BOOK TO BE RELEASED ON NOVEMBER 7, 2017
AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW

Third Man Books is proud to announce We're Going To Be Friends, a children's picture book based on The White Stripes' acclaimed song of the same name from their platinum-certified album White Blood Cells. Written by Jack White, We're Going To Be Friends is the first book from the twelve-time GRAMMY-winning musician, actor and producer. The book is illustrated by Elinor Blake, who is known for her work as an animator on The Ren and Stimpy Show and Pee Wee's Playhouse, as well as a musician under the name April March. Recordings of the original White Stripes song, along with new versions by April March and The Woodstation Elementary School Singers, will be included with the book as digital downloads. We're Going To Be Friends will be released on November 7, 2017, just a few months after The White Stripes' 20th anniversary as a band (July 14, 2017).

"We're Going to be Friends" is one of The White Stripes' most enduring and loved songs, and the perennial favorite feels right at home on the page as a children's book. This November, children, adults, and you, too, can join Suzy Lee as she goes to school with her books and pens, looks for bugs, shows and tells, and finds a friend.

Third Man's own 12 string blues and folk troubadour, Todd Albright, will be performing an in-store this Friday at Third Man Nashville just before doors open in the Blue Room for the North Mississippi All Stars show. That's a whole lot of blues in one night for your buck! This is Todd's first show here in Nashville since signing to TMR, we're really excited to have him here live. He'll have a limited number of copies of his exclusive White colored vinyl with him for sale, so collectors.. now's your chance to get one if you missed out when it was released.

And while we're on the subject of our favorite 12 String Stylist... Here's some press you may have missed or want to read again!

American Blues Scene

American Blues Scene 

American Blues Scene

Country Music News Blog

Premier Guitar

The Roadhouse 

We’re excited to announce we are now taking pre-orders for The Blue Series: The Story Behind the Color (Standard Edition) online here. Read the stories behind the Blue Series singles. Also, includes free black vinyl 7” single with unreleased songs from First Aid Kit and Gibby Haynes, a 10-song sampler download, a foreword by award-winning Rolling Stone journalist David Fricke, and interviews with Beck, Courtney Barnett, Insane Clown Posse, Stephen Colbert, Jack White, Dwight Yoakam & more! 

Picture it: peak summer in Nashville, July 2015. The sweltering days and nights are long as ever and the humidity ain’t kind. So what do we do? We put on a matinee all ages show with one of the most raucous bands we can conceive of resulting in one of the sweatiest crowds in Third Man’s Blue Room history—Fucked Up. True to tradition, we recorded the whole thing direct-to-acetate and are unleashing the force unto the world...TODAY.

Fucked Up is a rare band. They’re a mutant strain of post-hardcore, arena-punk super-talents capable of reworking the strange and the beautiful into something cohesive, but never at the expense of their signature, addictive, furious entropy. They are truly a blitzkrieg of song and lyric.

Is it work-shy and lazy to call a live record whose songs flow seamlessly into one another “epic?” What if every track is a battering ram of rabid guitar, fugitive vox, deathmatch bass and roaring drums? No matter how you dice it...one word won’t ever be enough to explain a band like Fucked Up. All substitutions will pale in comparison to the experience itself. That goes for every blurb and every pixelated cell phone video out there. But our record does the show justice.

We’ve been itching to get this one on your turntables and we know you can’t wait to drop the needle. This six-track sonic boom of a record will be available for your listening pleasure TODAY online and in both Nashville/Detroit storefronts as well as your favorite independent record stores. If you were lucky enough to attend this sweat show and purchased a black-and-blue record, it will be shipping out today, or if you opted for pick up, please bring your ticket and receipt to the Nashville storefront to redeem your exclusive vinyl record.

Tracklist:
Year of the Rat
David Comes to Life
Son the Father
I Hate Summer
Year of the Ox
California Cold

Listen to “David Comes to Life” below.

Third Man Records is excited to announce The Monks' Hamburg Tapes 1967, featuring five unheard tracks from the legendary group. To ring in the announcement, Dangerous Minds has premiered the new track "I'm Watching You," noting that "these songs aren't just some forgotten cast-offs, they're as vital and as punchy as everything else the Monks recorded." The album will see a vinyl and CD release on June 23, and "I'm Watching You" is available to stream HERE or pre-order the full album HERE.

