After nearly every Jack White show, his website features a selection of concert photos taken that night by in-house photographer David James Swanson, along with occasional shots of the crowd. After Friday night’s show at Mayan in downtown Los Angeles, a photo posted online showed one fan walking to the front of the crowd holding a handmade sign asking for the setlist. As most people who are not new to this setting know, set lists, schedule lists. Jack White’s night will be a night on Audible, with any menu of songs put together by fans after the last play is called.
For the first time this year, White is approaching his tour itinerary in such a manner. Recently, on his social media, a fan asked if the rocker was coming to their town, and White replied that he would go to the airport to see who was on the next flight and decide where to go next. . It’s a gag — booking a show clearly requires a little more foresight than deciding whether Hotel Yorba will continue smoothly on set — but at least that kind of itinerary. I think he’s done a good job of making it seem like there’s a certain romanticism at work in this piece. He chooses when and where he plays. Although he had announced shows in various cities just a few days before the performance, he felt the need to finally clarify that these were not “pop-up” shows as far as he was concerned. …This is the tour behind the “No Name” album. Since all of this takes place in clubs and small theaters, demand clearly outstrips supply, so hitting the “buy” button at the right time really is the hardest button.
White’s Friday night performance at The Mayan (capacity 1,300) was preceded by a Thursday show at Highland Park’s Lodge Room (capacity 500). Fans who went to the Los Angeles concert will like to brag that they had a genuine FOMO experience, but those of us who were lucky enough to see both can testify that it was a happy draw. . He played 20 songs each night, exactly half of which were duplicates. Even with the same numbers, Maya won a set that was 15 minutes longer. That’s 1 hour and 45 minutes and 1 and a half hours. Neither was meant to compare to his epic tour-ending show at the Belasco in January 2023, right next door to Maya, but both of these mid-tour LA shows were non-stop. , I could feel myself sweating and fully enthusiastic. It consumes more than enough water for the average person.
The Lodge Room show ends with “Seven Nation Army,” while he teases his signature song and closes out Maya with the Raconteurs’ timeless classic “Steady, As She Goes.” did. (Many white fans like to believe they’re at a special show if white fans don’t play “Seven Nation Army,” but it’s as if white fans are going home happy.) Perhaps they’re reading too much into it, but they drive up to the show and tune in to the Dodgers playoff game on the radio. I was shocked to find that the stadium crowd was already singing the song’s world-famous riff, so perhaps White (though he’s a notorious baseball fan) also paid attention to the ball game. (I guess they thought the song had already been covered enough that night.)
He crowdsurfed in the lodge room, not in the vast Maya. Maybe it’s because if the audience doesn’t pull him back soon, it’s going to be a long road back. The Lodge Room also featured perhaps the first ever cover of The Doors’ “LA Woman” as a lead-in to an extended encore segment, with White at least as good as actually quoting Jim Morrison. I spent about an hour howling in falsetto. But then only Mayans had a few guest stars with semi-bold names, the first being Money Mark (of Beastie Boys fame) on Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground. He appeared as the second keyboard player. And for the finale of the main set, “I’m Slowly Turning Into You,” Carla Azar (formerly of White’s band) appeared as a guest drummer. When Hazard left the stage without kicking the drum set, it appeared to fall apart in some kind of spontaneous combustion. It was as if it was made to handle only one strong percussionist per night. (For a few happy minutes, she stuffed shoes into Patrick Keller’s shoes.)
Another thing both audiences in LA got was a Donald Trump impersonation in which White took his hands off his guitar and played his least favorite politician with his accordion hands. He’s never been a fan of President Trump, but he took to his Instagram account to be furious when the candidate visited his hometown of Detroit this week and denigrated an entire city to his face. White took time out of his evangelist rap on “Archbishop Harold Holmes” in the Lodge Room to say, “I always tell the truth. I always tell the truth. I don’t know how not to tell the truth.” ” became even more overtly Trumpian toward Maya, leading the crowd in a call-and-response and shouting, “They’re eating the cats!” They are eating dogs! They are eating pets! ”
Here are some of the details from these two LA shows. What this flashback hasn’t touched on so far is how one or both of them made you feel. It’s like rock ‘n’ roll never died, like it was never on life support, like the flame never went out. It even flickered. So, in a climate where the burners are actually dark and some people are turning into poptimists due in part to the lack of viable rock alternatives, a show like this is just that. You can keep your gas fire lit for another year.
