Jack White performs at Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on Oct. 4, 2024. Courtesy David James Swanson.

SAN FRANCISCO — Friday night’s surprise sold-out Jack White concert was everything rock and roll is supposed to be: hot, loud, sweaty and intense.

The show followed a similar gig at Petaluma’s Phoenix Theater the night prior, and the excitement was natural considering the last time White played the Bay Area was in 2022, when he booked the 22,000-seat Shoreline Amphitheatre. But for this date, on his pop-up tour, he played at Great American Music Hall with its 470-person capacity. To keep scalpers from having a field day, staff matched IDs with a list of ticket buyers outside the venue.

White delivered a blistering set comprised of songs from his latest album, No Name, along with some of his biggest hits with the White Stripes, Raconteurs and Dead Weather, and a smattering of cover songs. The crowd roared when White appeared onstage dressed in a black T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. Flanked by drummer Patrick Keller, keyboardist Bobby Emmett and bassist Dominic Davis, White bounced around the small stage as the band opened with “Old Scratch Blues,” the heavy Led-Zeppelin-inspired opening track from No Name. He took his first extended guitar solo while the crowd kept the beat by clapping their hands over their heads.

As if allergic to the silence, White and the band ended every song with noisy crescendos and often jammed on extensive Yardbirds-style rave-ups in the middle of the songs’ loose arrangements. Playing smaller venues with a great band that knows his large catalog of material, White seemed to play by ear, yelling the next song’s title into the ears of the other band members during the noisy interludes. After an extended and expansive jam during The Raconteurs’ “Broken Boy Soldier,” he quipped, “Just how we rehearsed it.”

Jack White alternated between an array of electric and acoustic guitars, all of which were distorted with varying degrees of face-melting overdrive. Similarly, despite the wide array of material the band performed, it never let up, maintaining a superhuman energy and intensity throughout the 90-minute set. Even the delicate moments on songs like “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” crackled with frenetic energy. White’s signature wailing guitar cut through the wall of sound like a guillotine.

Clearly excited to be privy to such an exclusive concert, the crowd’s biggest reactions came in response to White Stripes hits like “Hotel Yorba,” from the 2001 album White Blood Cells. White closed out the set with a raucous rendition of “Seven Nation Army,” from 2003’s Elephant. While waiting for the encore, attendees stomped their feet and vocalized the song’s bass line.

The band returned for an encore without White, as Keller and Davis quickly got into a drum and bass jam with Emmett, and eventually White, joined on keys. He then strapped on his souped-up Fender Telecaster and the quartet tore into “Arch Bishop Harold Holmes,” from No Name. White and company closed the set with a full-tilt rendition of “Black Math” from Elephant before bowing to the ecstatic crowd.

Berkeley’s Naked Roommate got the evening started with its unique brand of off-beat funk rock. Anchored by Alejandra Alcala’s solid bass playing and a drum machine, the sextet conjured soulful, sonic stews that were part Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” and part Funkadelic’s “Wars of Armageddon.” The band played a number of songs from its forthcoming album, Pass the Loofah, due out at the end of October.

Follow writer David Gill on Instagram.