Jack White is thrilled to be a publisher.
Twitter image via @AndrewCieslak

Musician Jack White, of The White Stripes and The Raconteurs,  is expanding into book publishing. In an announcement on his label’s website, Third Man Records announced their expansion into books with an ambitious project. Writing that they “hope to be a welcome addition to what is already a very compelling and thrilling independent American literary landscape,” Third Man Books wants to be “fearless, imaginative, and eclectic,” and their first project seems to live up to that. Language Lessons: Volume 1 will include not just poetry and prose, but frameable art and two LPs.

Language Lessons is a 321 page hardbound book, co-edited by Chet Weise and Third Man’s own Ben Swank, full of contemporary poetry and prose including over 20 award winning and / or nominated contemporary poets and authors such as Dale Ray Phillips, a Pulitzer Prize nominee in fiction, C.D. Wright, a National Book Award finalist and National Book Critics Circle winner in poetry, and Adrian Matejka, a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry. Language Lessons is two vinyl LPs of jazz, psychdelic-punk, poetry, blues and pop from artists such as William Tyler, Destruction Unit, Ken Vandermark, Sampson Starkweather and more. Language Lessons is 5 pieces of frameable broadsides of poems by C.D. Wright, Frank Stanford, Brian Barker, Jake Adam York and Chet Weise with original art from former Big Boys guitartist Tim Kerr, one-time Hate illustrator Jim Blanchard, intertwangle-ist folk artist Butch Anthony and more. That’s a lot of bang for your buck… and it all comes housed in a hard-case clothbound sleeve. Has any other record label ever created such a thing? Are we mad?!

In addition, Language Lessons: Volume 1 will include photos from the recording of the seminal White Stripes album, Elephant, and the entirety of “Shark Infested Soda Fountain,” a previously self-published book of photos by Allison Mosshart, documenting the last tour of Mosshart and White’s band, The Dead Weather.

Language Lessons: Volume 1 is $50 and will be available in stores on August 5, but if you can’t wait, you can pre-order it here now.