Jack White Lights Up Trees With a ‘Secret’ Show for the Ages

Roughly 600 lucky fans got to see a rock icon up close and personal Wednesday night when Jack White played an instant classic, last-minute, “secret” show at Trees in Deep Ellum.

White has favored these intimate “pop-up” venue concerts to support his latest release, No Name. There’s been no FOMO-preventive frenzy for show tickets this extreme since Taylor Swift was in North Texas, and she had thousands more tickets available. These days it’s rare to put on a true must-see, “will be super pissed if I missed this” kind of show, but this one was all that and more.

The first hurdle was hearing about the show in the first place. Jack White fans were already on the lookout for a Dallas stop, and the speculation that he would play Deep Ellum swirled online for a few months. This was expected; White is a business owner in Deep Ellum whose baseball gear shop, Warstick, sits a few blocks away from Trees. Facebook and Instagram were also bombarded with comments filled with excitement and anxiety over the size of the venue and the potential difficulty in acquiring tickets.

These days, getting the secret code for an early ticket purchase time has become the norm, and this show was no exception. One way to get a real jump was to sign up for a subscription to “The Vault” by White’s label, Third Man Records. If you’re a fan of White or vinyl this is a pretty cool membership that offers exclusive, limited-edition vinyl, merchandise and other collectibles by White. It’s $75 a quarter, and membership included an extra-early access code for the show.

The other way was to get a regular code that gave you a headstart on the general public sale. This system used by White also required the person who purchased the ticket to be the one picking up and using that ticket. It’s a pretty good method to keep the scalpers away, and it seemed to work on this occasion.

But even if you had a secret code, you were probably one of many people who still couldn’t get tickets. Many fans reported being kicked out of the queue for trying to log in too early, and many complained of general glitches.

Aron Alfaro works the door at many Dallas venues and is also a concert-going pro.

“I waited until 11:59 then clicked on the purchase button and boom, I got ’em,” he says.

Alfaro was one of the lucky ones. M’Lou Elkins, a local concert photographer, had to earn her ticket. She missed out on the presale, but White had another means of getting fans to the show. There were 70 first-come-first-served tickets available only for students that released at noon. All you needed to get a ticket was a student ID. Elkins, although older than most of the students in line, took a trip back to her college days by getting in line for tickets at 7:25 a.m.

Elkins had no regrets. “It was totally worth it,” she says. “When I got there in the early morning I hadn’t planned on staying all day. But once I got there I spent five hours talking with the other fans … I think I got the Jack White fever and figured, what’s another seven hours? I knew being fifth in line would get me a spot against the stage to see one of my favorite musicians in a tiny club. It was really the chance of a lifetime, and something I couldn’t pass up.”

Students were present from most of the colleges in North Texas as were some out-of-towners who made the pilgrimage to multiple intimate White shows in other cities.

Other fans were not as lucky. Patrick Pluscht is an avid concertgoers who missed out on tickets.

“Trying to get Jack White tickets for his pop-up at Trees was like trying to catch a lightning bolt with a butterfly net,” he says. “I had two tickets in my cart at 1 p.m. and then was suddenly watching a Nicholas Cage movie: Gone in 60 Seconds!”

Pluscht was not alone in his painful pursuit for tickets.

Trees released more tickets in a few waves on show day, and some fans were alerted to this and got in line. At least one couple was unsuccessful trying to talk their way in as the woman at the door politely told them the show was sold out. There were plenty of other hopeful fans trolling the line wrapped around Trees, asking for extra tickets, apparently unaware or in disbelief over the wristband-only policy.

The concert was nothing short of amazing: dirty, gritty, sweaty, frenetic guitar-driven rock ‘n’ roll. White’s set spanned his entire career with songs from all his projects – The White Stripes, Raconteurs, The Dead Weather – and, of course, his solo output, including a heavy dose of songs off his latest release.

Some fans get attached to a certain album or time in an artist’s career and really just want to hear the hits, but White’s fanbase is different. They seemed almost as excited to hear the new songs as to hear the familiar favorites.

After a musical introduction that teased the night ahead, White shouted, “Dallas is alive and well right now and I can tell!” This caused the energy in the room to jump up even higher, and White fed on it.

Jack White is the type of artist and person who seems to like everything in his world curated to a specific aesthetic – from his stage crew decked out in ties and hats from the ’40s to the distinct sound of his tricked-out guitars. He effortlessly directed the band, weaving in and out of classic songs that blended into extended shredding sections.

White also had the audience involved from the jump. He kept instigating call-and-responses from the crowd and set the tone for the entire room to become the band’s back-up singers for most of the show. White seemed to love being close to his fans and even did a brief crowd surf on his back without missing a note in his solo.

The artist switched guitars throughout the night. It seemed random, but White seemed to have a feel for a specific sound he wanted at any given moment. He had a cut-away acoustic guitar with a capo that he played with a slide. If anyone thought an acoustic guitar was about to mellow the scene, they would’ve been wrong. White shredded that acoustic and laid it on the ground at one point, huddling over it like a pedal steel guitar. He then did a guitar slide across the famous “tree” pole onstage.

It’s possible many attendees’ ears were still ringing the morning after. This was possibly the loudest concert of the year. Not one person seemed to be complaining, however. Only at a small venue could you feel Jack White’s guitar amp blasting the air, making your shirt ripple with the sheer force of the sound waves.

There is no question this was the concert of the year in Dallas. Jack White is a rock icon and it was a rare experience for the lucky ones who made it inside. White said it all when he shouted, “It’s so good to be back in Deep Ellum,” and all 600-plus people couldn’t have agreed more.

This was the kind of night that restored one’s faith in Deep Ellum, and in all of modern music.