Artist

The Raconteurs

in Australia known as The Saboteurs

Detroit, United States · Formed 2005

The Raconteurs is a music group from Detroit, United States, active since 2005. Their discography on Gatefold includes 14 records.

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Albums tracked

268

In collections

2005

Since

Biography

The Raconteurs did not start as a master plan. Brendan Benson and Jack White sat on a hot attic porch in East Nashville during a sweltering summer, trying to write a song together. That song was "Steady, As She Goes." They did not hire session guys to finish it. They recruited the Greenhornes' rhythm section, Patrick Keeler and Jack Lawrence, who already played like a single, dual-headed beast. Suddenly, White had a band where he did not have to carry the entire sky on his shoulders. This was the perfect antidote to the rigid, two-piece architecture of The White Stripes. Here, White could hide in the grass as a co-frontman, letting Benson's classic power-pop instincts anchor the melodies while Keeler's monstrous John Bonham-style drumming kept the whole thing from floating away. They did not use the band to chase trends. They used it to run classic rock through a meat grinder, tracking live to tape and refusing to fix the mistakes. Then they walked away for a decade. By the time they tracked *Help Us Stranger* in 2019, the novelty of the side-project had worn off, leaving behind a lean, muscular rock band that worked because nobody in the room actually needed the money. It is the sound of four guys playing loud in a room because the chemistry is too good to leave in the garage.

Bio from The Clerk

The Arc of The Raconteurs

The pivots — what forced The Raconteurs to reinvent.

The Attic Porch Blueprints
What started as a casual writing session between Benson and White in 2005 exploded when they brought in Keeler and Lawrence to cut "Steady, As She Goes" at Benson's home studio. The result was *Broken Boy Soldiers*, an album recorded quickly with a raw, immediate garage-pop energy. You hear the friction between Benson's clean, McCartney-esque hooks and White's shrieking, unstable guitar solos. It was a massive hit that almost felt accidental, forcing a temporary side-project into a full-time touring machine.
The Ten-Day Blitz
By 2008, the band wanted to shed the "side-project" label and prove they could play heavier than anyone else. They booked Blackbird Studios in Nashville, wrote on the fly, and tracked, mixed, and mastered *Consolers of the Lonely* in a frantic ten-day sprint. They bypassed the traditional three-month promo cycle entirely, releasing the album to physical stores only days after finishing it. The record is a dense, southern-fried assault, packed with furious twin-guitar attacks and Patrick Keeler's most explosive drum performances.
The Third Man Reunion
After an eleven-year freeze, the band regrouped at Third Man Studios in Nashville to record *Help Us Stranger* in 2019. The analog gear was older, the budget was bigger, and the band members had spent a decade producing other artists. They used old-school techniques like tape flanging and live-in-the-room tracking to capture a mature, heavy-rock sound. The record proved they could still write massive riffs without relying on the frantic, youthful panic of their debut.

Influences

The Who — Jack White has repeatedly cited Pete Townshend as his absolute blueprint for rhythm guitar playing. You can hear this influence in the massive, acoustic-driven power chords that open "Steady, As She Goes" and the theatrical, heavy-handed dynamic shifts throughout their catalog. They even covered "A Quick One, While He's Away" during their 2006 tour.
Led Zeppelin — The band's heavy blues-rock swagger is directly modeled on the Jimmy Page and John Bonham dynamic. You hear it in Patrick Keeler's thunderous, triplet-heavy drum intro on "Consoler of the Lonely," which sounds like a direct homage to "Moby Dick." White's screeching, octave-pedal guitar solos frequently mirror Page's chaotic live style.
Cheap Trick — Brendan Benson's power-pop DNA is heavily indebted to the tight harmonies and massive guitar hooks of Robin Zander and Rick Nielsen. This influence is all over the soaring choruses of "Hands" and "Many Shades of Black," where the grit of garage rock meets radio-ready pop precision. They eventually covered Cheap Trick's "He's a Whore" live.
The Stooges — The raw, unhinged garage-punk energy of Iggy Pop's crew is a cornerstone of the Detroit scene that birthed both White and Benson. The dirty, overdriven bassline of "Store Bought Bones" is a direct descendant of Ron Asheton's fuzz-heavy work on *Fun House*. The band has frequently covered "I Wanna Be Your Dog" during their live sets.
Terry Reid — The Raconteurs covered Reid's classic "Rich Kid Blues" on *Consolers of the Lonely*. You hear Reid's gritty, blue-eyed soul influence in the vocal trade-offs between White and Benson, particularly on their more acoustic, folk-leaning tracks. They took Reid's blueprint of heavy acoustic blues and cranked the volume to ten.