Jack White says he's on tour now, but you might not know where he's playing until the day of
D etroit rocker Jack White has provided a "message to the peoples of the world" hoping to catch him on stage following the release of his brand new, sixth solo release, No Name , and keeping on brand he's not actually revealing any solid tour dates.
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In a post on his social channels, Jack White acknowledged fans’ anticipation regarding “tour dates”, however, he says “The tour already started at the Legion a couple of weeks ago,” referring to his benefit show on July 27 at Nashville’s American Legion Post 82 . “People keep saying that these are ‘Pop Up Shows’ we’ve been playing,” he adds, “well, you can call them whatever you want, but we are on tour right now. These are the ‘shows.’”
Since the end of July, White has performed at intimate venues in Atlanta, Detroit, and again in Nashville, as well as a number of international festivals to support the new album -- and fans' desire to see him live -- offering up only a moment's notice before tickets become available.
After his tiny American Legion benefit to help raise money for a new sound system, Jack took the stage in Atlanta at the 460-capacity venue The 40 Watt Club and The Earl which holds just 300, as well as his hometown of Detroit's 1,000-person Saint Andrew’s Hall and Nashville’s Basement East club which holds just 575 people. As you can see, things have been getting pretty tight at these concerts, so you better hit that follow button to stay in the loop.
"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," Jack explains. "Shows will be announced as close to the show date as possible, some shows we won’t even decide to do until that morning. I also want to walk through orchard fields and grab apples off of trees at will and fill my belly full of that fruit if the desire strikes me. I’m looking for that cool breeze you know?"
White ended his post by saying, "We hope that we see you out on the road soon, if not let’s get coffee and a slice of pie sometime? Music is sacred."
Jack White returned in true form at the beginning of August with his new, White Stripes -infused jams serving as the official follow-up to his double-record releases Fear of the Dawn and Entering Heaven Alive which arrived in 2022. Pick up or stream No Name NOW -- and keep an eye on Jack's socials to see if he's wandering around the outskirts of your town.
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I was a huge White Stripes fan back in the day. There was something about the cool simplicity of their aesthetic and their songs, while being super-catchy and gaining huge mainstream popularity, emitted a rawness and force that was all encompassing. Jack and Meg White make up the two-piece band of man & wife/ brother and sister/ divorced bandmates (the story changed continuously throughout their musical career, to, in Jack White's words, "keep the focus on the music"). The pair, hailing from Detroit, Michigan, was instigators of the lo-fi, garage rock revival in American music of the late '90s and early 2000s, with their pared-down combination of simple drums (Meg) and guitar and vocals (Jack). While the band is no longer together, you can still catch Jack White touring solo today- a powerhouse of riff-driven, blues-inspired guitar-smashing prowess I managed to catch the White Stripes before it all ended (and Jack formed his other hugely successful band, the Raconteurs), at the Hammersmith Apollo London, in 2005. The theatrical setting of the venue, with decadent red velvet curtains framing the stage, was a surprisingly fitting match for their ramshackle style of blues-rock, and their setlist of what are now considered indie classics didn't disappoint. The entire crowd was stamping their feet and jumping around for the unforgettable hits 'Seven Nation Army' and 'Fell In Love With A Girl', but for me the show's highlight was the raw, heart-tearing rendition of Dolly Parton's 'Jolene'.
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Has there ever been any stronger arguments for the abolition of the bass guitar than watching Jack and Meg White pummel their way through a live set? Doggedly minimalist in both instrumental set up and aesthetic, the duo’s shtick didn’t change all that much from their days playing Detroit clubs through to cavernous arenas the world over, a transition that took them less than a decade. Though detractors point to Meg not being the world’s most technically proficient drummer (and yet finding one who would better suit these songs is an exercise in futility), her brother / ex husband (depending on who you believe) Jack has gone on to become regarded as one of the planet’s finest guitarists. Yet for all his solo work and dabbling with bands such as The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, it’s on a stage with Meg that he’s at his most viscerally thrilling. While you’d expect such a small set up to only really thrive in similarly diminutive venues, The White Stripes have struck upon a way of capitalising on their minimalism, mainly down to having a vast array of tunes such as "Seven Nation Army," "Hotel Yorba" and "Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground" that nobody would argue are bona fide classics.
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The White Stripes’ biggest hit was born in Australia. Then it became a game-changing global sports anthem
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'Seven Nation Army' isn't so much a song anymore as a cultural tour de force.
It's a muscular rock anthem that transformed The White Stripes from best kept garage rock secret into the biggest band of the turn-of-the-millennium rock revival.
More significantly, in the 20 years since its release, the song has grown from the group's signature hit into a canonised pop culture artefact.
'Seven Nation Army' ranks alongside history's most iconic and influential guitar riffs — 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', 'Back In Black', 'Smoke On The Water', you name it. There's a whole generation who see the song as a rite of six-string-slinging passage.
