JACK LAWRENCE of THE DEAD WEATHER tells ALASDAIR DUNCAN all about his friendship with Jack White, his love of adopted city Nashville, and his band’s forthcoming second album.

A little over a year ago, Alison Mosshart of The Kills, Dean Fertita of Queens Of The Stone Age, Jack Lawrence of The Raconteurs and Jack White of just about every guitar band of the last few years convened at White’s own Third Man Studios in Nashville for a impromptu jam session. At most, they were planning to get together for a laugh and maybe record a one-off 7-inch single together, but the group hit it off so well that, twelve short months later, they have made two albums as The Dead Weather, and are showing few signs of slowing down.

“I think it’s just the chemistry that goes on between us,” bass player Jack Lawrence tells me, attempting to explain the bonds that keep the band together. “We respect each other as musicians, and we all have a similar drive for music, and to create. We all have other stuff going on – Alison right now is doing another Kills record as well as this. That we find time to do The Dead Weather must be out of some love of art and music and each other. We were thinking about the second album before we were even done touring the first, which usually doesn’t happen, unless you’re really truly dedicated to something.”

Lawrence and White have been friends since long before The Dead Weather – their association goes back to the late ‘90s, when Lawrence was playing in Cincinnati band The Greenhorns, and would make frequent visits to White’s home town of Detroit. “Detroit wasn’t very far away, maybe four hours, so we started heading up there a lot, and playing shows with a band called The Henchmen,” he says. “They were friends with Jack and they told him he should come check this band out from Cincinnati, and we just hit it off right away – we stayed at his house that night, I think we had a party. Ever since then, we’ve gotten together to work on stuff. If he needs a bass player, he calls me.”

The pair solidified their friendship several years ago, when they left their respective cities to settle in Nashville, Tennessee. The home of country music was surprisingly welcoming to the two scruffy garage rockers, who quickly established homes for themselves there. “I’ve been living in Nashville for going on five years now,” Lawrence says. “Jack and I recorded Loretta Lynn’s Van Lear Rose album down here, and I think both of us just felt an attraction to the city and its history. I like the people of Nashville a lot. They’re laid-back, and a lot of them are musicians, so it’s not a big deal if you play music loudly in your apartment. I just like the feel of it.”

According to Lawrence, the southern food in Nashville is also tremendously appealing. “If you ever come here and want to eat, there a really good meat ‘n three in town called Arnold’s,” he says. “I don’t know if you know what those are – I didn’t until I moved down here, but they’re cafeterias, and they serve one meat and three sides of your choice.” The menu features roast beef and fried chicken, with sides including mac & cheese, cornbread and sautéed vegetables, and sounds, I have to say, pretty tremendous. “If you come on a trip to Nashville, you should definitely go to Arnold’s,” Lawrence says. “Then you should come check out Third Man Records.”

The Third Man label, founded by Jack White, is home to The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather and The White Stripes, and the headquarters in Nashville are as old-fashioned as it gets. “There’s a store in front which has records from all the Third Man bands and any of the other 45s they’ve put out,” Lawrence tells me. “We have some items we’ve sold on tour, like posters and t-shirts and strange merch items, like Raconteurs stylophones. The whole place is open to the public from 12 to 4 on Monday to Saturday, and anybody who wants to can come in.”

There is more to see at Third Man than the record store, though. “You walk down the hall and there’s a shipping room, where all the shipping gets done,” Lawrence says. “There are a few offices where the employees work and a lounge where we do a lot of interviews. Towards the back, there’s one of those infinity walls where people stick photos up, and a stage where bands can play. There’s also a photo lab back there – a dark room. It’s pretty much all done there.”

“Third Man feels like a family,” Lawrence continues.  “It’s pretty much all friends that work there, and Jack built it up from nothing. I appreciate it, and I think anyone would appreciate the time and effort that he’s put into the details. It’s nice to be a part of it. We played our first show there as The Dead Weather; I’ve packed up records and shipped them out from there, which is pretty neat. We’ve probably shipped records to you in Australia!”

Speaking of records, it’s probably only fair that I ask Lawrence about Dead Weather’s forthcoming second album – recorded over a three-week period, it has been through mastering, and the only thing left for the band to do is decide on the artwork and title. “It’s different from the first one in that that was us playing for the first time together, and what you hear on tape is us getting to know each other,” Lawrence tells me. “In the early days, we really didn’t even know when we went in who was going to play what instruments. We wrote a lot of the songs for this one when we were on tour together – it’s a bit of a different album, but it still has that blues sound to it.”

 Lawrence tells me that the new songs are “a little soulful”, and might even include some touches of R&B. It also includes a song called Jawbreaker, which features the sound of an actual jaw breaking, though not in the way you might expect. “When we were recording the song, one of the assistant engineers came in and he had a donkey’s jawbone that he used for percussion,” Lawrence tells me. “When you hit it with your hand, the cheek would vibrate, and it had a really cool sound to it. He’d had it for a few years and used it on a lot of our sessions. He brought it in when we were mixing this song called Jawbreaker, and when he hit it that time, it fell apart and broke. I think he should have known better than to bring it in that day!”

The Dead Weather’s first single, Hang You From The Heavens, included a bracingly weird cover of Gary Numan’s synth pop track Are Friends Electric?, and I wonder if the band have any similar covers planned for this time around. “We might start thinking about that right before the Australian tour,” Lawrence says, “but there’s nothing yet. We played a lot when we were touring our first record, because we didn’t have enough songs to fill the time slots we were given. There maybe won’t be as many this time around because we have a whole new album’s worth of material.”

THE DEAD WEATHER play The Tivoli on Tuesday Mar 23; tickets are available through Ticketek. Check out www.thedeadweather.com for more.

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