The Dead Weather

Formation and Horehound

When The Raconteurs were performing in Memphis, Tennessee, Jack White lost his voice and the band asked Alison Mosshart of The Kills with whom they were touring to fill in on some songs. She sang lead vocals on "Steady as She Goes" and "Salute Your Solution". White later asked her if she would record a song with him and Jack Lawrence. They met Dean Fertita at the studio and they ended up performing more than one song that night.

Ultimately they decided to form a band with Mosshart as their lead singer, Lawrence on bass, Fertita on guitar and keyboard and White on drums. White claims he wanted to play the drums in the band, having rediscovered drumming after playing on a kit on "Another Way to Die" with Alicia Keys. He had played drums as a child, and for Goober & the Peas before forming the White Stripes. White said he felt that playing lead guitar in another band would be too redundant and saw it as an opportunity to do something different.

In January 2009, Mosshart, Fertita, Lawrence and White got together for an impromptu jam at White's Third Man studio. The session was followed by two and a half weeks of song writing and recording, during which The Dead Weather formed. "Things just started to happen," said White. "We didn't have a direction. We just went a song a day, two songs a day, whatever we could do and recorded them on the fly... There was no time to think about what it was. It just was."

The Dead Weather's debut album, Horehound, was released on July 14, 2009 in North America, and July 13 in Europe. It entered the U.S. Billboard 200 Album Charts at No. 6 and the UK Album Charts at No. 14. Three tracks from Horehound ("No Hassle Night", "Hang You from the Heavens", and "Treat Me Like Your Mother") were made available as downloadable content for the Rock Band video game series on the same day as the North American release.

Jack White co-directed a short documentary about The Dead Weather called "Full Flash Blank". It contains exclusive interviews of the band members and performances of "60 Feet Tall", "I Cut Like A Buffalo", and "Treat Me Like Your Mother". "Full Flash Blank" aired on Channel 4 straight after the showing of "Later . . . With Jools Holland" which featured The Dead Weather performing their first three singles.

Sea of Cowards

On October 16, 2009, Mosshart confirmed that a second album was "halfway done". White later announced that the first single from the new album would be called "Die By The Drop", for which he would sing lead vocals. He commented that it was "bluesier and heavier than we ever thought we could be".

Sea of Cowards was first released on May 7, 2010, in Ireland, and then released on May 10 and May 11 in the U.S. and the U.K. respectively. The album peaked at number five on the Billboard 200, and was placed at number eleven on Rolling Stone's thirty greatest albums of 2010 list.

The song "Rolling in on a Burning Tire" appeared on The Twilight Saga: Eclipse movie soundtrack.

Dodge and Burn

In July 2013, it was reported that Jack White had started writing and recording new material with The Dead Weather. Two new songs, "Open Up (That's Enough)" and "Rough Detective" were released as a 7-inch vinyl single in December 2013 as part of Third Man Records' Vault, a record subscription service. White also confirmed that a new album is set to be released in 2015. The album will be composed of two-song sets published up to the album's release as well as new album-only tracks. The first single, "Open Up (That's Enough)", was released digitally in January 2014. "Buzzkill(er), the second single, was released in November 2014. The LP, Dodge and Burn was released worldwide on September 25, 2015, through Third Man Records.

Influences and sound

Both Alison Mosshart and Jack White are heavily influenced by Captain Beefheart and have made several tributes to him in a few songs, similarly to how they covered Beefheart songs in their previous bands. The Dead Weather usually open their acts with an intro of "Sure Nuff 'N' Yes I Do". On the track "Hustle and Cuss", the first line Mosshart sings is "knock on the door and the door knocks back", a clear reference to the Beefheart song "The Dust Blows Forward 'n the Dust Blows Back" (which itself echos T. S. Eliot's line "When the wind blows the water white and black.")

Other influences come from the range of artists that Mosshart listened to when she was growing up. Her own frontwomanship is the result of watching videos of Janis Joplin and Patti Smith.

Band members