SAN FRANCISCO — Jack White brought his guitar-heavy rock and roll to the Fillmore on Wednesday for the first of two San Francisco appearances supporting his seventh solo album, Frozen Charlotte.
Bay Area fans had already gotten an unusual dose of White earlier in the day, when he appeared at City Lights Booksellers for a poetry reading and signing of his book, “Jack White Collected Lyrics and Selected Writing.” The free event reached capacity quickly. By evening, the line outside the Fillmore stretched along Geary Boulevard and Divisadero Street. The show marked White’s first Bay Area appearance since 2024, when he performed at Great American Music Hall.
Artie Shaw’s eerie 1930s jazz recording “Nightmare” played over the speakers before White walked onstage dressed in black and launched into a high-energy mix of rock and old-school blues.
White opened with the riff-heavy “Old Scratch Blues.” Its slow, sliding guitar figure created an uneasy tension over a tightly controlled drumbeat, while White’s raspy vocals cut through the distortion.
The set pulled from White’s solo catalog as well as his work with The White Stripes, Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, moving between garage rock, blues, power pop and the heavier material on .
More than anything, the performance became a showcase for White’s aggressive, physical approach to guitar.
He attacked the strings with a heavy pick hand, moved rapidly across the fretboard and brought the same urgency to rhythm parts as his solos. His playing leaned into thick fuzz, distortion and deliberately rough edges, with bends and improvised runs that often felt more instinctive than polished.
White switched guitars throughout the set, including his Valco Airline, Kay archtop and Gibson acoustic, using each to shift the texture from garage rock and blues to folkier material.
White typically doesn’t say much during performances, but his voice is as recognizable as his guitar playing. His singing can be sharp, strained and deliberately imperfect, with a high, crying quality that suits the tension in his songs.
That combination stood out on the mellow folk track “All Along the Way,” rap-rocker “Freedom at 21” and the fiery, heavily distorted “Derecho Demonico.”
“I Can’t Believe What I’m Hearing,” from Frozen Charlotte, became another highlight. The track paired White’s rapid-fire vocal delivery — “Click clack, back track, tick tock, smack talk/ Can’t believe what I’m hearing now” — with a tight groove, quick guitar riffs and driving percussion.
Toward the end of the set, White introduced drummer Patrick Keeler, keyboardist Bobby Emmett and bassist Dominic Davis.
The backing power trio gave White plenty of room to improvise. Davis anchored the songs with blues-heavy bass lines, Keeler supplied hard-hitting percussion and Emmett filled out the arrangements with keyboards and vintage tones.
The closing stretch reached across White’s various bands, including The Raconteurs’ “Steady, as She Goes,” The White Stripes’ “Cannon” and “Ball and Biscuit,” and The Dead Weather’s “I Cut Like a Buffalo.”
White saved his most recognizable riff for last. The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” closed the show, though the familiar crowd chant took until later in the song to fully catch on. White kept grinding through the hypnotic riff before shouting, “Thank you so much!” and taking one final swing at his guitar.
The band bowed as distortion continued buzzing through the room.
Opening the night was San Francisco punk trio False Flag, featuring Strong Sims on guitar and vocals, Pretty Sims on bass and vocals and Munro Azumi on drums.
The Tenderloin band brought the same raw, DIY energy that’s made it a fixture in the city’s underground punk scene.
“This is the first time we played the Fillmore. Holy fuckin’ shit!” Sims told the crowd.
The band played with ferocious speed, heavy bass and jagged, noisy guitar stabs, giving the room a blast of punk and hardcore before White took the stage.
Highlights included “Cool Guy,” the dynamic “Keep Me Around” and anti-tech track “City of the Future.”