Hometown rocker to play Labor Day Fest

Jack White

By Charles Sercombe
Now it can be told.
Actually, it’s been told already, but, yes, the BIG secret music guest at this year’s Hamtramck Labor Day Festival is Detroit’s hometown hero Jack White.
Scoring him to perform took a weeks’ long effort, but the stars finally aligned and White cleared his schedule to accommodate a Hamtramck visit, say organizers.
White started out in Hamtramck, and he will team up with Hamtramck’s own garage rockers The Hentchmen on Monday, Sept. 2, at 8 p.m. on the Caniff stage, also known as the “South Stage.”
He has agreed to play a few tunes with the band, whom he started out with way back when before he formed The White Stripes and reached the stratosphere in the rock world.
White is credited with lifting a number of local bands in the early 2000s, who got to piggyback on his wave of success.
He has since gone on to front a number of bands of his own, each also wildly successful, and he also founded Third Man Records in Detroit, which again has become hugely successful.
You could easily say that Jack White has the Midas touch.
White’s appearance highlights a number of top-shelf musical groups slated to perform at this year’s festival, such as Canadian indie rockers Sloan on Sunday at 9 p.m. (South Stage) and, just prior to them, Detroit’s own Mike Skill of the Romantics, performing with Detroit rockers Ricky Rat, Brian McCarty and Joe Leone, on Sunday, at 8 p.m. on the North Stage.
Hamtramck-based songster Michael Hurtt will once again make an appearance on Monday at 1:30 p.m.
Also of note, Ohio “No Wave” pioneer John D Morton’s band “X______X” (pronounced, “ex blank ex,”) will appear on Monday at 7:30 p.m. Morton’s earlier band, The Electric Eels, helped shape the punk era of Cleveland in the mid-1970s. With him in the band is Craig Willis Bell, of the legendary Cleveland band Rocket from the Tombs.
Saturday features a number of well-known rappers, such asSada Baby, Esham and Gmac Cash.
To find out more about the festival’s musical line-up, go to their website at hamtownfest.com.
On top of all this, the whole weekend’s musical offerings are free of charge, as it is to attend the festival in general.
Now, that’s a deal.
Posted Aug. 23, 2024