If these letters to you have seemed like they are all about transitions lately it’s because I am still in very much a transitory state. My buddy Sha he says whenever he travels it’s like he leaves behind a deactivated body which on return must be powered up again. Please imagine robot motions.
I listened to a podcast a few days ago in which Jack White talked about recording his first solo album. Unlike the more collaborative process of playing in a band, here he was orchestrating the music for the first time. Seven or eight session musicians would come in and stand there waiting for him to tell them what to do. He’d choose the musicians on the morning of, call and ask can so-and-so come and play drums:
What I love about that is, oh that drummer’s out of town, he’s playing a gig – now the whole situation is totally arbitrary and now we can create something out of that … You do get in these scenarios where you use somebody I would not have normally used and it’s sort of like, all right, that guy’s only bluegrass and we’re going to put him on this rock and roll song and we’ll make it work; that wasn’t my first choice but now we can make something cool and usually it’s better that way.
