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The latest round of Jack White’s “No Name” tour recordings finds unparalleled, shattering versions of songs from the album of the same name, new interpretations of White Stripes classics, and impressive bust out covers of songs by the MC5, the Stooges, Cream, Hound Dog Taylor and THREE songs originally by blues master Robert Johnson.

Songs made up on the spot, with improvised lyrics? No less than six of them.

We are living through a truly wonderful, exciting time for fans of Jack White, rock and roll and the electrifying energy unleashed within these live performances.

It’s one of the hardest tickets to get, but you don’t have to miss a note. Stream these new shows and Jack White’s entire archival concert catalog now exclusively on nugs. Hi-res downloads are also available. Sign up for a free trial now to get instant access.

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An exclusive archive from Jack White just dropped for streaming in the nugs.net app, featuring a batch of shows from the 2024 ‘No Name’ Tour! Sign up for a free trial now to hear all ten shows plus the entire Third Man Records archival catalog.

South Korea to Detroit to Sweden is one of the more ludicrous three show tour routings in recent memory, so it’s only fitting that the performances across Jack White’s current run of gigs have been equally as ludicrous. Day in and day out, these performances – announced mere days in advance, selling out in an instant – are garnering laudatory praise and “best concert I’ve ever been to” reviews across the board. A quarter century into his touring career, Jack White is playing the best shows of his life and the audio here is all the proof you need.

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An exclusive archive from The White Stripes just dropped for streaming in the nugs.net app, featuring July 30, 1999 from The Magic Bag in Ferndale, MI!

Sign up for a free trial now to hear this newly mastered show plus the entire Third Man Records archival catalog.

Say A Little Prayer For Her and Say A Little Prayer For Yourself

The White Stripes played fifteen shows in 1999. Only three of those occurred in any approximate vicinity of others (the late September sojourn opening for Pavement) meaning each one of the shows from ‘99 exists in a vacuum, with new songs flying in and different arrangements making themselves known, no real established running order or pacing/tempo/meter/cadence. All but four of these shows were recorded in some manner, which still feels like a tiny miracle given how unknown and unheralded the band was at this juncture.

Outside of the Stripes show from the Gold Dollar, August 14th 1997, this July 30th, 1999 gig is the White Stripes show that I have listened to the most in my life. No doubt I immediately popped this sumbitch into the cassette deck of the ‘95 Ford Taurus on the way home from the show and would continue to come back to it for years. It lives in my head rent free, iconic and memorized and encased in amber, a memory reinforced by the consistent reliving of it over the past twenty-five years that it’s foundationally unparalleled in my understanding of the band.

When I listen now, what immediately grabs me is the piano. The piano!!! Oh man, it felt like a huge coup to get the powers-that-be at the Bag to actually let Jack play the thing, a seemingly “fancy” instrument that lived on the stage but was always covered up when bands of their ilk were in the house. In comparison, the powers that be would not let the band use the projection/video screen (they softened that stance by the De Stijl album release show the following year). 

Twenty years after the show, dear friend (and White Stripes roadie in arms) Brandon Beaver mailed me a stack of Polaroid pictures that I had taken at the show. I had completely forgotten about this, because, well, it wasn’t in the recording. They hadn’t informed my recollection, my mind canon of it all. I was surprised to see the piano, this grand (baby grand?) beast covered in the red-and-white stripes of an American flag that was previously used as a stage backdrop as depicted on the cover of TMR-345. The visual of it all is striking, it is visually compelling and indicates a modicum of extra effort that separated the Stripes from their peers at the time.

Couple that with the fact that in the rehearsals leading up to the show, Jack and Meg had repeatedly practiced a cover of the song “Do You Love Me Now?” originally by the Breeders. I still don’t know why they didn’t play it that night…the moments in rehearsal were solid and worthy of being trotted out on stage. It sounded damn cool. The fact that the band never recorded a version of this song is one of the bigger frustrations in the “Shit The White Stripes Should Have Done” list in my head.

The recording here is the first time that a piano or any keys are ever used live in a White Stripes performance and it’s beautiful.

Terry Cox was the sound man on this night. At the time he was the front-of-house engineer at the Magic Stick, so I’m not really sure why he was at the Magic Bag this evening. But with Terry behind the mixing desk, the band got a more-familiar set of ears working in their favor, as opposed to some rando without a clue as to what the band sounded like. The reverb on vocals “Love Sick” is a prime example of the special touch Terry brought to the mix. Reverb on the snare too. Actually, it’s just a shit ton of reverb. The whole show sounds “BIG” in a way that no other recording from this era ever would. God bless Terry.