The same goes for “No Name.” It’s literally all the newly recorded rock and roll everyone needs heading into 2024. No matter how unpredictable the show’s composition, White plays about seven new songs each night, including No. 1 and No. 2 “Old Scratch Blues” and “That’s How I’m Feeling.”・You can expect it to be performed from the album. slot, and “It’s Rough on Rats (If You’re Asking)” is usually in third or fourth position before all other plans get off the ground. And unlike most concerts that feature new songs, I can’t say that there’s a single fan in the audience who regrets the inclusion of new songs, even if they don’t end up getting their hands on the new album. It’s no exaggeration. Every single one of them feels just as familiar as the White Stripes and the early solo material that surrounded them. People sometimes wonder if White has reached a point in his career where he is considered “classic rock,” but the answer to that is that “No Name” is his current work in progress. Absolutely yes, as long as we count it as an actual part of. Imperial era. As is the case here in the mid-2020s, you’d be lucky to find someone else even remotely of his ilk.
If you make a list of highlights, how many of them are from new albums and how many of them are not just things he’s done before, but some new twists on things the masters have done before. I noticed that it was something that seemed to be added. Take “Archbishop Harold Holmes,” for example, which sounds basically like a metal song with some preachy rap on top, with or without a bit of election-year comedy thrown in live. suddenly takes over into more music, and the basic guitar riff changes to something like “Happenings Ten Years Time Go.” “That’s How I’m Feeling” and “What’s a Rumpus?” both enter the set as songs that start with a powerful bassline (played by Dominic Davies), and if that’s what’s coming. It foreshadows the eventual appearance of “Steady, as She Goes.” There’s no jamming on “Bombing Out,” a two-and-a-half-minute blast of punk, just ramming.
But the atmosphere is recreated when White takes out his slide guitar and does otherworldly things with it, like on “It’s Laugh on Rats,” and during the encore segment of “Underground.” Perhaps nothing stands out more in the show than when it hits. Both of these numbers are reminiscent of Led Zeppelin, but they’re bluesy, deep, album-cutting versions of Led Zeppelin, with White taking on the roles of both the skinny Jimmy Page and the screeching Robert Plant. We are undertaking the following.
Watching White reclaim his title as the king and savior of rock in the 21st century makes you wish everyone could have witnessed it…and he probably won’t let anyone who really wants to But I’m doing festival dates that pay well enough to do it. But it’s hard to understate the excitement of this kind of seemingly spontaneous, low-capacity gig. This is in contrast to the delayed gratification of modern tours. If you’ve opened the email notification for a concert scheduled to take place in late October, 2025, you may have been in for a surprise. There’s a sense of urgency in White’s work, whether he’s releasing the first copy of “No Name” without telling anyone or hosting a gig with almost no warning. Perhaps there is something in the mood of the country and the world that makes living in the moment feel more vital than ever. Anyway, the spirit of “No Name” has a name: Thrilling.
Jack White setlist at the Lodge Room in Highland Park, California, October 10, 2024:
old scratch blues
That’s How I’m Feeling – Bass Riff
It’s Rough on Rats (If You’re Asking) – Chime slides into Led Zep blues
Stones in My Pathway (Robert Johnson cover)
small bird
Why walk your dog?
Goin’ Back to Memphis (Soldad Brothers cover)
cannon
john the revelator
bomb out
What is Rumpus?
broken child soldier
black math
(Encore)
LA Woman (door cover)
The hardest button to press
Archbishop Harold Holmes
lazarette
fear of dawn
underground
Seven Kingdoms Army
Jack White Setlist at Mayan, Los Angeles, California, October 11, 2024
I Wanna Be Your Dog/Old Scratch Blues
That’s How I’m Feeling
Tough on rats (if you’re asking)
Phonograph Blues (Robert Johnson cover)
dead leaves and dirty ground
bomb out
fell in love with a girl
interruption of love
Hotel Yoba
What is Rumpus?
I’m slowly turning into you
(Encore)
Archbishop Harold Holmes
Goin’ Back to Memphis (Soldad Brothers cover)
cannon
Icky Thump
underground
Catch the hell blues
broken child soldier
Steady as she goes
