‘Kneeling At The Anthem D.C.’ Finds Jack White Wrestling With His Past And Planning For The Future

I can’t really decide whether I like Jack White or think that he’s a schmuck. On the plus side, he’s got good taste in music, owns a bunch of cool guitars, isn’t afraid to scrap with his fellow celebrities and does pretty much whatever the hell he wants, whether it’s reissuing his favorite forgotten artists on his Third Man record label, or collaborating with Beyoncé. On the down side, he’s self-important, thin-skinned, and his shtick – color themes, steam punk fetishism, stupid facial hair, etc. – can grate after a while.

White, of course, first came on the scene as lead singer, guitarist and creative architect of baroque blues-punks The White Stripes. Sure, he’s played with other bands before and since their official split in 2011, but his legacy will forever by tied to them. His solo career, then, has increasingly seemed like an effort to break from the past. It started symbolically, with him switching color schemes from red to blue. Then he abandoned the minimalism of The Stripes two-piece format for a purposefully maximalist full band. Most recently, he’s traded in his pawn-shop guitars for pricey custom models, and shelved his dandified apparel for long-sleeve t-shirts and Dad shoes (they look wicked comfy). This metamorphosis is on full display in the new concert film, Kneeling at The Anthem D.C., which premiered on Amazon Prime last week and is now available for streaming.

Spontaneity has always been a hallmark of White’s creative endeavors. Carrying on a long standing tradition of playing surprise shows in unusual locations, Kneeling at The Anthem D.C. begins with footage of White and band playing lunch period at Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington D.C. “You can feel the tenseness in the air of school,” he says delightedly. It’s the kind of thing he would like. Coincidentally or not, the school is the alma mater of numerous luminaries from the capital city’s storied punk rock scene, including Ian MacKaye of the band Fugazi, which White later tells us was the first rock concert he ever attended. The majority of the footage, however, is from a performance at music venue The Anthem in D.C. in support of White’s latest album, Boarding House Reach. The film’s title brilliantly plays on the club’s name and the ongoing controversy over NFL players kneeling during the national anthem.

Where The White Stripes pulled from blues, Americana and ’60s pop and garage rock, White’s solo work has increasingly incorporated sonic touchstones from funk, soul, and even hip hop. Live, keyboardists Neal Evans and Quincy McCrary play organ vamps and squishy synth lines that sound like they snuck off a P-Funk album, while White leans hard on his DigiTech Whammy pedal, using it not unlike Tom Morello in Rage Against The Machine to make ridiculous noises that sound like a brontosaurus having a nervous breakdown on a sailboat in a stormy sea.

My brother once compared The White Stripes to listening to two fifteen year olds trying to learn a Led Zeppelin song in the basement. He meant it in a good way. Their perceived amateurism – the lack of a bass guitar and Meg White’s “simplistic” drumming – belied White’s skills as a guitarist and prevented them from sounding like mere copyists. With a full behind him, the Zeppelinisms are more pronounced, a good thing in my book, especially on vintage Stripes numbers like “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground.” At other times, White and the band conjure up ’60s mods The Small Faces, roots rocker Leon Russell, the proto-metal of early Judas Priest, and even Prince. Again, in my book, these are all good things.

White’s always been most comfortable in front of a crowd with a mic in his hand and keeps the energy up throughout the show. He moves from guitar to keyboard, takes extended solos, jumps and hoots and screams and coos. His guitar goes out of tune, as do his vocals, but as in The White Stripes, the bum notes give the music an urgency and authenticity missing from so much modern music. His flirtation with rapping on such songs as “Ice Station Zero” is perhaps ill-advised, but you got to hand it to the guy for trying something new and keeping himself and his audience amused, even if it isn’t 100% musically successful. In interview snippets he even seems funny, relaxed and likable. He’s not such a schmuck after all, I guess.

Behind the antics and outfits, there’s little doubt White has always been 100% about the music. You know it when he champions his favorite music from the past and present, you hear it in his all-encompassing songwriting, which is both familiar and foreign at the same time, and you see it as he relishes his time on stage. Kneeling at The Anthem D.C. is further proof of his restless creativity and pursuit of his own distinct musical vision. It ends, as you might expect, with The White Stripes “7 Nation Army,” one of the most memorable rock riffs of the new millennium, now a staple of sports arenas from Dallas to Rome. It ain’t a bad way to end a concert at all.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter: @BHSmithNYC.

Watch Jack White: Kneeling At The Anthem D.C. on Amazon Prime Video