It's instantly magnetic, impossibly catchy but also doesn't get dull thanks to a selection of slippery little variations to the phrasing – best evidenced by White teaching Jimmy Page and The Edge how to play the riff in 2008 documentary It Might Get Loud .
"That'll be five dollars," he jibes after instructing them and jamming on the track.
With over one billion streams and counting on Spotify alone, it's The White Stripes' most recognisable and popular song. Across two decades it's gone from their highest charting hit in triple j's Hottest 100 to an inescapable stadium chant at sporting events the world over.
And 'Seven Nation Army' was born right here in Australia.
The song that nearly wasn't
Jack White came up with the iconic riff during soundcheck at Melbourne's Corner Hotel in January 2002, on one of The White Stripes' earliest tours Down Under.
Ben Swank – White's roommate and later, Third Man Records exec – was there during that historic moment. At the time, he didn't think much of what would become one of the most recognisable descending note patterns in music.
"Weirdly enough, I didn't like it," Swank told Deadspin in 2012. "I [told Jack], 'I don't know man, you can do better'."
Recounting the origin story in It Might Get Loud , White said the muted reaction only encouraged him to pursue the idea further.
"It's almost great when people say that, because it almost makes you get defensive in your brain and think, 'No. There's something to this. You don't see it yet. It's gonna get there."
He pocketed the riff, thinking it would make for a great James Bond theme should the opportunity arise. (As it turned out, White did get to compose a 007 tune: 'Another Way To Die' with Alicia Keys for 2008's Quantum of Solace ).
Even after recording the song, the frontman fought resistance from the band's labels to make 'Seven Nation Army' the lead single for The White Stripes' career-altering fourth album Elephant , which celebrates its 20th anniversary this Saturday.
To say his instincts were correct is a wild understatement.
"The labels in America and the UK, neither of them wanted to put that out as the first single," White told Rolling Stone in 2009. "It just shows you that you really never know."
Released on 17 February 2003, 'Seven Nation Army' rocketed to number one on Billboard's Alternative chart and later earned the Grammy for Best Rock Song, while Elephant won Best Alternative Music Album (the first of three in a row for the band).
"Maybe it should have won for Best Paranoid Blues Song," White joked to Rolling Stone .
Buoyed by its hypnotic music video, which received heavy rotation on MTV and rage here in Australia, 'Seven Nation Army' also hit the Top 10 in the UK and peaked at #17 on the ARIA Singles Chart following its CD release on 28 April, 2003.
By the end of that year, it was voted in at #3 in triple j's Hottest 100 (just behind Outkast's 'Hey Ya' and Jet's 'Are You Gonna Be My Girl?) and interestingly, rose to #2 in a poll on the previous 20 years of Hottest 100 countdowns held in 2013. It remains the highest charting of 10 songs by The White Stripes in triple j's annual music poll.
'I'm gonna fight 'em off…'
'Seven Nation Army' was recorded in April 2002, at Toe Rag Studios in the London borough of Hackney, entirely on analogue equipment.
The lack of digital gear wasn't a surprise for the Detroit duo – with their old-fashioned sensibilities stripped-back voice/guitar/drums set-up. But the song's opening riff was.
The growling, ominous melody sounded like it was played on a bass guitar – a self-imposed White Stripes no-no – but was created by White pitch-shifting his guitar (a semi-acoustic 1950s Kay Hollowbody gifted to Jack by his brother as payment for moving a refrigerator, for you trivia heads).
Using a digital whammy pedal, he down-tuned his six-string an octave to mimic a bass. (A very similar effect is heard on another decade-defining hit , Tame Impala's 'The Less I Know The Better'.)
"I was just calling it 'Seven Nation Army' — that's what I called the Salvation Army when I was a kid," White told Rolling Stone . "So that was just a way for me to remember which one I was talking about, but it took on a new meaning with the lyrics."
As the down-tuned guitar meets the four-to-the-floor drum thud, White fires his powerful opening salvo:
'I'm gonna fight 'em off / A seven nation army couldn't hold me back' They're gonna rip it off / Takin' their time right behind my back'
Charged with a fearsome defiance, the lyrics were actually inspired by the perception of the band's burgeoning celebrity within the grassroots Detroit scene that spawned them. The paranoid protagonist imagines the bitchy backstabbing of the folks back home, jealous of their fame and success.
"He feels so bad he has to leave town but you get so lonely you come back," White explained to The Independent in 2010.
"The song's about gossip. It's about me, Meg and the people we're dating."
A key part of the early White Stripes narrative was that Jack and Meg White pretended to be brother and sister, when in fact they had been married and divorced.
It was a relatively open secret, one that White later claimed was to keep the focus on the music rather than their personal relationship.
For better or worse, the 'Are they/aren't they?' question dogged the band in the early stages of their career and began to irritate the duo when it did distract from the music.
It's easy to read that frustration in the second verse of 'Seven Nation Army', where the tone switches to something a little more threatening.
