Karen Elson: from supermodel to rock star

Karen Elson, the red-haired former supermodel from Oldham, Lancashire, is sitting in a room that has been decorated in a style best described as "taxidermy chic". There is a stuffed giraffe in the corner and a disembodied buffalo head hangs off one wall, its shaggy fur wafting in the breeze every time someone walks past.

The dead animals are, I think, meant to indicate a certain rock'n'roll nonchalance: this, after all, is the Nashville headquarters of Third Man Records, the uber-trendy imprint founded by White Stripes frontman Jack White. The whole place looks like something out of a mad Gothic fairytale: burnished gold wall tiles, black floorboards and a series of willing female minions wearing identikit yellow dresses who bustle around making espressos.

It is all a very long way from Oldham. "Oh my God, yeah," says the 31-year-old Elson. She stretches out her endless legs, casually placing her wedge heels on a coffee table. "It's like going to Mars, that's what happened to me. It's like the Wizard of Oz analogy: I was in black and white and then a tornado came and sort of swept me off."

The tornado came in the form of Jack White, the Detroit-born musician generally credited with reinventing rock'n'roll. In 2003, when White and his ex-wife Meg released the White Stripes' Grammy Award-winning album Elephant, Rolling Stone called it "a work of pulverising perfection". Two years later, Jack White met Elson – then a successful model living in New York – on the set of the band's video for "Blue Orchid". Elson and White fell in love, got married and moved to Nashville to start a family. They now have two children, Scarlett, four, and Henry, two.

While White has gone on to form two more groups, the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather, as well as continuing to work on his own influential label, Elson has been making music of her own. Her debut solo album, The Ghost Who Walks, features 11 of her original compositions and was produced by her husband, who plays the drums on it.

Perhaps largely as a result of White's involvement, Elson's album of folk-inspired ballads has generated quite a bit of excitement. In March, she performed gigs in Austin, Texas, and New York – the latter in front of an audience that included fellow British model Agyness Deyn and photographer Annie Leibovitz. Even Elson's bandmates are plucked from rock'n'roll royalty – her guitarist Jackson Smith is the son of punk poet/singer Patti and MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith, and is married to Meg White.

Most up-and-coming singer-songwriters would not get this much attention. Is Elson worried that people will criticise her for exploiting her husband's fame? She nods her head. "I might as well be open about it. Lots of people are going to be curious because of Jack, of course they are. And people are probably going to listen to the songs and say: 'Oh, I wonder if he wrote that song. I wonder if he had anything to do with it.'"

To be fair, The Ghost Who Walks has a very different tone from the stripped-back garage rock of the White Stripes. It is an elegantly crafted album with a folksy, bluesy timbre accented by throaty organ music and cascading accordion chords that evoke lonesome cowboys and the depression-era dust bowls. Elson's voice – sparklingly clear with a hauntingly melodious quality – is startlingly good.

She cites Nick Cave and PJ Harvey as inspirations, but perhaps the biggest influence has not been music so much as the vast and changing vista of America itself. Since moving "on a whim" to Nashville five years ago from New York, Elson has been immersing herself in American literature, including John Steinbeck and Willa Cather. Timothy Egan's dust bowl saga The Worst Hard Time directly influenced two of her more theatrical tracks: "Mouths to Feed" and the Peggy Lee-inspired "100 Years from Now". "I like those stories that capture the brutality of life but there's still some kind of melancholy romance," she explains.

In person, it is quite easy to imagine Elson with her rust-coloured hair and translucent skin as a languidly beautiful prairie girl in some wild west saloon. No wonder she never felt like she fitted in back home. "Mmm, Oldham was strange," she says, vaguely. "I'm always aware of where I'm from and it's always kept me fighting."

Elson was born into a working-class family – her parents separated when she was seven and she has a twin sister, Kate, and two much older half-brothers. At school, she was gawky and gangly, and was bullied her for her strange looks and her pale skin – "The Ghost Who Walks" was an adolescent nickname. Did she feel the need to get away? "Oh yeah," she says, looking straight at me, "big time." At 16, Elson was spotted by a model scout while shopping in Manchester. Her mother was supportive but Elson did not tell anyone at school "for a really long time" because she knew she would be teased. "When it did get revealed that someone had asked me to be a model, it felt like every kid came up to me and laughed.

"The day I walked out the door, I was 16 and I was like, 'I'm never fucking coming back' and I didn't… I think if I had stayed in Oldham, I would have been a painfully shy, insecure and sort of beat-down person, and I knew there was more to me than that."

After a brief stint as a catalogue model, Elson got a job in Paris and moved to the city shortly afterwards, living in a cockroach-infested flat. She had stints in Tokyo and Milan before settling in New York, where she was persuaded by photographer Steven Meisel to shave her eyebrows. The result was so visually arresting that Elson was catapulted into the big-time, appearing on the covers of Vogue, Elle and W, as well as fronting international campaigns for Burberry, Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent.

And all the time, Elson was writing songs. In New York, living with fellow models Erin O'Connor and Maggie Rizer, she taught herself to play the guitar and recorded her efforts on a four-track. She says that she has always wanted to make music [she sang backing vocals on a remix of Robert Plant's "Last Time I Saw Her" in 2003 and is a founding member of New York-based political cabaret troupe the Citizens Band] – as a teenager, she used to front a Manchester salsa band – but that modelling got in the way. "I did make music with a few people but I truthfully don't think I was ready until now."

She says that part of what she now values about making music is the creative control. "I knew I had more in me than just standing up and having my picture taken… Being in the studio, I have to have an opinion." Elson gives an embarrassed giggle. "I love having an opinion."

Still, the history of models-turned-singers is not one defined by notable greatness. Naomi Campbell's dire mid-90s album, Babywoman, was written off by Q magazine as an example of "gobsmacking hubris". Kate Moss has repeatedly tried to muscle in on the act by duetting with various rock-star boyfriends with mixed results. And although Carla Bruni's first album sold more than 1.2 million copies, her most recent effort has been poorly received. Is Elson worried that she will be dismissed as just another model trying to sing?

"That's why it's taken me so long, because I was terrified of the judgment. I still am. I mean, I have days when I feel really confident in what I'm doing and there's other days when – trust me – I wake up and think: 'Who am I fucking kidding? You know, really, who am I kidding? I'm going to get slaughtered. People are going to laugh at me.' But I can't let that take over."

For a while, she was even unwilling to let her husband listen to her songs. As it was, any fears were unfounded: White's reaction was to get his wife to the studio as quickly as possible. "He definitely pushed me to do better… All his equipment is analogue not digital, so he has to be really hands-on and know what he's doing. There's no time for fixing anything that sounds no good, you've got to just do it, you've got to deliver it." In fact, two of the tracks on The Ghost Who Walks were recorded in a single take.

Elson will continue modelling for the time being, even if the album does well. Partly, the income it gives her is a useful means of financing her music (although presumably there is not much to worry about on that score: she and her husband were valued at $20m in a recent rich-list). But partly it is that writing the album has left her feeling more confident in front of the camera. "It's just this huge sense of relief I have with myself right now… It took me to be 31 to go, 'Wow, I'm really happy being a model.' I've finally got all this shit off my chest." She pauses and then adds, sheepishly: "I'm sorry, I don't mean to swear so much."

I don't think she needs to apologise: the giraffe seems not to have heard.