A midday crowd laughed and cheered during an AmericanaFest panel on Thursday, Sept. 11, as John C. Reilly and Jack White spoke about everything from the heart behind their projects to doing Elvis impersonations.
The room asked questions and responded to each answer with cheers and applause. One fan asked White his thoughts on political statements made by famous people, to which he responded that he will continue to comment on the topics he knows about and where he feels the most educated.
“Just because I’m an actor or a musician doesn’t mean I deserve to be tamped down. We all deserve the right to our opinion,” Reilly said, “I say things ethically challenging to both sides of the argument.”
The conversation began at noon with a discussion on Reilly’s newest project, “Mister Romantic,” a vaudeville show that explores the search to find love as it showcases songs throughout history.
Reilly didn’t always want to do musical theater, he said. He grew up doing musicals, but when he attended acting school, he wanted to be a “serious actor.” It wasn’t until his involvement in “Chicago” as Mr. Cellophane that his love for musicals was reignited.
“Then I realized,” Reilly said, “this is an incredible American art form, and I can do it, so why wouldn’t I do it?”
In the midst of the COVID-19 era, Reilly wanted to use what he could to spread love in a time when the world seemed to be falling apart. Reilly used his gifts, his ability to dance and sing, to spread his message of love and feeling empathy in a world that Reilly feels needs constant reminders.
Switching gears, the bantering duo changed the topic to songwriting. With “Mister Romantic,” Reilly said he would often face people who believed he wrote the songs on the soundtrack, and the idea of an artist taking someone else’s song and creating something new with it is lost with this generation of artists. “Songwriting has become a new level of narcissistic,” White said, as songwriting 100 years ago would have been about worldviews and outside things that affected the songwriter, while now, when asked to write a song, many new songwriters merely write about themselves.
“The interpretation is the art form,” White said as they reminisced on artists like Elvis Presley, whose art came from reimagining songs and interpreting them in a new way.
Reilly continued to look for ways to separate himself from past works and characters he has played. Before Mister Romantic, he spent time playing bluegrass and folk music, and would often show up to venues with a crowd who came to hear him say “shake n’ bake” but were exposed to Reilly’s appreciation for all types of music as art, even the music with flaws.
Flaws represent honesty, Reilly said, discussing how he chose to record the tracks for the musical. His desire wasn’t for them to be perfect; he wanted to emulate the art form that he had heard before, mistakes and all. Reilly didn’t mind if people heard a mistake in his vocal performance; he cared that what he created was real.
“Computers have trained our minds to think like computers,” Reilly said, “it’s either zero or one, red or blue, democrat or republican, gay or straight.”
Constant exposure to computers has made people impatient beings and taken away their ability to see a middle ground. They force everything to seem perfect when it isn’t, and they force everything to pick one side, even when the answers aren’t black and white. Reilly received a room full of applause, whistles and cheers as he continued to talk to White and the crowd about the effects he has seen from the use of technology.
Later on in the discussion, White lightened the mood after a fan requested an Elvis impersonation, which he delivered expressively and received an array of laughs and cheers in response. White also responded to questions regarding his record label, Third Man Records, as a fan asked how he would continue supporting up-and-coming artists, as Americana music is primarily focused on helping new artists gain their footing.
“We love supporting up-and-coming artists at Third Man Records. We’ll be doing that as long as we’re around,” White said.
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