Brooke Waggoner -- "Ink Slinger" (2013)

I can't contain the words

I am on fire

Brooke Waggoner is a classically trained pianist who played with Jack White when he recorded his debut solo album (Blunderbuss) in 2011, and then went on tour with him in 2012.

Brooke gets credit for the fabulous piano part on "Weep Themselves to Sleep," the Blunderbuss track featured in the previous 2 or 3 lines post.

But Brooke is a recording artist in her own right, with an EP and three albums to her credit.

Brooke and I were both born on May 30, so we are astrotwins (sort of).

Brooke Waggoner

If you want to get all technical, astrotwins are born not only on the same month and day, but also in the same year.  For example, Andy Griffith and Marilyn Monroe were both born on June 1, 1926 -- so they are astro twins.

Brooke Waggoner and I were both born on May 30, but she was born in 1984 and I was born in 19-NOT-84.  So we aren't true astrotwins.

Which may be just as well because Brooke Waggoner's sh*t is almost as cray as Jack White's.  (No wonder he picked her to play on Blunderbuss.)

If you don't believe me, just read what she wrote on her website about recording one of her albums:

This record began as small simple melodies on my spinet piano; a piano that was once a golden honey color -- a glorified brown.

I NEEDED this piano to be black.  In a burst of rash action I bought 9 cans of black spray paint and coated the entire instrument in layers of murky froth.  Pianos are heavy and this one couldn’t be moved.  So my studio, speakers, microphones, books & records were draped with tarps while the vapors clung to the wood.

A black spinet piano

I couldn’t wait 'til it dried to sit down and play the freshly painted instrument.  Surrounded in a cloud of white cloth tarps -- soaring on fumes -- I sat down and wrote songs; songs that bewitched me and are now smeared on the whites of the ivories.  Sweat and paint went into each note.

A party was had.

It was January then and I have a vague recollection of layered coats, dry skin, cracked cuticles on the keys, and passing the Chapstick around.  Harps, organs, big gold brassy instruments, field recordings, French films, basses of all different shapes and sizes, a magical choir, new friends and old somehow found their way into this music.  I’m forever grateful it did.

That sh*t isn't just cray, it's EXTRA cray.  Jack White's sh*t is cray, but I think Brooke Waggoner's sh*t may be even more cray.  (Women are generally crayer than men.)

"Ink Slinger," which is from Brooke's 2013 album, Originator, is a song about the process of songwriting.

The singer in "Ink Slinger" first fixes a pot of tea, then prepares for work:

Lock the doors and bolt the windows

Crack the knuckles, pop the elbows  

Songwriting is thirsty work:

Second cup of tea until this

Finish, 1-2-3, it will diminish

But suddenly the dam bursts, and and the songwriter is slinging ink like crazy::

Honestly, oh me, oh my

I think my nerves are growing high

I can't contain the words; I am on fire

Here's Brooke Waggoner's "Ink Slinger":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Jack White -- "Weep Themselves to Sleep" (2012)

And men who fight the world and love the girls 
That try to hold their hands behind them
They won't be left behind by time
Or any rules that try to bind them

I don't think Kanye West was talking about Jack White when he uttered these immortal lines in "N*ggas in Paris":

That sh*t cray!

That sh*t cray!

That sh*t cray!

Kanye followed up "That sh*t cray" with this line:

What she order?  Fish filet?

Rap Genius offers this annotation of that line:

My coworker at our Firestone tire store in Inglewood [CA] used to always complain about women ordering fish filets when he took them to McDonald's because they were more expensive: "She even ordered two of them things.  It's not Easter, b*tch!"

That's a fact, Jack -- it sure as hell ain't Easter!  It's the Fourth of July!  (Or it was when I wrote this post.)

By the way, the Filet-O-Fish is far from the most expensive sandwich at McDonald's. 

The Big Mac is $3.99.  A Quarter Pounder with Cheese (or a "Royale with Cheese" if you're French) is $3.79 -- same as a Filet-O-Fish.

Of course, a Double Cheeseburger is only $1.59.  That's what 2 or 3 lines orders, boys and girls.  (It's delicious!)

But we were talking about Jack White -- whose sh*t is truly cray!

Jack White

Here's some stuff I pulled at random from Jack White's Wikipedia page:

In 2005 on 60 Minutes, White told Mike Wallace that his life could have turned out differently. "I'd got accepted to a seminary in Wisconsin, and I was gonna become a priest, but at the last second I thought, 'I'll just go to public school.'  I had just gotten a new amplifier in my bedroom, and I didn't think I was allowed to take it with me."

It gets weirder:

At 15, White began a three-year upholstery apprenticeship with a family friend, Brian Muldoon. White credits Muldoon with exposing him to punk music and pushing him to play music with Muldoon as a band: "He played drums, well I guess I'll play guitar then."  The two recorded an album, Makers of High Grade Suites, as the Upholsterers. 

And weirder still:

White later started a one-man business of his own, Third Man Upholstery.  The slogan of his business was "Your Furniture's Not Dead" and the color scheme was yellow and black -- including a yellow van, a yellow-and-black uniform, and a yellow clipboard.  Although Third Man Upholstery never lacked business, White claims that it was unprofitable, because of his complacency about money and his business practices that were perceived as unprofessional, including making bills out in crayon and writing poetry inside the furniture.  Shortly thereafter, White landed his first professional gig, as the drummer for the Detroit band, Goober & the Peas.

White formed the White Stripes in 1997 with wife, Meg White.  For some time, they claimed to be brother and sister instead of husband and wife.  (Her real last name is White.  His isn't.)

Meg and Jack White

Jack and Meg White got divorced after releasing two albums as the White Stripes.  They then released four more White Stripes albums.  

White formed the Raconteurs in 2005.  That band released two albums.

He then formed Dead Weather in 2009.  That band also released two albums.

White released his first solo album, Blunderbuss, in 2012.  (Today's featured song is from that album.)  It debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and was nominated for the "Best Rock Album" and "Album of the Year" Grammies.

When White toured in support of Blunderbuss, he played with both an all-male backing band (called the Buzzards), and an all-female backing band (called the Peacocks -- although calling them the Peahens would have made more sense).

I've chosen to feature "Weep Themselves to Sleep" from Blunderbuss in part because its dominant instrument is the piano -- a/k/a "The King of Instruments" -- rather than the guitar.  

The pianist featured on this recording is a classically trained pianist and composer named Brooke Waggoner.

Jack White and Brooke Waggoner

I'll have more to say about Brooke in the next 2 or 3 lines.  But all you need to know about her right now is that Brooke and her piano own this song!  (I kid you not!)

Here's "Weep Themselves to Sleep," featuring the fabulous piano of Brook Waggoner.

Click below to order the song from Amazon: