know.

What happens when you do, eventually, fuck up?

Lillie: Well, I fuck up all the time, but it’s not like I’m the drummer. [laughs] If I was playing drums, I wouldn’t be able to get away with it. Or bass, that’s a solid, locked-down instrument, you know. If I fuck up, nobody can tell — I mean, not that you can’t tell, but it’s a lot more hidden than the drums. I can just laugh it off, “oops”. [laughs] But he wouldn’t care anyway, he wouldn’t give a shit.

I mean, it’s not about perfection anyway.

Lillie: It’s not at all, and that’s cool. I mean, when I was growing up it was absolutely about perfection, 100%. I’m the youngest in my family, and watching my older brother and sister… My sister Scarlett practiced mandolin for eight hours every day, every single day, she had no choice. It was all perfection, nothing out of tune, get everything down, if you screwed up you got in trouble. So it’s weird coming from that — although it was more lenient on my part because I’m the youngest, so for some reason I got away with shit. But it is nice to be like, “hey, it’s low-key”[?], really, it’s probably the biggest thing I’ll ever do in my life, but who cares?

When you had the two bands, was there a specific direction in trying to make one band different from the other?

Lillie: Not necessarily. Each group had their slightly different arrangements, but we all generally played the same songs, minus a couple different ones for each one. But how am I to know exactly what Jack was going for in his head? I don’t know. But it was pretty loose as well, it wasn’t completely different. There were a couple of shows when he got me up to play with the boys, and it was generally the same idea. I mean they were definitely a lot heavier for sure, musically.

It seems to me that the Peacocks had more of a dream-like quality.

Lillie: Absolutely. But I guess that’s what you’re supposed to get from a bunch of women in long dresses.

When you had the two bands, did it really feel like one band, united?

Lillie: Absolutely. I mean, even now, obviously I’m from the girl band, but all the guys were from the same group, and it still felt like one big band to me. To me, anyway, I don’t know what the other ones would say. [laughs] Looking around for my cigarettes, I can’t find them.

Does the smoking affect your voice at all?

Lillie: Absolutely, it’s terrible. I’ve smoked since I was 11. It’s been too long. But it’s about to run its course, I think it’s done. [calls dog]

I can’t recommend that enough. You see so many singers with problems because of smoking.

Lillie: Yeah, that’s the thing. [Come on Cherry Pie, inside, let’s go] Sorry. I mean, singing is the only thing I love in the world, why am I just putting a timer on it? It’s not fair. [lights cigarette]

One of the questions that’s kinda weird to ask: how did it go from one band to two bands?

Lillie: I think Jack probably had some ideas in his head, I’m sure he had the idea of both of them, I think he would’ve liked to do two bands again. I think that it just didn’t work out. I’m gonna guess that some folks had some scheduling interference. But I could be wrong. I mean, he could’ve gotten whoever he wanted for the tour, he wasn’t obligated to get the same members, but he didn’t. Maybe if he didn’t get certain people, he wouldn’t want to do it, but I’m not sure.

Some people assume that it was a budget cut.

Lillie: No, definitely not a budget cut, not for him. [laughs]

I forgot what I was going to say. And I don’t even drink, imagine…

Lillie: You don’t drink? I don’t either. I haven’t drunk in four years.

Wow. Glad to hear that. I’m not the only one.

Lillie: No, you’re not. [laughs] I’m the only one on tour who doesn’t drink though. But, imagine if I drank, I’d never get ahold of you. [laughs]

Was there ever a sense of competition between the two bands, even a friendly one?

Lillie: There shouldn’t have been. Unfortunately, there was a little bit. There should not have been, because it wasn’t a competition for playing a slot or anything. I think, more than anything, it was people wanting to play. If you’re on tour, there are ten gigs, and you only get to play five, that kinda sucks. I think that was the hardest part, everybody wanted to play, nobody wanted so many days off. But, yeah, there should not have been any competition, but there was a little bit, unfortunately. Too many hens in the hen house, etc.

Too many cooks will spoil the broth.

Lillie: Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Have you seen the Too Many Cooks video?

Lillie: I have seen it, yes.

So you’re not completely off the internet while on tour.

Lillie: Somebody sent it to me. Somebody made me watch it. I think it was Dominic.

Right on, Dominic.

Lillie: He always sends me funny stuff to watch.

As far as the songs go, I know you had like 80 songs you needed to know, but were there any that you knew would never pop up?