“Love Sick” here is the Stripes first ever performance of the song, not even two years old by this point, the highlight of Bob Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind album from 1997. It sounds important. It sounds serious. It sounds like it is a harbinger of bigger things to come.

Followed by “Dead Leaves” which, by this point, still hadn’t truly found its form. A piano take on the song is still a rare outing, so even though it is by far the song the band played most in their career, I’m unclear if it was ever done exclusively on piano again.

The tension here is palpable. Between “Dead Leaves” and “St. James” someone shouts something in the crowd. At 2:04 and again at 2:07. You can just barely hear it. Wouldn’t be a stretch to think they’re screaming “Fuck you!” Whatever is said, Jack responds with “You’re a liar,” echoing Dylan’s retort at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1966 to a member of the crowd shouting “Judas!”

Couple that with the intro to “Astro” where Jack extemporaneously sings “I’m gonna kill my brother Jack” from Meg’s perspective, to the tune of “Three Little Fishies” a child-like number 1 hit from 1939. I recall Meg responding to this moment with a dismissive laugh, but still, I remember feeling uncomfortable. It was awkward.

But at some point, it all changes, the air is cleared, so to speak. Everything feels…understood? Accepted? Light-hearted even? Having thought about this many times over the intervening 25 years, I just know that while the first half of the set embodies a tension, the second half emboldens a joy throughout. Listening now, I smile. I feel happy.

As Jack is ready to end the performance with “Broken Bricks” you can hear Kevin Peyok (The Waxwings, Jack White and The Bricks) and Ko Shih (The Dirtbombs, Ko and The Knockouts) repeatedly yell “SAME BOY!” while Jack is thanking the opening bands the Greenhornes and Clone Defects. 


Isn’t it great when folks request an unreleased song? Kevin would know the song from playing it with the Bricks just three weeks earlier, but even so, the three Stripes performances of the song earlier this year were already enough to embed it into the consciousness of fan/friends in teh crow. And with an “aw shucks” manner Jack responds “You wanna hear ‘Same Boy’? Alright I’ll play that.”

Come the encore of “You’ve Got Her In Your Pocket”, another Stripes live debut that wouldn’t see a studio release for another FOUR YEARS, it all is sweet and dare I say wholesome. With just Jack and the piano, here is a worthy reminder that there’s no such thing as an off performance of “Pocket” as the tender emotion is palpable whenever it was performed and only more so if it was just Jack playing it. 

With Jack asking “What do you want to hear?” it’s worth noting how rare it is to hear him openly take a request, especially in light of already taking one with “Same Boy.” Funnily enough, we don’t hear anyone yell anything in response. At the culmination of a blistering “Broken Bricks” Jack sheepishly gives notice that the gig is over…that he broke a string and that Meg has mono.

“She’s tuckered out…so say a little prayer for her and say a little prayer for yourself” he offers up. Jack didn’t have to say that. No one would have begrudged the band ending the show at that point without any indication as to why no more songs were performed. It was already a decently full set. But the sincerity, the honesty, the essence of “we have given you our all” coupled with a “you are released” sews up this oddity of a show perfectly.

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An exclusive archive from Jack White just dropped for streaming in the nugs.net app, featuring June 14, 2014 from Bonnaroo in Manchester, TN!

Sign up for a free trial now to hear this newly mastered show plus the entire Third Man Records archival catalog.

Jack White: June 14, 2014

Ten years and one week ago, Jack White unleashed what was arguably one of the best performances in the history of the Bonnaroo

festival. 

In an expansive field in Manchester, TN, filled with approximately 70,000 fans, White let loose a tour-de-force, two-hour and forty-five minute career-spanning set. From White Stripes songs like “Hotel Yorba” and “Icky Thump” to Raconteurs numbers such as “Top Yourself” and “Steady, As She Goes” through “Blue Blood Blues” by the Dead Weather…not to mention a wide selection of his solo material and covers of two surf rock classics “Pipeline” by the Chantays and “Misirlou” by Dick Dale. And Led Zeppelin’s “The Lemon Song”? He did that too.

