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With the White Stripes officially retired, Jack White could spend his days having cocktails on his tropical lanai if he wanted to. But he is, famously, not that kind of guy.

Instead, he’s running a musical empire in his adopted hometown of Nashville, keeping his hands in two well-established bands (Raconteurs and the Dead Weather), and taking his Rolling Record Store, which he debuted at this year’s SXSW, on the road — while also raising a family and proselytizing for vinyl nearly full-time. EW catches up with him below.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Now that the White Stripes are done, you actually seem more busy than before.
JACK WHITE: Younger musicians might look at someone who’s quote-unquote “made it,” and think well, that’s it, they won the lottery now they can do whatever they want, and that means go to the Bahamas and just party all the time. But my opinion has always been if you call yourself an artist, you have a responsibility to that liberty that you’ve given yourself.  You don’t have a day job where you work 9 to 5 at a factory because you’re an artist? Well, okay, well then you better make some art. That doesn’t mean you can sit around all day and do nothing. That’s the way I treat myself, and those are the artists I respect who do that. And it doesn’t have anything to do with being a workaholic or anything like that; it’s about creating all the time, because that’s what you can’t help but do.

You have built up sort of a sovereign Third Man nation down in Nashville…
We have a live venue, which is the only live venue in the world where you can record on analog tape in front of an audience and it comes out on vinyl four weeks later. There’s gonna be a lot of special shows on Record Store Day I can’t tell you about yet — I did one with [rockabilly legend] Wanda Jackson. Everyone’s playing there, it’s great for up-and-coming punk bands and all that.

If you’re a producer and a label-runner, does that mean there will there be less music-making for you? READ FULL STORY »