Over the last two weeks we’ve brought Jack White fans into the world of the Third Man Records nucleus, with a series of interviews featuring assorted members of his previous touring bands– the all-male Buzzards, and the all-female Peacocks, which were distilled into one formidable force for the Lazaretto tour last year. We dove deep on the process and pressures behind recording the albums, as well as getting into the band and preparing/rehearsing for the musically acrobatic experience of touring with one of the most prolific songwriters of our time.
Today we continue with part three of our four-part series, this time focusing on the wild ride of playing with a high-level musician who refuses to use a setlist, who’s known to make up songs on the spot, or transform one song into another – or two others – with maniacal bravado. We also discuss the sudden, heartbreaking loss of keyboardist Ikey Owens, remembering a beloved fixture of the band who played with The Mars Volta, Free Moral Agents and more before serving as a cornerstone color man for White’s wildly ambitious onstage productions.
We were happy to speak to members Dominic John Davis (bass), Daru Jones (drums), Fats Kaplin (lap steel / theremin), Lillie Mae Rische (violin / vocals), and Cory Younts (mandolin / harmonica) all of which were featured on both of Jack White’s solo LPs and accompanying tours, and singer Ruby Amanfu, who was around for the first tour cycle but is now about to launch a solo record of her own.
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PLAYING LIVE
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.
You just played a song together you’d never played before? 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”. 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. It took a little while to figure 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.
A lot of the songs really come to life in a different way with the six-piece.
Dominic: 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.
You toured with him for over two years. 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.
Although you really never have a setlist, did you know what you were going to play before the TV performances?
Lillie: Absolutely not. [laughs]
Not even that?
Lillie: No. No, sir, never.
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 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.
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.
Those final acoustic gigs that you did, just how different were they?
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 special to fans.
Lillie: It was unexpected for everyone. They just came up with it like the day before, and decided to do it.
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.
It seems that on the last tour Lillie Mae 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.
I noticed how much he gestures to you as well.
Lillie: Yeah. 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.
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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.
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: 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, 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.
Cory Younts: 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: 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.
What was the last gig you did with Ikey like?
Lillie: 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. 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. 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.
Can you summarize the experience of playing with Ikey?
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?
Read the entire “On Road & Record” interview series with Jack White’s band.
Photos by David James Swanson via JackWhiteIII
