{"id":460525,"date":"2026-10-08T22:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T22:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/460525\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T22:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T22:00:10","slug":"jack-white-returns-to-the-bomb-factory-in-deep-ellum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/460525\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack White returns to the Bomb Factory in Deep Ellum"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was no hardest button to button at the Bomb Factory<\/a> on Wednesday night; Jack White pushed every one of them anyway.<\/p>\n

By the time the house lights dropped, the line for the venue had already wrapped around the building like a fuzz pedal cable on a crowded stage. Inside, the room was packed shoulder to shoulder. Not one of those shoulders held up a glowing rectangle.<\/p>\n

White\u2019s tour runs on a strict no-phone policy. Once your ticket\u2019s scanned, it goes into a locked Yondr pouch. We wore it around all night like a backstage pass to nowhere, and staff unsealed it when the show ended.<\/p>\n

That may sound extreme, but White is in good company. Artists like Danzig and Tool have long waged similar wars on the screen. And after a decade of watching concerts through a strangers\u2019 iPhone, a room without a sea of red record buttons felt like a small miracle. We just wrote about concert etiquette<\/a>, so we\u2019re not mad about it. The show belonged to the people standing in it. You left with the night stored where it used to be kept: in your head. <\/p>\n

LABELS hit the accelerator first<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Music newsletter to get the latest stories delivered to your inbox<\/p>\n

THANK YOU!<\/p>\n

You’re all set.<\/p>\n

CLOSE\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Fort Worth\u2019s LABELS opened the night. They play fuzzy, fast garage-punk with a psych-rock streak, and they floored it from the first note.<\/p>\n

Many people in the crowd were clearly meeting them for the first time, but that didn\u2019t matter. Frontman Tyler Waller bounced around the stage like a human Roomba, bumping off invisible walls and changing direction at full speed. Guitarist Braden Burgan, who co-founded the band with his twin brother, drummer Taylor Burgan, pulled Tom Morello-style squeals from his guitar that sounded like a car alarm with a music degree.<\/p>\n

The energy needle stayed pinned for about 95 percent of the 40-minute set. The one exception was an older track where Waller swapped his yell for something calmer, a song you heard more than you felt, and yet you still couldn\u2019t look away.<\/p>\n

Near the end, Waller stared out at the packed room and said, \u201cThis is the first and likely only time we\u2019re going to play a stage like this.\u201d When the crowd roared through their bow, he added, \u201cY\u2019all are going to make me cry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nobody in the building could have sold that with more sincerity. Their debut EP, \u201cLive to Revive,\u201d drops Oct. 29 through Austin\u2019s Spaceflight Records. If Wednesday was any sign, we disagree with Waller: this won\u2019t be the last big stage they see.<\/p>\n

Jack White took the stage and didn\u2019t let go<\/p>\n

White walked out at 9:15 p.m. and kept the needle right where LABELS left it. Spread across two hours, he played 25 songs and never gave the room a chance to breathe.<\/p>\n

He opened with \u201cThat\u2019s How I\u2019m Feeling\u201d from 2024\u2019s \u201cNo Name,\u201d the record he slipped into Third Man shopping bags like a garage-rock Easter egg. Then, he went straight into \u201cDead Leaves and the Dirty Ground.\u201d A pair of Raconteurs cuts followed, \u201cCarolina Drama\u201d and \u201cBroken Boy Soldier,\u201d and that pretty much set the rule for the night. White Stripes, Raconteurs and solo material all got equal billing, and every song got equal ferocity.<\/p>\n

\"\"Jack White and the Church of Loud.<\/p>\n

There was no screen behind the band. There were no graphics. There were only blue and white lights sweeping the stage. White\u2019s catalog has always gone back to basics, from peppermint red-and-white to his solo-era blue, so this fit. With nothing to look at but the band, everyone locked in. White seemed perfectly happy to go feral.<\/p>\n

A guitar clinic disguised as a riot<\/p>\n

White is one of the most gifted guitar players alive, and Wednesday didn\u2019t feel like a debate. He punched the guitar\u2019s body to shake loose fuzzy notes. He slid a brass slide over the strings on \u201cOld Scratch Blues\u201d and \u201cBall and Biscuit.\u201d He bent strings so far, you\u2019d swear they were about to turn inside out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI play the kind of blues that only I know about,\u201d he told the crowd, \u201cBut you may not know about.\u201d Fair enough. Picture garage rock and the Delta blues brawling in a parking lot behind a Detroit upholstery shop.<\/p>\n

The best moments were his \u201cCrossroads\u201d-style duels<\/a> with keyboardist Bobby Emmett. They traded hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends and shakes like two gunslingers who had both decided to miss on purpose. The improvised jams played like a live sparring match.<\/p>\n

White\u2019s voice matched the guitar\u2019s range. He could slip in soft on \u201cLove Interruption,\u201d then let out a high-pitched yell just for the hell of it. Somehow, it never got sloppy; it stayed raw and passionate.<\/p>\n

Editing in real time<\/p>\n

The band sped up and slowed down like a film editor scrubbing through footage frame by frame. There was no tuning between songs. White swapped from an acoustic tone to blues guitar while the band rocked out a fade behind him.<\/p>\n

The fade on \u201cScrewdriver\u201d sounded like playing cards flapping in a bicycle\u2019s spokes as the wheel slowed to a stop. It was a mechanical, perfectly timed wind-down from a band that runs like a machine.<\/p>\n

The high point came with \u201cFell in Love with a Girl.\u201d On the \u201cWhite Blood Cells\u201d album, it\u2019s a two-minute sprint. White slowed it down and gave it a new flavor, the kind you only earn after 30-plus years of practice. He tipped his hat to the energy of the early 2000s and added some hard-won wisdom.<\/p>\n

\"\"Proof that rock shows don\u2019t need a screen saver. <\/p>\n

After about seven songs, people noticed he hadn\u2019t said much. Mostly he pressed his fingers to his ears so the crowd could shout lyrics back at him. Then he cleared it up: \u201cJust because I\u2019m not talking to you doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m mad at you. I still love you.\u201d He let the guitar do the rest of the talking.<\/p>\n

The encore brought the house down<\/p>\n

He worked in newer cuts like \u201cDollar Bill\u201d and \u201cNeighbors Blues,\u201d plus \u201cLazaretto\u201d and a cover of Henry Mancini\u2019s \u201cPeter Gunn\u201d theme, the most noir detour of the night. Then the encore lit the place up. \u201cIcky Thump\u201d and \u201cThat Black Bat Licorice\u201d shook the room, and \u201cI Think I Smell a Rat\u201d landed with a snarl.<\/p>\n

Then came the riff. The whole building chanted \u201cSeven Nation Army\u201d like a stadium during the World Cup, and the floor bounced.<\/p>\n

It felt like a rock opera, and it was one of the best rock shows you can see right now.<\/p>\n

As for Charley Crockett, the Texas troubadour who picked a fight with White<\/a>, we\u2019d suggest he catch the next tour date. Bring an appetite, Charley. You\u2019ll be eating those words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was no hardest button to button at the Bomb Factory on Wednesday night; Jack White pushed every…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2171,102,104,103,3949,3503],"class_list":["post-460525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-concert-reviews","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-deep-ellum","tag-rock-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}