Murder Ballads and Southern Grooves: The Raconteurs are Back

When Jack White was writing "Carolina Drama," the murder ballad that closes the Raconteurs' new album, Consolers of the Lonely, he got some songwriting advice from a friend. In the tune, a young boy named Billy kills his mother's boyfriend, and White was worried that the name Billy was played out. "It's in 'Billy, Don't Be a Hero' and 'Ode to Billie Joe,' and Dylan used it in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," says White. So White — who has performed with Dylan at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium — asked the legend what he should do: "Dylan said I should change the name to Eddie." (Dylan was joking.)

At Stubb's Bar-B-Q in Austin in early May, the song — from the band's follow-up to 2006's Broken Boy Soldiers — is a live highlight. Backstage before the show, White lifts the blinds in the dressing room to let the sunshine in. "It's such a beautiful day," he says. The other Raconteurs — co-songwriter, singer and guitarist Brendan Benson, drummer Patrick Keeler and bassist "Little" Jack Lawrence — are equally psyched. After they scrambled in March to release Consolers just a week after announcing it was finished, touring is the payoff.

"I'm tired of living in constant fear from record companies about how to release an album," says White. "Putting it out first digitally, explaining a record that no one's heard yet, giving away something on iTunes, doing an AOL Live session — all that stupid shit." Adds Benson, "What's so funny about it is that it's the simplest concept, and people are flipping out about it."

The quartet — "who each have the same big record collections," says Keeler — are made up of two pairs of old friends. Keeler and Lawrence — of the Cincinnati garage-rock trio the Greenhornes — have been playing together since 1995, when they were teenagers, and can communicate a rhythmic shift onstage with a simple glance. Benson has known White since he saw the White Stripes perform their very first gig, in 1999 at Detroit's Gold Dollar. "In the scene we were in, a lot of things were considered uncool," says White. "Caring too much was at the top of the 'uncool list.' I thought Brendan was the only person in town who seemed to care about songwriting and craftsmanship." (White plans to continue splitting his time between his new band and the White Stripes. "The Raconteurs and the White Stripes share an equal part of my heart," he says.)

White recruited the Greenhornes' rhythm section to record with him on Loretta Lynn's killer 2004 comeback album, Van Lear Rose. Shortly after those sessions, the group collaborated on "Steady, As She Goes," a tune that White and Benson had written together. "The song sounded different from all our other bands," says Keeler. Lawrence remembers thinking to himself, "OK, this is going to be big." Lawrence and Keeler are both relieved to finally be in a financially successful band. "I was thinking the other day, 'I have holes in my shoes, and I've got to buy another pair,' " says Lawrence. "Then I realized, 'Oh, wait, I've got enough money to go to the store and buy some shoes!' Sometimes I forget — we've been scraping by for 10 years."

"Steady, As She Goes" became the new group's first single, and they gigged heavily behind Broken Boy Soldiers — recorded in Benson's attic in Detroit. It was on those tours that White and Benson began hatching the songs that would end up on Consolers. "We've never come to each other or the band with a finished song," says White, who splits songwriting credits with Benson. "Pushing each other is stimulating and pushes us in directions we wouldn't normally go." The title track, for example, is three different songs pieced together.

Studio work on Consolers of the Lonely — the title is taken from an inscription on the Old Post Office building in Washington, D.C. — began in March 2007 at Nashville's Blackbird Studio. "We had about three weeks, and I wanted to get as much on tape before I had to leave for the White Stripes' [Icky Thump] tour," White says. (The band members — who all followed White to Nashville when he moved there three years ago — later reconvened to finish the disc.) The Ennio Morricone-inspired "Switch and the Spur" and the horn-fueled "Many Shades of Black" add more layers on the Raconteurs' retro-rock base — although they are still willing to go deep into classic-rock territory, as with their cover of Terry Reid's "Rich Kid Blues." "When we finished it, we were thinking, 'Wow, this really plays into people thinking that we're some kind of Seventies retro band,' " White says. "But we threw all that aside — we just thought that the song was beautiful."

Over two nights at Stubb's, the Raconteurs are firing on all cylinders. Keeler has a bit of John Bonham in him, throwing his body into every hit. On "Many Shades of Black," Lawrence keeps up, closing his eyes to harmonize with Benson, whose rhythmic guitar work lays the foundation for White to rip out a devastating solo. After the show, the bandmates lavish each other with warm embraces.

In a bigger sense, White finds it comforting to have the Raconteurs around — both on the road and at home. "Detroit had become like an iron-maiden sort of torture device," he says. "I couldn't breathe anymore in that scene. The musical environment in the South has always been supportive — that's where all the greatest music is from. There, you don't have to be ashamed of being ambitious, or to let on that you care."

[From Issue 1054 — June 12, 2008]