Jack White’s Private Bowling Alley Holds Bob Dylan’s Bowling Ball, Which Is Painted With A Portrait of John Wayne

Jack White has gotten a lengthy profile in the New Yorker, which discusses the numerous aspects of his professional and personal life outside of his notable career as a musician and singer-songwriter. White dishes on Third Man Records, as well as the new Third Man Pressing plant that officially opened last month. He also reveals that he has a three-lane bowling alley housed in a building on his Nashville property, where he keeps racks of personalized bowling balls for friends. One of those balls belongs to Bob Dylan, and features portrait of John Wayne on it.

Elsewhere in the interview, White talks about his non-music-related interests. He expressed disappointment over “losing the opportunity” to head up White Boy Rick, a new movie starring Matthew McConaughey about a drug dealer and FBI informant from Detroit in the 1980s. White also revealed he owns some pretty rare collectibles, including an arrest record for Leadbelly, James Brown’s Georgia driver’s license, and the first demo that Elvis Presley ever recorded from 1953.

As far as new music, it appears that White is working away on fresh songs. Near the end of the profile, he takes writer Alec Wilkinson into an apartment that he’s rented and placed a four-track recorder in. “I’m going to try to write songs where I can’t be heard by the next-door neighbor… And I want to write like Michael Jackson would write—instead of writing parts on the instruments or humming melodies, you think of them,” White said. “To do everything in my head and to do it in silence and use only one room.” White’s last release, Acoustic Recordings 1998-2016, was a retrospective compilation of songs from throughout his career. Check out the full New Yorker profile here.

In other Third Man-related news, “The Today Show”’s Al Roker recently made a stop at the Third Man Records location in Nashville, chatting to manager (and White’s nephew) Ben Blackwell about the resurgence in vinyl’s popularity. He also goes to the United Record Pressing plant in Nashville; check out the video below.

Check out our annotated look at the White Stripes’ White Blood Cells over on Pitchfork.tv’s “Liner Notes”:

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