Live Music Review: Jack White Turns Moody Amphitheater Into Detroit Garage
Detroit’s Jack White has spent close to three decades treating rock and roll like a contact sport. He locks your phone in a pouch at the door, keeps young bands pressing vinyl through Third Man Records, and lately has had less patience than most of his peers for keeping his politics to himself. Frozen Charlotte, his seventh solo record, picks up where 2024’s surprise-dropped No Name left off: blown-out blues, short fuses, garage rock with the grime left on. The band hasn’t changed, and that’s the point. Patrick Keeler on drums, Dominic Davis on bass, Bobby Emmett on organ. On a Tuesday night at Moody Amphitheater, Austin turned out again for Jack White, and in numbers. He gave them a set that hit hard, turning the amp into a Detroit garage and left fans with something to chew on afterward.
White likes to hand the opening slot to a hometown band, and in Austin that’s meant Die Spitz and Gus Baldwin & The Sketch on prior tours. This time it was Touch Girl Apple Blossom, whose K Records debut, Graceful, has been out since May. On record they’re tidy jangle pop. Onstage the edges fray: Olivia Garner’s and John Morales’s guitars tangle, a tambourine keeps nagging at the beat, and the songs come out jittery and a little out of breath. The lawn was already filling before they plugged in, and people actually listened, which an amphitheater opener doesn’t always get for free.
White’s band hit the stage the way they always do: at a sprint, straight to the gear, amps on and feedback howling before anyone counted in. They opened with No Name‘s “That’s How I’m Feeling,” a fixture of White’s sets that also kicked off his Thanksgiving halftime show at Ford Field last November, the one where Eminem also came up through the stage. White didn’t stay in one era for long. “Black Math” came early, proof that 15 years after the White Stripes called it quits, he’s still happy to raid the catalog.
The Raconteurs got their turn with “Carolina Drama,” the murder ballad that closes Consolers of the Lonely. It starts quiet, builds to violence, and then refuses to tell you how it ends. It’s still the best short story White has written. Then came “The Union Forever,” the Stripes song stitched together from lines in Citizen Kane, and White finally used it the way it always seemed to want to be used. Between verses he took shots at Elon Musk and the right-wing podcast circuit. A song lifted from a movie about a media baron who mistook owning the conversation for owning the country, aimed at a billionaire who bought a social network: White didn’t have to explain the joke. Musk calls Austin home these days. Nobody at Moody seemed eager to claim him.
The next stretch didn’t let up. The Dead Weather’s “I Cut Like a Buffalo” slid into No Name‘s “Old Scratch Blues,” then the Stripes’ “Fell in Love with a Girl,” with hardly a gap between them. White doesn’t carry a setlist, and you’d never guess it. A lifelong Tigers fan, he calls songs like a catcher in October: a glance, a nod, and the band is moving before the crowd catches up. For all the guitar-hero billing, he spends a surprising amount of the night facing his own band. Keeler hits like he’s settling a grudge. Emmett pushes the Hammond until he growls back at White’s leads. And every time White trades one guitar for another, which is constantly, Davis keeps the low end rolling so nobody hears the handoff. When White introduced them, he sounded less like a bandleader than a fan.
Three from Frozen Charlotte came next: “Derecho Demonico,” “Dollar Bill,” “G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs.” White could live off the catalog at this point and nobody would argue. He did his experimenting on 2018’s Boarding House Reach. The new record is about volume and speed, and the songs didn’t sag next to the ones people paid for. He still plays like the garage door is up and the neighbors are reaching for the phone. The main set closed with “Steady, As She Goes,” the Raconteurs’ biggest hit and the song that made a supergroup side project sound like a band people would still be singing along to 20 years later.
White came back out with “Icky Thump,” the title track from the last album the Stripes made before calling it a day. It’s never been a subtle song. Under that lurching riff, it tells white Americans to remember they’re immigrants too, and with the midterms a month out and immigration enforcement all over the news, it landed less like nostalgia and hit as an abrasive reminder. He stayed on that record for “I’m Slowly Turning Into You,” all stops and starts, the band slamming the brakes on a look. One last No Name cut, “It’s Rough on Rats (If You’re Asking),” and then the one everyone had been waiting on since the gates opened. “Seven Nation Army” is a foregone conclusion at a Jack White show by now. It doesn’t matter. Moody sang it like they’d never heard it before. The city’s 10:30 curfew still had 20 minutes left on it when White walked off, and he didn’t come back for them. The marathon nights of three-hour stretches might be behind him. Everything else isn’t.
Jack White’s tour runs through the end of 2026. Tickets are available on his website.
All photos courtesy of Jack White
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