'Everyone knows about it / From the Queen of England to the Hounds of Hell And if I catch it comin' back my way, I'm gonna serve it to you And that ain't what you want to hear, but that's what I'll do'
Them's fighting words, doubling down on the song's attitude and air of ferocity.
"That song started out about two specific people I knew in Detroit. It was about gossip, the spreading of lies and the other person's reaction to it," White told Rolling Stone in 2005.
"It came from a frustration of watching my friends do this to each other. In the end, it started to become a metaphor for things I was going through. But I never set out to write an exposé on myself."
"To me, the song was a blues at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The third verse could be something from a hundred years ago."
He's right. That verse combines the romantic imagery of a ramblin' Bluesman — 'goin' to Wichita' to ' work the straw / make the sweat drip out of every pore' – with religious allusions: ' I'm bleedin' and I'm bleedin' right before the Lord'.
It's worth noting White and his nine(!) siblings were raised devout Catholic and he even considered joining the priesthood as a teen.
But for all of its evocative, ear-turning phrases, what really powers 'Seven Nation Army' has very little to do with the words
The staying power of seven notes
The White Stripes' most popular song by a comfortable stretch, 'Seven Nation Army' posed a songwriting challenge from White to himself to "NOT put a chorus in the song," he told The Detroit Free Press in 2016.
"I wanted to see how powerful I could make the track without resorting to it having a chorus."
That central burly riff – a seven-note descending pattern – is so good that it doesn't really change throughout the song. It goes quieter and louder, or is embellished with broader chords.
White has written plenty more involved songs and equally effective riffs but 'Seven Nation Army' endures precisely because of its simplicity.
That timeless quality also ensured the song's fascinating migration from indie rock staple to a global anthem, chanted by packed stadiums at sports events.
As legend has it, in 2003, 'Seven Nation Army' was playing in a Milan bar and heard by supporters of Belgian football team Club Brugge, visiting the Italian city to see their team face off with AC Milan.
Struck by its urgency and electricity, the fans continued to sing the riff as they filled the stadium for the European Champions League match-up. Following a surprise win against Milan, Brugge adopted the chant as an unofficial anthem and even began playing 'Seven Nation Army' every time they scored.
In February 2006, Brugge lost a EUFA Cup match against A.S. Roma, prompting the Italian team's fans to chant the song back as a taunt to the Belgians.
"I had never heard the song before we stepped on the field in Bruges," Roma captain Francesco Totti later told a Dutch newspaper .
"Since then, I can't get the ' Po po-po-po po-ppo-pooo ' out of my head. It sounded fantastic and the crowd immediately loved it. I quickly went out and bought one of the band's albums."
The Italian team and their supporters ended up taking the song back home, later exposing it to a massive global audience as their nation went on to win the 2006 World Cup, belted out from the nosebleeds of the Berlin Olympiastadion to the streets of Rome.
Two days after the World Cup victory, two of the Italian team's star players (Alessandro Del Piero and Marco Materazzi) joined the Rolling Stones onstage and led the enormous crowd in a chant of 'the po po po song' with the words "campione del mondo" (world champions).
Its status as a sporting anthem was sealed, played during every game of the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Euro Cups, and migrating to other sporting events, such as Formula One racing and across the Atlantic to infiltrate the NBA , MLB , and even the WWE .
It also made the natural leap from the sports arena to political chant.
In 2017, 'Seven Nation Army' became linked with UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's rise to power, becoming what The Guardian described as a "ubiquitous and inescapable" rallying cry.
White may have intended the song to have no chorus but chants of 'Oh! Je-re-my Coooor-byn!' dominated Glastonbury Festival that year.
The song's all-conquering ubiquity and endurance has, of course, delighted its composer.
"As a songwriter it is one of the things I am most proud of being a part of," White told The Detroit Free Press in 2016. But he was talking about something much deeper than the song royalties lining his pockets.
As White noted, the song has transcended its humble beginnings into something utterly timeless due to its adaptability by the masses swarming large-scale sporting and music events.
"Modern folk music around the world happens when groups of people gather together in larger numbers, not in small homes and villages like it used to in the past…
"What thrills me the most is that people are chanting a melody, which separates it from chants like 'Thank God I'm a Country Boy' and 'We Will Rock You' and many of the most popular songs where large groups tend to clap or sing words and not just notes."
That power and the deathless popularity of 'Seven Nation Army' has stuck with White. It has remained a tentpole of his live shows even now , more than a decade after going solo.
His pride in the song was evident when he spoke to Conan O'Brien last year , happy to revisit the song's origin, trajectory, and legacy.
"Nothing is more beautiful in music than when people embrace a melody and allow it to enter the pantheon of folk music," he told O'Brien.
"It's not mine anymore. It becomes folk music when things like that happen. It becomes something that, the more people don't know where it came from, the happier I am."
Whether in its original 2003 recording or in a raw live iteration – performed by musicians or divorced of its lyrics and boiled down to its rudimentary elements by a rowdy crowd – the idea that tickled Jack White while sound-checking in a Melbourne pub has never gone away. It probably never will.
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