It was about 40 minutes into his set, and Jack White was finally taking a brief pause.
“Let me catch my breath, goddamn,” he told the crowd Friday at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles, slightly panting. Just moments later, he’d jump right back in, encouraging fans to sing along as he started strumming his beloved White Stripes country rock classic “Hotel Yorba,” and the energy was amped back up to eleven — where it remained for the rest of the night.
White’s latest pop-up gig — one of two small LA shows the guitar god played this week — was over an hour and a half of pure raucous energy from a remarkably confident showman. Throughout the night, White screamed and yelped, shredded guitar solos, stood on top of drum kits and slammed on keyboard keys. A few songs in, White had declared to the crowd that “tonight, I am the mayor of Los Angeles.”
Starting promptly at 9:30 p.m., White kicked off the show with “Old Scratch Blues,” the opening track from his latest LP No Name. That led into two more No Name tracks “That’s How I’m Feeling” and “It’s Rough on the Rats (If You’re Asking),” before veering off into a healthy collection of his solo material and White Stripes and Raconteurs songs.
Given White’s reputation for embracing the unconventional, the No Name era has fittingly been filled with novelty. He secretly released the album over the summer, giving away vinyl copies to customers who went to Third Man Records for one day in July before more widely releasing the album in August.
Meanwhile, White’s kept fans on their toes with his tour too, playing much smaller venues than usual, and only announcing show dates at most a couple days before each gig. Some fans were expecting the first few pop-up shows to lead into a more traditional tour rollout, but as White says, this is the tour.
“We won’t really be announcing dates in advance so much, we will mostly be playing at small clubs, back yard fetes, and a few festivals here and there to help pay for expenses,” White explained in August.
David James Swanson
That strategy seems to have afforded rock’s modern guitar hero a certain level of freedom and looseness as he plays for smaller groups of harder core fans. While White famously used Yondr pouches to restrict phone usage during tours in the past, he went with a far less stringent tactic this time, sending out a roadie (along with comedian Reggie Watts) 15 minutes before showtime to ask fans to “be present” and keep the videos and photos to a minimum. That request was mainly met, as fans took the occasional video, but there were still far fewer phones obstructing the view of the stage than at the usual concert.
The crowds fed off White’s own high-octane tempo, aggressively moshing during “Fell In Love With a Girl,” and “Bombin’ Out,” two of the fastest-paced songs of the night.
Some of the highlights of the evening included a loud, call and response rendition of the White Stripes’ heavy-riffed “Slowly Turning Into You,” and some piercing slide guitar on “Catch Hell Blues” and “Underground.”
In the latter half of the encore, White seemed to impersonate Trump, making fun of the former president’s crazy claims that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs as he performed the pro-immigration “Icky Thump.”
White nixed playing arguably his signature song “Seven Nation Army” altogether — perhaps another perk of playing for 1,000 dedicated fans instead of a music festival main stage, or perhaps because he played it the night before during another pop-up show at Los Angeles’ the Lodge — finishing instead with a rowdy performance of the Raconteurs’ “Steady As She Goes.”
“You’ve been outstanding, you’ve been incredible, you’ve been amazing,” he told the crowd enthusiastically as he wrapped the night with his signature sign-off. “And I’ve been Jack White.”
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