BonosLil'Pal94
ONE love, blood, life
^which festival?
and that would be great to have the Raconteurs open
and that would be great to have the Raconteurs open
BonosLil'Pal94 said:^which festival?
and that would be great to have the Raconteurs open
The White Stripes' first single, 'Icky Thump', will be available exclusively online through the iTunes music stores (US and Canada only) starting at 12:01 am this Thursday, April 26th.
inmyplace13 said:"Icky Thump" is like "The Denial Twist" on acid.
No, on speed.
Nah. On steroids.
cdisantis83 said:My anticipation for this album is nearly boiling over at this point.
We love you, Iqaluit!
Jack White explains why the White Stripes decided to tour every province and territory in Canada
GUY DIXON
In their eccentric way, the White Stripes have already won over Canada without playing a note.
When the American alt-roots, blues-rock superstars announced their summer tour last week, with an itinerary including such unlikely stops as Thunder Bay, Glace Bay, N.S., and Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, the decision struck a power chord with fans on Internet message boards.
But for guitarist Jack White, who lives in Nashville and originally formed the bare-bones duo with drummer Meg White in Detroit, it's all about trying something new, booking agents be damned. The rationale for the tour? The band's sixth album Icky Thump is coming out June 19, and Jack and Meg always like to mix things up. They had never done a full Canadian tour. So why not now? Simple as that.
"I told them when I handed in the album and we started talking about touring, I said, 'Before anybody starts getting any ideas, this time we're doing a solo tour of Canada, and I will not take no for an answer.' I put my foot down before anyone even mentioned any shows we were going to play," Jack said on the phone from a Nashville studio, where he's recording the second album for his side project as a member of the Raconteurs.
"I told our tour manager and our manager, 'I want to play in every province and territory in Canada, and I want you guys to call up people and make sure that if we're going to do it, we're going to do it. I don't want to come home and say, well, we technically didn't play every province because we didn't play Prince Edward Island or something like that.' You know what I mean?"
When you're as big as the White Stripes, you can make an idea like that happen. Beginning June 24 at Deer Lake Park in Burnaby, B.C., hitting Canadian cities big and small, and ending on July 16 at the Mile One Centre in St. John's, the itinerary suits the band. And they'll likely turn up looking less like American Apparel outcasts and more like the Mariachi Goths they are today.
"There's a selfish pleasure that me and Meg will get from seeing these places we've always wanted to see, while we're at work," he added. "There's that side of it. But as far as the novelty side, I look more at it as a challenge. Why do bands not go to out-of-the-way places? Because it's hard.
"When you don't take the easy way out, something interesting happens. Maybe we'll have the best show of our lives in Nunavut. Maybe it'll be a disaster, who knows?"
In the White Stripes' early touring days in the late 1990s, the U.S.-Canadian border and distances between Canadian cities proved too much of a barrier. It's a reality Canadian bands know all too well. "We found it difficult back in the day when we were just touring around in a van. So we never had a chance to do it. Now, finally, let's do one. For God's sake, how many albums do we have to put out before we do a tour of Canada?
"I want to push to see how far we can go with it. Okay, we've never done a tour of Canada. Well, let's not take the easy way out and just play all the major cities. You play Winnipeg, Manitoba. What about the guys who live 200 miles north or whatever? I always think that if I lived in the Northwest Territories or the Yukon, it would be nice if bands came here once in a while."
The duo's ruckus blues meets angular post-grunge makes for a loud show, but it suits small venues, with Jack emoting a band-load of heaviness from his six-string and the deceptively lithe Meg banging on her drums. Nevertheless, they regularly play gigs double the size of Iqaluit's total population of 6,000. In 2005, the band headlined Britain's Glastonbury Festival in front of more than 100,000. That track record makes the smaller Canadian dates all the more novel.
"A booking agent's job is to see how big a place you can play. If a band can play a 20,000-seat place, it's kind of ridiculous in a business sense to put them in a 3,000-seat theatre. [But] we have always not seen eye to eye with booking agents on our tours, because we're not looking at it from that standpoint," Jack said with Southern matter-of-factness.
"There's nothing worse than a band who has corporate sponsorship, who comes through town and plays the same set every night wherever they go, and they play it [the music] just like it is on the album. We want to do a tour where we go places we've never been before. We play a different set every night. We don't have a set list in this band, and we play venues that people don't normally play and see what happens. That's a lot more interesting to me."
Remember this is a group that kicked off its last major tour in South America, where White Stripes albums can be a rare commodity and a world away from music-biz hubs such as New York or London. In typical fashion, Jack takes inspiration for all this from the past.
Elvis Presley never toured outside of the United States except for a few dates in Canada. The excuse Presley gave the press was that if he played one European country, for instance, it wouldn't be fair to the others and he'd wind up having to play them all.
"In the same sense, you say to yourself, if you're going to play every province, you're going to have to play every province," Jack added with a laugh.