Lillie: No, not at all. Not to my knowledge. There were songs that were… well, after Ikey passed away, we never played I Cut Like a Buffalo again. It just never happened, and that was one that we said, “I don’t think we’re gonna play this one again”.

I was wondering what happened to all the Dead Weather songs, especially that one, so I guess that explains it.

Lillie: Yes sir. But, if you know me, I don’t know what a Dead Weather song is versus a TWS song, I have no idea. I learned them all at the same time. [laughs] I have no idea. I’ll ask, “which one is this one from? what record is that?” Like, I know now that Steady as She Goes was by the Raconteurs, but I didn’t know Jack’s music before I started playing with him. I didn’t know it at all.

Finding parts for the violin on some of those songs must be pretty hard.

Lillie: Right. Definitely.

Did you have any trouble on specific songs?

Lillie: Never. There were some songs where I kinda lay out in, or lay out on, that I feel like a fiddle is not necessarily necessary. A couple of the blues numbers or something where it’s kinda like, “Eh, I’ll let you guys have this one”.

And you got to play that beautiful acoustic guitar of Jack’s sometimes.

Lillie: I wish I got to play it more often. I love playing guitar onstage, it’s my favorite. But when we’re not playing all the time, he’s always generous with his guitars. He lets anyone play them.

There was a joke he made onstage about the difference between a fiddle and a violin. You told him a fiddle has “strangs”.

Lillie: Yeah. [laughs] Because of the southern accent.

Another one I saw about that difference, is that you wouldn’t spill beer on a violin.

Lillie: [laughs] I always say: the difference between a fiddle and the violin is the paycheck. [laughs]

Yup.

Lillie: Yup.

Do you ever feel like you guys challenge Jack sometimes, or is just him challenging you?

Lillie: Huh, I’ve never thought about that. No, I don’t think so. I never thought about him challenging me much either [laughs].

Did you ever get a chance to get bored on stage?

Lillie: No, never. Never bored. That’s the only place I feel comfortable. That’s the only time I’m myself, and it’s just never long enough for me. The sets are always too short, for me.

Do you have any fuck-up tales to tell me?

Lillie: There are lots of them. Almost every night we play a song we’ve never heard before. Or a piece of a song, or something. The song we played with Robert Plant, we’d never played that [in full] before.

[I tell her Dominic’s fuck-up story]

Lillie: But he would often break out songs I wasn’t familiar with.

But you’re all on the same boat, it’s not like anyone has an advantage, right?

Lillie: Totally. The only reason some may… like, Dominic, because he grew up with Jack, he would know those earlier songs when I wouldn’t, because he was around when Jack wrote them, I guess.

Do you miss being on tour already?

Lillie: Absolutely. I’m gonna miss it for a long time. I can’t wait to go back on tour no matter what. I grew up on the road, we lived in a motorhome. I’m gonna miss the people, the crew. If I’m ever on a big tour again, it’s gonna be a long time, and I may never see half of those people that we were working with again, who knows. You never know. It’s definitely gonna be missed. It’s a family that you have for this long period of time, and then you come home and it’s like, “Where is everybody?”

Did you ever read any of the press surrounding the tour?

Lillie: Never. I never read anything.

Is it just because you don’t care or…

Lillie: I don’t care at all. I was there, I feel the way I felt about it, and that’s what’s important to me. I don’t care what somebody writes. I mean, it’s great if somebody writes me something, or says something to me, that’s awesome, I don’t mean to sound like I don’t care about that. I think that’s awesome, people have been very kind to me. As far as reviews go, I don’t read any of that stuff.

To be honest, I don’t think you’re missing much.

Lillie: If people get beat up about something you read, that’s terrible. You gotta be in the moment, whether the moment was good or bad. Some of my favorite shows were other people’s worst favorite. Like Bonnaroo, everyone loved that and had a great time, but I hated it, that was one of my least favorite shows we ever did. But that’s because of my own personal shit, I was going through something that day. And that was everybody’s favorite show. [laughs] You have your memories of how things went, and keep them the way you remember.

Even just watching gigs, I can feel how the outside stuff changes the experience.

Lillie: Absolutely. It’s like anything. If you’re in a relationship and you’re having relationship problems, and you take advice from your family, versus somebody you’ve never met before, your family is gonna be on your side. Just listening to somebody else’s opinion, you gotta have your own first.

So, what was your favorite gig?

Lillie: Aw. [laughs] You know what, not my favorite evening, but one of my favorite shows was the last one we did in Mexico.