To be in the field that evening was to truly have one’s mind blown. As Jack pulled trick after stupefying trick as the set went stratospheric, all I could do was look to Ben Swank next to me and say “Can you even believe this?”

Originally released as a Vault package back in 2014, we’ve updated the setlist to include to previously unlisted covers…snippets of “Cool Drink Of Water Blues” by Tommy Johnson and “Fried My Little Brains” by the Kills both couched within medleys of other songs.

Listening back a decade later, these recordings hit just as hard as the initial blast of soundwaves reverberated off our bodies in that sweaty Tennessee field back then.

– Ben Blackwell

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Stream this new show and all other exclusive archive releases from Third Man Records with a 7-day free trial. Explore The White Stripes catalog and start your free trial here.

An exclusive archive from Jack White just dropped for streaming in the nugs.net app, featuring July 30, 2014 from Detroit, MI!

Sign up for a free trial now to hear this newly mastered show plus the entire Third Man Records archival catalog.

Jack White: July 30, 2014

On July 30th, 2014 Jack White played one of the most captivating live shows of his career. With the friendly confines of Detroit’s Masonic Temple providing as much of a home field advantage as White could ever get, this tour-de-force, three hour plus, 38 song barn-burner of a set spanned the breadth of his recorded career and left all comers in its wake gobsmacked, a testament to the undiminished magnetism of a performer at the height of his powers.

Kicking off at breakneck pace with three sizzling fan favorites from the White Stripes back catalog, the impromptu song selection never loses focus and instead delivers body blow after body blow of unrelenting passion. Inspired, off-the-cuff covers of Beck’s “Devil’s Haircut” to Zeppelin’s “Lemon Song”, Hank Williams’ “Ramblin’ Man” to Junior Wells’ “Hoodoo Man” absolutely delight. White’s Dead Weather bandmates Alison Mosshart and Dean Fertita unexpectedly join onstage for a particularly heavy version of “I Cut Like a Buffalo.” Chock full of delightful stage banter, local references and even a laugh-out-loud takedown of a supposed icon (you’ll have to listen to know exactly), the performance manages to blow everyone’s mind, both satiating desire and yet quizzically also leaving them wanting more…such are the paradoxes of a truly transcendent evening.

Previously only available on a limited edition, one-time only vinyl pressing, Third Man is ecstatic to be able to share this unparalleled recording complete and unedited for the first time, truly the way that it was played on a sweaty Detroit night nearly ten years ago.

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Stream this new show and all other exclusive archive releases from Third Man Records with a 7-day free trial. Explore The White Stripes catalog and start your free trial here.

An exclusive archive from The White Stripes just dropped for streaming in the nugs.net app, featuring April 17, 1999 from Detroit, MI!

Sign up for a free trial now to hear this newly mastered show plus the entire Third Man Records archival catalog. From White Stripes archivist/historian Ben Blackwell on this month’s ‘Third Man Thursday’ release:

The White Stripes 1999 Tour Archive

There are moments, ever so brief, that feel like an entire room has catalyzed and are all speaking the same language. Even if speaking vaguely or in code, everyone understands fully.

So while I cannot speak for the rest of the 100 or so folks that were at the Magic Stick on April 17th, 1999, I can speak to how *I* felt.

For establishing purposes, exactly 25 years ago, on April 17th, 1999 the White Stripes played in the middle of a bill with Gore Gore Girls opening and the Compulsive Gamblers headlining. I was sixteen years old.

Barely a month earlier, it appeared that the White Stripes were done. With their cessation being reported in the Detroit News, the fact that a DAILY newspaper was covering such underground countercultural gossip still feels beguiling. Yet in the span of a few weeks, the Stripes had played a triumphant non-farewell show (March 13th, 1999) and were most definitely soldiering on, while Jack White’s other current musical concern, the Go, had unceremoniously kicked him out.

I guess this was relatively big news in the small world of Detroit garage rock. In hindsight, it seems pretty insignificant. So when the Stripes roll into “Astro” at the tail end of their set and Jack substitutes in the names of his former bandmates in the Go “Bobby”, “Marc” and “John” as “do(es) the astro” the feeling in the air, to me, was “oh man, he’s giving it to ‘em.”

To follow it up with the ending verse impromptu singing “Maybe someone has an ego!”

and “Why don’t you do what you want to, girl?” (with what I would interpret as foreshadowing of future attack-like songs as “There’s No Home For You Here (Girl)” and “Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine”) and it all had the allure of an up-to-the-minute newscast, made up in real time, for the couple dozens friends and scenesters gathered there that evening, all of whom knew the score.

