No Name

​Jack White didn’t promote his new album. Didn’t do any interviews. No music videos. No TikToks. Two weeks before it was released on Spotify, his record store Third Man Records shipped free vinyl copies with every order. No explanation. Fans discovered it was his new album and eBay prices hit $1,000. He created mystery in an age of oversharing. Thirty years in, he delivered one of his best albums and vocal performances.

One Foot In The Light, One Foot In The Darkness

When Bruce Springsteen walks into the studio he’s not just recording. It is not about collecting songs. It is about becoming someone else. He steps into other lives, becomes the characters. The songs are the people he creates.

“My records are always the sound of someone trying to understand where to place his mind and heart. I imagine a life, I try it on, then see how it fits. I walk in someone else’s shoes, down the sunny and dark roads I’m compelled to follow but may not want to end up living on. It’s one foot in the light, one foot in the darkness, in pursuit of the next day.”

Navigating A Burning Ship

​Bob Dylan’s advice in Chronicles was to “sing like you’re navigating a burning ship.” I get that feeling from Jack White’s new album No Name. I get it from Darkness on the Edge of Town. But as I listen to the vocal from a song I wrote last November and re-recorded this week, it’s missing. The feeling that I had when I wrote the song isn’t there. I gotta find it, and sing like I’m on that ship again.

Talk to you next week,
Dawson