Third Man RecordsJack White may be a solo artist now, but his backing band is very involved in the recording process. In an interview with Crave, bassist Dominic John Davis gives a behind-the-scenes look at the recording of White's latest album, Lazaretto.
"The way he records though, there's not a lot of multi-tracking, a lot of things are sharing tracks," Davis explains. "So it kinda has to be quick, you can't really change it. There's no computer, we have 16 inputs to plug in, and only eight tracks. 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."
As for the album's title track, which won Best Rock Performance at this year's Grammys, Davis remembers that White and the band recorded the song before it ever had any lyrics.
"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," Davis says. "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."
White is currently taking a break from touring both with his solo band and his other projects. However he will be releasing a new album with The Dead Weather, called Dodge & Burn, this September.
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