As the song concluded, you faintly hear a request for the Go song “Meet Me At The Movies” to which Jack replies on mic “Somebody wanna hear “Meet Me At The Movies?” It’s the wrong band!”

The Stripes performance, overall, is just so different from any single show they’d ever played before or would play after. First ever appearances of gems like covers of Iggy Pop’s “I’m Bored” and Earl King’s “Trick Bag” (done in the style of the Gories) alongside Jack and Meg’s first ever performance of “The Same Boy You’ve Always Known.” They also cover Brendan Benson’s “Crosseyed” for seemingly the only time ever with Brendan himself smack dab front and center watching the proceedings.

Interesting little moments abound…the show-opening “I’m Bored” is quickly scuttled as Meg’s bass drum pedal snaps. She coordinates a quick replacement with Deb Agolli (drummer for openers the Gore Gore Girls) that precipitates Jack’s solo take on “Trick Bag”

(For years my recall is that I was up there helping Meg attach the borrowed pedal to her kick drum. But just now, at this moment, I’m half-thinking that I watched it from the crowd. In my head, I see Deb, coincidentally wearing red and white, behind the drums with Meg. But I also see myself crouched down, futzing in the dark, helping Meg. The video of the show conveniently shows neither myself nor Deb onstage during any of this. There’s a possibility my memories are lies)

But once all is back up-to-speed, Jack just starts “I’m Bored” from the beginning.

There’s a simplicity to taking the song from the top, an innocence to it, a “we’re gonna do this right” stick-to-it-iveness that I tend to think most bands would not actually endeavor. Most bands would just move past it and try to pretend that they never even attempted the song in the first place, let alone start their set with it.

And that’s just one of many reasons why the White Stripes were objectively great from such an early point in their career.

Other treats include an early run of “The Big Three Killed My Baby” that does not start with the trilling three scratches of the guitar. Seemingly every version performed afterwards would start just like the album recording…with those ominous trills. Jack introduces Meg as his little sister. Jack also, for the first time we’ve documented, signed off the show with a “My sister thanks you and I thank you.” Little Easter eggs all of them.

And while there’s no real evidence here to point to proving so, we all know that this is the evening that Jack White would pay a couple hundred bucks to Compulsive Gambler’s Jack Yarber for his red Airline guitar that in short order would become an iconic piece of the White Stripes imagery.

My favorite moment of the entire show unfolds in the middle break of “Astro” where Jack drops a curveball…

What did the hen dog say to the snake?
No more crawfish in this lake
Just a hair, just a little bit, just a hair, just a little bit
Well what did the woman who came to the side,
one hand on her leg, one hand on her thigh
Good lord, have mercy, good lord, have mercy

This is a slightly altered take on George Johnson’s version of “Jack The Rabbit” as featured in the 1978 John Lomax film The Land Where The Blues Began. Johnson was a gandy dancer, a now-obsolete job of manual railroad track maintenance. This is a work song, plain and simple, Johnson’s repeated lines of “just a hair, just a little bit” actually instructions to the rest of his crew in regards to which increment or degree they should be adjusting the track. It’s chilling, it’s got unforced attitude, it’s beautiful.

In sharing this clip with Jack this week, twenty-five years later, he said he had absolutely no recollection of what it was or where it even came from.

But it felt so familiar, both then and now. Like a nursery rhyme I’d heard my entire life. Like something EVERYONE had heard their entire life, certainly everyone in the room. Like it was meant to be there, that it had always been there, and would always be there, smack dab in the middle of “Astro.”

The point I’m trying to make is that for these fleeting moments on this night, the demarcation of stage and floor were largely irrelevant. What was happening wasn’t a band playing for a crowd. What was happening was a conversation, an education, a therapy, a laugh, a finger-pointing, all wrapped into one. And so much of it, hell, maybe all of it, happened just that once, seemingly to be experienced only by those in the room. Fleeting.

So should you give a shit that this is effectively a spruced-up audience recording? Not in the least. Just sit back and enjoy all the swirling different factors and reactors that melted together to create a one-of-a-kind evening a quarter of a century ago.

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Stream this new show and all other exclusive archive releases from Third Man Records with a 7-day free trial. Explore The White Stripes catalog and start your free trial here.