How Jack, Jack, Brendan and Patrick Became the Raconteurs

Here are my liner notes for the Raconteurs "Live at Montreux" DVD. I figure no one is crazy enough to buy the whole thing just to read what I have to say, so here it is in its entirety.        

         For a band whose every move has been overly documented since the instant their existence was known, there's still a large part of the Raconteurs story that's largely untold.

While Jack White was at the time the most well-known musician amongst the self-proclaimed "new band made up of old friends,” it is oftentimes overlooked that Benson had the earlier success.  His impressive debut album, One Mississippi, was released on Virgin Records in 1996. Benson supported the likes of the Wallflowers, saw his song "Insects Rule" covered by the Foo Fighters and even enjoyed a successful tour of Japan all before the White Stripes would play their first live show.

Benson moved back to his hometown of Detroit in 1998 after a stint living in California and soon met (and hit it off with) White. Brendan was the first artist to ever cover the White Stripes when he performed “Sugar Never Tasted So Good” at the Magic Stick in Detroit on November 27^th, 1998.

At that same time, Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler were barnstorming the Midwest as the rhythm section in the Cincinnati-based act the Greenhornes, quickly making a name for themselves as the nation's premier garage/soul band. It was a given then that all future Raconteurs would know each other by the release of the Greenhornes debut album Gun For You in May of 1999, but that it would take until 2004 for them all to collaborate was almost odd given the collabo-happy times they were enjoying.

There were previous pairings of the friends that would happen first. White and Benson did a one-off performance together (doing songs each had written) at the Garden Bowl in Detroit on March 14^th, 1999 and recorded demos of songs like "Now Mary" and "You've Got Her in Your Pocket" in Brendan's attic later that spring. Benson would later appear in the documentary Detroit Rock Movie performing "…Pocket" while the White Stripes would begin to cover Brendan's "Good to Me" live in the fall of '99 and released their version in 2003.

Benson and White also performed together in the short-lived and posthumously-named Jack White and the Bricks along with Kevin Peyok (the Waxwings) on bass and Ben Blackwell (the Dirtbombs) on drums. While they only existed for a handful of shows in the summer/fall of '99, their first performance was actually opening for the Greenhornes on the Garden Bowl Lanes on July 9th…White's 24^th birthday.

With a set comprising mainly of songs written by White that had yet to be appropriated by the White Stripes, the Bricks were never a serious concern to any of its participants. The band is only really remembered because of a decent audience recording (easily found online) made live at the Gold Dollar in Detroit on September 16, 1999.

Come September 2002, the White Stripes were personally selected by Jeff Beck to serve as backing band on songs from his Yardbirds era in a career spanning 40^th anniversary concert at London's Royal Festival Hall. Needing a bass player to fill out the group, the Stripes tapped Jack Lawrence for the spot and the result was an unqualified success, as the YouTube videos will attest.

By August 2003,White had Keeler and Lawrence serve as the rhythm section for the sessions that would yield Loretta Lynn's universally acclaimed Van Lear Rose. Released in April 2004, the album would go on to win two Grammy's and found White, Lawrence and Keeler backing Lynn for performances on The Today Show and The Late Show with David Letterman. It would also seemingly be the last necessary step before all members of the Raconteurs would finally play together.

In the summer of 2004 Benson, recording in the attic of his grand Detroit home, was stuck on an uncompleted lyric of  “Find yourself a girl and settle down, live a simple life in a quiet town.” Good friend, neighbor and occasional musician White came up with the fitting conclusion and de facto song title, “Steady as she goes.” Slide in Keeler and Lawrence as the best bassist and drummer around and it all fits together like pieces to a musical puzzle…while they'd all been knocking about in the same space for years, they were finally locked-in together in the right configuration.

The sessions in Benson's attic at 419 E Grand Boulevard (a house that at most recent check was boarded-up) yielded the ten tracks that would serve as their debut album Broken Boy Soldiers. During overdubs White managed to lay down a demo of "As Ugly As I Seem" which would later make its way into the Stripes' repertoire.

