the dead weather

The Dead Weather (left to right): Jack White, Alison Mosshart, Jack Lawrence, and Dean Fertita.

Photo by David James Swanson

Dean Fertita and Jack Lawrence—the guitar-and-bass team from Jack White’s other other band—talk about fuzz, their intertwined roles, and just how much their boss bosses them around.

Few contemporary bands have reached the level of commercial success that the Dead Weather repeatedly achieves with its simple, potent equation: anarchy + chaos + melody = rock ’n’ roll. As the Nashville-based quartet featuring Jack White on drums has progressed from its 2009 debut, Horehound, to 2010’s Sea of Cowards (both of which debuted in Billboard’s top 10) and now to this year’s Dodge and Burn, they’ve amped up that math to create the sonic equivalent of a human cannonball. Songs like “I Feel Love (Every Million Miles)” and “Cop and Go” fly out of the speakers—arms and legs of octave-fattened guitars, buck-wild keyboards, fuzztone bass, and expressionistic power drumming poking out in all directions—then somehow tuck into a neat landing via Alison Mosshart’s seductively ferocious vocals.

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