Jack White said very little during his Cracow show. At the very end, he said goodbye with the words Thanks, it feels like home and walked offstage looking visibly moved. Did this short tour of Poland - another one, and probably not his last - mean something special to him? Perhaps.
In March this year, Jack’s mother, Teresa Gillis, died at the age of 95. Her parents came from Poland’s Podkarpacie region. Jack has said many times that he feels close to Poland. During his 2018 show at Warsaw’s Torwar, he invited his mother onstage and the crowd sang Sto lat to her. More recently, in a moving tribute, he wrote: She was the youngest of ten just like me, so we had that special bond together. So yes, it seems fair to think that returning to Poland for shows in Warsaw and Cracow meant something special to him.
Torwar and Tauron Arena are venues Jack could easily sell out. This time, though, he chose smaller clubs: Stodola in Warsaw and Klub Studio in Cracow, where I managed to get tickets - no easy task. Credit, too, for the reasonable prices. Given how intimate these shows were, the tickets could easily have cost twice as much. What’s more, on the day of the Cracow show, a limited number of student tickets were available at the box office for €20.
What Jack did at Klub Studio took me completely by surprise. The band came onstage right at 8 p.m. and moved from a brief, wild improvisation straight into Old Scratch Blues, the opening track from White’s latest album, No Name. That set the tone for the night. The setlist covered every stage of his career, from Cannon off The White Stripes’ debut and Catch Hell Blues from their later years to his latest solo singles. It was loud and fast, one song after another. Only around the 40-minute mark did Jack pause briefly for a sip of water before carrying on.
The songs from The Raconteurs’ debut sounded especially good: Broken Boy Soldier and Steady As She Goes. I really love that album, so I was glad Jack had brought Patrick Keeler from that lineup into his band. And the whole group deserves a lot of respect. They play a different setlist every night, and during this show Jack repeatedly exchanged a few words with the others, probably making changes to the running order. They kept up with him without missing a beat.
I could complain that a few songs I was hoping for didn’t make the set - especially Icky Thump, Hello Operator and We’re Going to Be Friends. But the show had such momentum that I barely noticed their absence. And hearing gems like The Same Boy You’ve Always Known from White Blood Cells and The Dead Weather’s I Cut Like a Buffalo sent me back to those records on the journey home. I was reminded just how good they are.
Jack White is in the best place he’s been since The White Stripes split up. He’s playing phenomenal shows on his own terms, and he’s still putting out albums and singles worth listening to. Long may it continue. He’ll always be welcome in Poland.