Karen Elson 'Pushed' to Record Album by Husband Jack White

Aside from the high school troubles that inspired it, what's most surprising about Karen Elson's debut 'The Ghost Who Walks' is the divergent styles that appear throughout. With the production led by her husband Jack White, the hard, blues-driven 'The Truth Is in the Dirt' could easily pass for a White Stripes outtake. But mostly, Elson riffs on country tunes that draw from old Nashville traditions.

"When I wrote 'Cruel Summer,' I was definitely thinking of Hank Williams," Elson tells Spinner. "Even some of the jangly Hank Williams songs, there's still a morbid undercurrent and I find that interesting instead of talking about how happy we are."

Along with Williams, Elson also says other classic era influences made their way onto 'Ghost,' in particular an Edith Piaf nod on '100 Years From Now.' She snatched the title of the song from an old book of parlor songs and combined it with her own words. "I love the vaudeville feel to it," she says of the track. "I love that sort of music. Not to sound biased, I'm sure there's room for computer gadgetry but I felt very proud that we just went in there did it. That's why the influences were so varied."

Elson wrangled White to back her on drums, with Jackson Smith (aka, Patti Smith's son and Meg White's husband) and My Morning Jacket's Carl Broemel handling guitar duties throughout. Naturally, it helped to have access to such a talented crew -- they were able to do a lot of tracking in just one day, with Elson rarely needing more than one vocal take. But she says it was her husband who actually put his foot down in getting the recording started.

"The way Jack produces, he never uses Pro Tools -- analog all the time, straight to tape," she says. "He knew how to push me, and he knew how insecure I was in general. He knew how to beat it out of my system in a sense, by putting me on the spot: 'Pick up this guitar, use this mic, the band's in there. Let's go sing.'"

Elson launches a seven-city tour starting on June 8 at San Francisco's Café du Nord and will wind things down as the opening act for Grizzly Bear and Band of Horses at Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Williamsburg Waterfront on June 20.