Jack White on Scheduling Touring Around Tigers Baseball, Remembering Detroit Cobras’ Rachel Nagy

Jack White is widely known as a massive baseball fan -- particularly of the Detroit Tigers -- so it should come as no surprise that Tigers baseball plays into various parts of his life.

White's "Supply Chain Issues Tour" kicks off on April 8 at the Masonic Temple, and in a new interview with WRIF's Meltdown, that bit of scheduling was by design.

"Where else could I start the tour, but Detroit?" said White. "It just worked out perfectly, you know, and Tigers Opening Day that afternoon. I mean, what else could you ask for? The album ['Fear Of The Dawn'] comes out that day? I mean, it had to be Detroit...We plan our tour around the baseball schedule of the MLB. So yes, that comes first and foremost before anything important that we're doing."    

White's presence and influence in Detroit has been ongoing for decades and has even increased thanks to the opening of the Third Man Records store in the Cass Corridor in 2015 and their pressing plant in 2017. Third Man has been the home of a variety of reissues, including the first two albums from The Detroit Cobras who suddenly lost their singer Rachel Nagy just last month.

"Oh, what an amazing, amazing, beautiful, scary person Rachel Nagy was," said White. "I mean, she's just so incredible. She punched me in the stomach once at the Magic Bag, and I still don't know why she did it. [Laughs] It hurt, man!"

He continued, "She always had something nice to say about The White Stripes, and we played a lot of shows together. The Detroit Cobras' albums were really the soundtrack of the Detroit Garage movement. You went to someone's house, everybody had that record on of all of our friends. It's just a sad loss to lose her."

While White has always been active and always striving to push the rock genre forward, it's almost mind-boggling to think he and Meg White will be eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2024. (The White Stripes' self-titled debut album was released in June 1999.) So, what does White think of the prospect of being inducted into the Rock Hall?

"I don't know. Where is that? In Cleveland or something?" quips White. "I haven't really thought about that. I mean, you know, all the awards are political, really. So it's hard to really grasp any real thought about what they actually mean. You know, maybe it should be called the Music Museum instead."

As previously reported, White will be releasing two new solo albums in 2022: Fear Of The Dawn on April 8 (pre-order here) and Entering Heaven Alive on July 22 (pre-order here.) His "Supply Chain Issues Tour" kicks off with a two-night stand at the Masonic Temple on April 8 and 9 and wraps on August 29 in Kansas City. Full tour details can be found on JackWhiteIII.com.

Meltdown's Jack White interview can be heard in its entirety here.