As Jack White explained during a Q&A that followed the premier of Davvis Guggenheim’s documentary ‘It Might Get Loud’ at the Toronto Film Festival “There’s a lot you can do when you have unlimited means and unlimited opportunities, but over the past few years I’ve worked on projects that are both limited and constricting because those limits bring creativity. You learn more”.

This mind set has pervaded throughout White’s career. The most obvious example being the guitar and drum line up of The White Stripes, something almost unheard of when they first caught the attention of music fans all over the world (these days of course it’s nothing out of the ordinary, with Blood Red Shoes, Black Keys, Two Gallants and, to a much more demanding end, Lightening Bolt all adhering to the same format). Then there was their studio of choice: East London’s Toe Rag Studios, a love letter to the golden days of studios like Sun and Motown where analogue equipment and limited mics are favoured over multi-track digital recording and computer technology.

The same ‘less is more’ adage informed Jack and Meg’s Canadian tour, the subject of the film ‘The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights’. Playing shows in every province – something that very few bands, if any, had done before – Jack and Meg made a point of playing a secret show in each town… there aren’t many bands of The White Stripes renown who would play shows in bars, pool halls, transit buses or pleasure boats. The last of these secret shows took White’s statement of austerity to its most logical conclusion: their infamous ‘One-note Show’ in St. Johns, which was denied entry in to the Guinness Book of Records. “The Guinness book of world records has refused this entry as the shortest concert of all time citing it’s not interesting enough” joked White at a later press conference. The ‘One-Note Show’ is the opening scene of ‘Under Great White Norhten Lights’, which will receive a proper cinematic release in the UK this March.

Jack’s latest project takes a something of sidestep from his usual spartan way of doing things. Whilst it still promises to be suitably stripped back, it looks like White has achieved an ambition that he could have well been harbouring since childhood: he’s making an album with ‘The Queen of Rockabilly’ Wanda Jackson. Rock & Roll hall of Fame inductee Jackson came to prominence during the Fifties, and was a contemporary of Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley, with whom she had a whirlwind romance. White has called on band mates from The Dead Weather and The Raconteurs to help with the recording, the first spoils of which will be a 7” on White’s Third Man imprint featuring a cover of Amy Winehouse’s ‘You Know That I’m No Good’. Keep an eye on Barclaycard Mercury Prize Recommends for more news in the coming weeks.