 With all songs written and produced by the White/Benson pairing, the album was more-or-less finished by the beginning of 2005. The fact it wouldn't see release for over a year was understandable as '05 saw the White Stripes release Get Behind Me Satan, the Greenhornes East Grand Blues and Benson The Alternative to Love. Each album was accompanied by extensive touring.  The bulk of the Stripes' dates had the Greenhornes as openers while Benson opened a handful as well.

        

The Raconteurs' first live performance was an unplanned occurrence on October 1^st, 2005. The event was a private party held in White's home at 1731 Seminole in Detroit's Indian Village and followed a Stripes concert at the Masonic Temple. While the Greenhornes served as the planned entertainment, with all four members in attendance it didn't take much urging to get the Raconteurs playing. White's house, where …Satan was recorded, was less than a mile from the attic where …Soldiers was recorded.

         White moved to Nashville in December 2005 and it wasn't long before the rest of the Raconteurs were rehearsing in his living room (footage of which is viewable on Third Man Records' Vault fan club), pulling up their stakes and moving there too.

The public wouldn't hear music from the Racs until XL Records released 1000 copies of the 7" single of "Steady, As She Goes" in January 2006. Their public live debut would come a few months later on March 20^th, 2006 in Liverpool, England but from there, the rest of the story has already been told.

I Remember that dog...

I wrote this nine years ago for a website called Swizzle Stick that seems to be long gone. Today seemed like one of those perfect limbo pre-summer days that I remember fondly in the piece.

I remember that dog’s “Totally Crushed Out” because the album came at a transitional period in my tender youth.  I had seen the band open for the Foo Fighters on March 30^th, 1996 and was non-plussed.  Granted, it was the first live show I’d ever attended, but I think I was overly-anxious to see the guy who used to be in Nirvana.

Two months later and I was different.  It was an awkward time…I’d finished 8^th grade and we were done with school a good two weeks before the rest of school.  Hanging around at this time was a strange, unknown pleasure of nothing to do during school-hour weekdays.  Ordering pizzas in the middle of the day, riding bikes down streets we’d never been, perpetually throwing water balloons…me and this motley group of rag-tag others lived as unchallenged kings in our own four square block stomping ground.

Be we did other shit too.  I’d dyed my hair forest green…only to have it fade that same day in a gruesome shaving cream fight.  The rest of the summer was spent with faint pea green locks atop my head.  We’d gotten unusually obsessed with the Anarchist’s Cookbook, but all being under-18 were unable to purchase said text from the local head shop.

So we improvised.  We had a general idea of what a Molotov cocktail was made of, so the Snapple bottle was filled with lighter fluid with a paper towel hanging out of the top.  We lit the paper towel and sat there, basking in the pyromania that most twelve-year-old boys go through.  I’d say the flames got a little over my waist, so at that time, about three feet tall.  We never seemed panicked or worried or scared…someone simply filled a kitchen pot with water and doused our sorry excuse for overthrowing the government.  The concrete on that spot had actually been bleached a bright white from our actions and would remain so until we tore up the backyard six years later.

But behind all this pre-pubescent machismo, that same fucking day, I rode my bike to the Harmony House and spent what felt like an eternity trying to decide between that dog and the Vaselines.  The Vaselines album had the originals of three songs that Nirvana had covered and was on Sub Pop to boot and was so terribly hip and tempting.  But I kept coming back to that dog.  Something about the cover drawn to look like a teen romance novel or the no short of brilliant use of all the song titles in a well-written, coherent paragraph on the back cover was all too much.  I was secretly scared that some suburban youth would come and buy “Totally Crushed Out”, having witnessed the same mediocre opening performance for the Foo Fighters I had, and I would never find the album again.  I bought that dog and came back a few days later for the Vaselines.

The songs on “Totally Crushed Out” are heartbreaking stories of lost love, missed chances, the “what could have been?” which is totally what leaving eighth grade is all about.   It made sense to me, but not too quickly.  As I grew, I kept finding myself coming back to the record…it never aged and always seemed to equate to that particular moment in my life that I happened to be living.

After meeting Anna Waronker, she told me that she thought of that dog as an art band…the whole thing being a kind of art project.  And I thought that a little queer.  “Totally Crushed Out”, a masterpiece that I revered as highly as any Beatles or Stones effort, was almost shrugged off by its inceptor as a one-off art thingy.  I prided myself on telling her that it meant so much more to me and she was flattered.

So what I think of when I think of “Totally Crushed Out” is the confusing time at the end of my pre-teens, my stupid ugly green hair with the stink of lighter fluid still fresh on my hands and the squeak of bicycle breaks humming in my head, partaking in some psuedo rite of passage with a bunch of other hormone-addled freaks, and later, in secret, hoping that no one would find me out, listening to this “pop” album and feeling utter bliss and confusion and ecstasy and bewilderment.  I liked the album so much that I was scared.  “Totally Crushed Out” made a difference in this poor white boy’s life.

Even More Items I Didn't Win on eBay

1. I'd never seen the Atlantic promo sleeve with the MC5 pic on it before. Strangely enough it's a photo from the band's time on Elektra records. Not crazy enough to spend any more dough on.
2. Detroit-area garage single I didn't even know existed. Somewhat happy I did not win.
3. Detroit-area girl-band single I didn't know existed. Definitely happy I did not win. Probably sucks.
4. I'm slowly trying to acquire big time Detroit rap titles for the archive. Found out late in the game this was erroneously listed as an original pressing and withdrew my bid. Glad I did not win, but not willing to spend $8500 asking price on Discogs for an OG.
5. Was able to grab the Friars' other single, but this one NEVER turns up. Probably should've bid a little more. Bummed I did not win.
6. I'm a sucker for the Correc-Tone label. And an instrumental with a title like "Monkey Whip"...how could you go wrong?
7. Another big-time Detroit rap title. I still need this one...badly. Hook a honkey up...someone.
8. I think I've lost the last 3 auctions for L.S.D. How in the hell? Do you think these guys ever even tried LSD? Probably.
9. Private press, Michigan psych-folk...I've been known to take a chance on the genre before. Anything more than that $$ is beyond my level of interest and enjoyment of the genre.

Some observations...all of these titles are Detroit/Michigan records. Yeah, shit's serious. Three rap 12"s. I was the second-highest bidder on all but three of the auctions. I like my bid amounts to repeat numbers or patterns. In the same amount of time I won auctions for nine records that cost me a combined total of $277.79.

			Bids	Price
1.		MC5 SHAKIN STREET US PROMO ATLANTIC PICTURE SLEEVE PUN... Your max bid: $111.11	6	$113.61 Free shipping
2.		The Fyrebirds Strange / I'm So Lonely 45 vg++ Universal S... Your max bid: $111.11	9	$168.50 + $2.15 shipping
3.		Garage 45, Pleetas on Diamond Jim, rare Detroit girl gara... Your max bid: $44.44	4	$45.44 + $3.00 shipping
4.		EMINEM - INFINITE LP Original Rare Detroit Dr. Dre Your max bid: $404.44	6	$164.09 + $4.00 shipping
5.		FRIARS OF YOUTH Sparrleyy Manurpus MONSTER Michigan FUZZ ... Your max bid: GBP 233.33	15	GBP 238.33 $386.98 See description
6.		MOD R&B TITTYSHAKER - MONKEY WHIP - PACESETTERS - hear- l... Your max bid: $33.33	5	$34.33 + $4.00 shipping
7.		*** Mega rare DETROIT RAPP Various Artists Comp Jet Eye L... Your max bid: $232.92	13	$260.29 + $4.00 shipping
8.		L.S.D. It's Fresh 12" Rare Detroit Electro Rap Yellow Tig... Your max bid: $88.88	9	$89.88 + $4.00 shipping
9.		Rob Carr & Bill Kahl Communication 1 Grotesque 1970 Michi... Your max bid: $75.75	3	$76.75 Free shipping

Things We Left in the Fire

(This piece originally appeared in Boat Magazine in November 2011. They edited out the footnotes for some untold reason. Those are included here in all their resplendent glory.)

I was in Sweden on December 13^th 2008 when I got the phone call that my mom's house caught on fire[1]. While I barely ever spent the night there, it was essentially where I lived, holding all my possessions and acting as the de facto headquarters of my label Cass Records.