The last one with Ikey?

Lillie: Yeah, that was an especially awesome show. It was great, I had so much energy, I was so happy that day. It was just a fucking awesome show, everyone had a great show. I had so much fun that day, and I remember that show being a favorite. But also, everyone thought it was going to be a bad day, because it didn’t sell a lot of tickets. I mean, for a Jack White concert. They had to keep closing off sections of the building because they didn’t sell that many tickets, but it ended up being awesome. I also had a lot of fun at the Nashville show we did, playing with Loretta Lynn, that was really a great time. But there’s been too many, they’re all fun.

[If you had said Brazil, I would’ve been suspicious]

Lillie: We played so few shows on that trip. I was like, “Damn, we gotta play more, we’ve been here two and a half weeks and we’ve played like three shows”. [laughs] Are you from there?

Yes, but not from Sao Paulo.

Lillie: Ok. Right on.

About the gig in Mexico, Daru was telling me that the day preceding the gig was special, that a lot of cool things were happening to you. He didn’t get into any specific though.

Lillie: Yeah, those were an especially great couple of days. And it was weird, there were all kind of things that were just lining up in weird ways, you know. Ikey was happy as could be, he really loved Mexico. We had a couple great conversations that day, he and I had stepped outside to smoke a few times. We always talked, we were good buddies. Now, there was one thing that was funny: on the way home, from the gig to the hotel, we were in a van, everyone was in conversation, Ikey was being extra-loud, and he was hilarious, he was being really funny and opinionated [laughs]. As always. But we were talking about some religious stuff, because he was a Jehovah’s witness growing up. And… you know, there was definitely a religious conversation that happened, that was, you know, but… anyway. I don’t know, there were a lot of things that kinda panned out in weird ways.

So, playing with Ikey, what was it like?

Lillie: It was amazing. I loved that guy so much. He was one of the most supportive people I’ve ever met, in a lot of ways, but as far as just being yourself, as far as music, women in music. He supported women in music more than anyone I’ve ever met in my life — well, him and Jack too. With them, it’s not even spoken of, it’s just a line. The rest of the world talks about it, they just believe that you’re fucking able to do anything that anyone’s able to do. But Ikey always… it was awesome, I loved playing with him. I got a lot from him. He’d just look over and grin at you, like “right on” [laughs]. The tour before Mexico, Ikey and I always smoked together. Before the show he called me up and we got behind these porta-potties, and he told me… There’s a part in this song when I sing a little bit, and he knew me, and I’m very insecure, although I’m confident at times. And as bad as I wanna go for it, I don’t go for it, I hold back. And he just told me that, “You gotta go for it, you have to, just break loose!” He was so encouraging. And I never went for it [laughs]. But I wanted to. But he was always encouraging.

I guess he always went for it more…

Lillie: …more than anyone, absolutely. More than anyone I know. He wasn’t scared of anything, he just did it. What the fuck have you got to lose, you know?

[I mention how I would’ve liked to talk to Ikey]

Lillie: Yeah, it’s too weird. His brother just passed away too, I don’t know if you heard about that. I can’t imagine what his mother and his other brother are going through. It’s not right, it ain’t supposed to happen. But I guess it is, because everything happens the way it does.

Yup. So, your solo album, I’ve been listening to it.

Lillie: Right on, that’s cool. Thank you.

Sorry I didn’t pay for it.

Lillie: [laughs] Thank you for listening to it. It’s been a few years that I started recording it, even though it’s just released. I have so much new stuff, I can’t wait to put something else out already.

What do you have planned?

Lillie: Well, I’ll be playing with my family quite a bit. But I’m gonna have to set a tour here real soon, record a new album, and just hit the road. That’s all I know how to do, so…

Any closing comments on the band and the tour?

Lillie: Uh, I’m lucky to be a part of it, I guess. [laughs]

I guess that’s as good as I can get.

Lillie: [laughs]

Well, I hope I haven’t taken up too much of your time.

Lillie: Not at all, I don’t, this is all that I have to do today. I have a lot of cleaning to do. That’s what happens at home, all the rockstar bullshit goes out the window. Gonna walk the dogs and move some dressers.

You get to feel like a human being again, right?

Lillie: Totally. I mean, it’s real life, but it’s also fantasy land on tour. Riding on a bus, these fancy backstage areas, it’s fucking fantasy land, it’s not real life. When I leave a dressing room messy or something, I always feel like I gotta clean it up.