The Monks - a strange, rare group with a story that sounds like a drunk friend's generous hyperbole. A group of American G.I.s stationed in Germany on the precipice of Western cultural revolution starts playing music loosely connected to the rock n' roll craze, contrastingly incorporating a critical and often offensive avant-garde edge. Nothing was off limits - screeching vocals, dark aesthetics, staccato-strummed banjo, sardonic lyricism, critiques of the Vietnam War and full monk costuming down to the tonsure. When viewed on the whole, it seems like an art school student's senior thesis on what the craze means and its future possibilities. Due in large part to original Polydor vinyl collectability and years in the word-of-mouth hype machine, their legend and cult status has steadily blossomed since their last shows in 1967.

Fast forward to 2017, the crew here at Third Man, already huge fans, are presented with an honest-to God treasure trove of original Monks photos, newspaper clippings, business cards, letterhead, contracts, postcards and, yes, analog tapes, containing trailblazing, wild compositions completely unheard by public ears.

"I'm Watching You" would have been recorded on February 28th, 1967 at the same sessions that would produce the Monks' final single "Love Can Tame the Wild" b/w "He Went Down to the Sea." The remaining four songs were recorded after hours in the Top Ten Club later that year, just prior to the break-up of the band.

These songs have been unreleased for 50 years and are quite possibly the last music left to be heard by this legendary band.

Hamburg Recordings 1967 tracklist:
1. I'm Watching You
2. Julia
3. P.O. Box 3291
4. I Need U Shatzi
5. Yellow Grass

 The AMERICAN EPIC historical documentaries are a journey back in time to the "Big Bang" of modern popular music.

In the 1920s, as radio took over the pop music business, record companies were forced to leave their studios in major cities in search of new styles and markets. Ranging the mountains, prairies, rural villages, and urban ghettos of America, they discovered a wealth of unexpected talent. The recordings they made of all the ethnic groups of America democratized the nation and gave a voice to everyone. Country singers in the Appalachians, Blues guitarists in the Mississippi Delta, Gospel preachers across the south, Cajun fiddlers in Louisiana, Tejano groups from the Texas Mexico border, Native American drummers in Arizona, and Hawaiian musicians were all recorded. For the first time, a woman picking cotton in Mississippi, a coalminer in Virginia or a tobacco farmer in Tennessee could have their thoughts and feelings heard on records played in living rooms across the country. It was the first time America heard itself.

On June 16th, Third Man Records will release AMERICAN EPIC: The Sessions on 180 gram vinyl, which you can pre-order here, this is the soundtrack to “THE AMERICAN EPIC SESSIONS” directed by Bernard MacMahon. In “THE AMERICAN EPIC SESSIONS,” the team has reassembled the very first electrical sound recording system from the 1920s, and invited Jack White and T Bone Burnett to produce an album of recordings by twenty of today’s greatest artists. In this beautifully filmed musical feature, these artists are given the chance to pass through the portal that brought the world into the modern era.

Engineer Nicholas Bergh has reassembled this recording system from original parts and it is now the only one left in the world. The system consists of a single microphone, a towering six-foot amplifier rack, and a live record-cutting lathe, powered by a weight-driven pulley system of clockwork gears. The musicians have roughly three minutes to record their song direct to disc before the weight hits the floor. In the 1920s, they called this “catching lightning in a bottle.” All the musical performances in this film are live. The audio you hear on the soundtrack is taken directly from the discs they were recorded to, with no editing or enhancements.

AMERICAN EPIC: The Sessions, soundtrack features: Alabama Shakes, The Americans, Ana Gabriel, Ashley Monroe, The Avett Brothers, Beck, Bettye LaVette, Bobby Ingano, Elton John, Frank Fairfield, Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton, Los Lobos, Lost Bayou Ramblers, Nas, Pokey LaFarge, Raphael Saadiq, Rhiannon Giddens, Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, Taj Mahal, Jack White, and Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.

“THE AMERICAN EPIC SESSIONS” airs in the U.S. on PBS Tuesday, June 6 at 8 p.m. (check local listings) and in the U.K. on BBC in June.

In addition to The Sessions, on June 16, Third Man Records is also slated to release 180 gram 12" audiophile vinyl versions of AMERICAN EPIC: The Carter Family, AMERICAN EPIC: Memphis Jug Band, AMERICAN EPIC: Mississippi John Hurt, AMERICAN EPIC: Blind Willie Johnson and AMERICAN EPIC: Lead Belly, as well as thematic collections including AMERICAN EPIC: Blues and AMERICAN EPIC: Country.

PRE-ORDERS ARE AVAILABLE NOW