It would be just short of a week before I was back home in the states to actually survey the scene. After dark on a cold December night, she opened the newly-added padlock, took a deep breath, looked at me and asked "Are you ready?"

What I didn't anticipate from the burned-out shell of the house I'd grown up in was how messy it would be. I expected shit to be burned, the acrid smell of the stale smoke and the general despair of the entire situation…but it's easy to forget that fire fighters tear up walls and bust holes in ceilings to control the conflagration. What results is an ungodly amount of stained dry wall, soggy insulation and every other sort of disemboweled housing material all over the place.

The combination of the flames from a candle left burning and the water sprayed to douse them destroyed all of my books, leaving literature littered all through the front room where I used to lay on my belly with feet flush up against the heating vent watching the 7am airing of SportsCenter before heading off for school.

In hindsight, I don't really miss the books and feel almost ashamed that I'd convinced my mom to go through rubble and compose a list of all the one's I'd lost. I've been very happy to discover that replacing my books has been far cheaper than replacing my records could ever be.

The awkward part of cleaning out a burned house is the uncertainty. It was immediately clear what stuff I wanted and needed to get out of there…records, musical equipment, all of my clothes. It was also self-evident what was garbage…all my books, the television with a melted plastic casing, all of the dishes except for my favorite ramen bowl (that was thankfully submerged in water in the sink during the ordeal). But things like artwork I'd trash-picked, participation trophies from grade school…all the STUFF that one accumulates in life is confusingly difficult to deal with.

You don't have the luxury of a proper "moving" like other folks do when they leave a residence. You are evacuating. When given the opportunity to return to the scene of the crime, you feel like shrugging your shoulders, "I got out already…do I really need any of this?"

I did shit like glued a Chet Lemon Starting Line-Up action figure to the front door, put a glow-in-the-dark skeleton (used in an 8^th grade science project) in my old bedroom window[2] and nailed a bass drum with "The Rolling Stones" written on the head to the roof. The whole situation was surreal to me so I did my best to have the structure echo my feelings[3].

On top of that was the frustration of the scum of the city breaking into the house and going through what was inside. A small, faux-historic childhood bank safe was pried open and freed of the $2 bill and bicentennial drummer boy quarters it contained. The next-door neighbors saw some guys walking out of the back door with an armful of busted drum cymbals and unusable hardware. Thankfully it seemed scrappers never got in there, but the fact that some absolutely soulless fuck took a shit in the middle of the living room was the ultimate low[4].

Approximately three months after the fire, I moved to Nashville to take my dream job of overseeing vinyl record production at Third Man Records. My mom was left with the task of the affairs of the house.

The building itself was not a complete loss. It did however suffer $90,000 worth of structural damage…mainly confined to the walls of the front room where the fire was and smoke damage everywhere else on the ground floor. The way insurance operates is they give you $70,000 to cover the structure and the balance of $20k if you actually decide to renovate.

My mom had no interest in renovation. When a 1989 Pontiac with a Blue Book value of no more than $500 was stolen from the driveway earlier that year she'd already pledged that she was done with Detroit. Having spent all 50+ years of her life in the city, she'd felt that she'd done her time. The fire merely hastened her exit and to some extent made it easier, as she was renting a cute little house in the bedroom community of Berkley by late January.

The peculiar thing about the check from the insurance company for $70k was that it was made out to my mom AND the bank[5] who held the mortgage. She couldn't do anything with that check without them. And in 2009, trying to deal with a mortgage company in regards to property in Detroit was the last thing you wanted to do.

Every person she talked to told her something different, contradicting and unaware of what folks all working for the same company were telling my mom at any given time. The charade went on for so long that the check actually expired and she was sent ANOTHER one by the ever-patient (and extremely easy to deal with) folks at Farmer's Insurance.

The other thing to know about the house is that she owed $100,000 on it and if the residence were in proper, livable condition (as it was before the fire) its estimated market value would be $50,000. It's pretty clearly stupid to spend $90,000 fixing a house that's only worth half that, just to spend another 20 years paying off that $100k.

So over TWO YEARS after the fire, my mom had negotiated with folks at the mortgage company to take ALL of the $70,000 and just consider the deal done. She'd be taxed on the $30k she never paid back and was fine with it. While the bank would be out $30k, in giving her the house they'd have their books clear of a place that was worth half the money it'd take to fix. She was fine with the responsibility of the house from that point, whether to sell it, bulldoze, whatever.

Once the mortgage folks received the check and deposited it, they told my mother that they'd changed their mind and that they were keeping the money and not giving her the house. To be fair, she stopped paying her mortgage once she'd stopped living in the house so it was technically a foreclosure. But I doubt any of the other thousands of foreclosures in Detroit at that time had a homeowner immediately willing to pay 70% of the total amount owed.

There was an unsuccessful foreclosure auction of the house in May of 2011. Just before that, my mom and I essentially broke into the house[6] for what I imagined would be my last time. I pulled some old speakers out of a cabinet in the basement, a box of multiple copies of the White Stripes' first cover appearance on the Metro Times and a handful of other inconsequential random things. I told mom I was fine if I never went back into the house.

But I think there are probably still some baseball cards and back issues of Sports Illustrated in the attic. I know I left hundreds of copies of the Int'l Shades cd I'd released in the basement. The cement walkway leading from the driveway to the house still has the impressions of my feet from when I was four months old. The kitchen door frame still displays the heights of me and my siblings as we grew over the years.

A friend of a friend has taken on mom's case in terms of pursuing legal action. Mom was ready to just walk away, to essentially let the bank steal the house out from under her, but I urged her to pursue it, to not let those ogres to just take the place away from her.

My stomach felt instantly nauseous when I opened an email from my mom that showed the house listed on a local Detroit real estate website for the paltry sum of $5000. What was even more frustrating was that being in the middle of saving up to buy a house in Nashville (where shit is pricey) made that amount seem so insignificant. I could've bought it instantly. I wanted to buy it instantly. If I was 21-years-old I probably would've.

But I'm old enough to know about property tax (in Detroit, exorbitant) and can't imagine that I personally want to be responsible for a burned out building in the city. It's embarrassing. My mom's words on the whole foreclosure ordeal are short but to the point "It could've been so simple."

While researching for this article, the folks from Boat sent photos of the house as it stands as of October 2011. The front door has been replaced with an out-of-place stained wood with oval-shaped glass center. Friends in the neighborhood were under the impression that someone was living there. A quick search of real estate records show it sold for over $7000 in July of 2011.

While the twinge of discomfort I feel is only slightly belied by the fact that someone, somehow sees promise in the building, the way we got to that point is nothing but absolutely disgusting. For a city that has lost over a million people in the past few decades, too many folks' memories of Detroit are tied-up in empty lots or burned-out buildings. There were five people living in that house in the year 2000. They've all left the city now. It seems that my family's memories (both good and bad) will be encased in that house forever. I just wish it all didn't end on such a sour note.

---

[1] For my thoughts and feelings about this at the time it happened, check my blog at

http://trembleunderboomlights.blogspot.com/2009/01/atp-part-four-worst-possible-phone-call.html

[2] Before being shown photos of the house as it stands now, I'd forgotten that I'd put a Church of the Subgenius sticker on that same window.

[3] I did walk Heidelberg mastermind Tyree Guyton through the house in the summer of '09 and gave him free reign to take whatever he wanted. That was surreal in a positive way and I someday hope to see something that was once mine nailed to a tree as part of his art project

[4] Never mind having to clean it up, I was just disappointed in all the times as a kid when I sprinted to the bathroom at the first sign of a television commercial break only to come back having missed a joke on "Full House" or some other such pallid sitcom. If anyone should've gotten to take a shit in the living room it should've been me. Or maybe my brother.

[5] I specifically don't want to mention the name of this multi-billion dollar bank, mainly because I don't think they're above exacting retribution on me for writing this

[6] earlier in the year the bank tried to seize possession of the house by putting new locks on the charred door WITHOUT ever telling her. When my mom so very kindly reminded them that they didn't have that right she was overnighted a set of keys to the place. For some reason this day those keys did not work, while they had on previous occasions.