Two Masks and a Bassman: Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets Hit White Eagle Hall
Tomorrow night, Friday, July 24, one of the finest songwriters in the English language walks onto the stage at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City, and he's brought a surf-rock band in Mexican wrestling masks to back him up. If that sentence doesn't already have you reaching for your wallet, I'm not sure we can be friends.
Nick Lowe is the man who wrote "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" — yes, the one Elvis Costello made famous, the one that turns up whenever a movie needs to break your heart. He wrote "Cruel to Be Kind." He produced Costello's early records and a whole shelf of pub-rock and new-wave landmarks. Somewhere along the line he became a silver-haired elder statesman of the well-turned three-minute song, and he did it without ever once seeming to try too hard. That's the trick, and nobody alive does it more gracefully.
His accomplices, Los Straitjackets, are the instrumental surf-and-twang outfit who perform in luchador masks — a reverb-drenched, gloriously unserious band that turns out to be a deadly serious backing unit. The pairing has become one of the great late-career reinventions in roots music: Lowe's wry, literate songcraft riding on top of a band that plays like the house group at the world's coolest tiki bar. It shouldn't work as well as it does. It works better than it should.
The room is the other reason to go. White Eagle Hall — 800 standing, 400 seated — is exactly the scale this show wants: big enough to feel like an event, intimate enough that you'll catch the glint in Lowe's eye when he lands a punchline. Built in 1910 by Polish immigrants and lovingly restored before its 2017 reopening, it's the kind of historic room where a songbook this deep gets the acoustics and the reverence it deserves. Talent buyer Heath Miller has said his goal is "to serve the entire local music community and work with a variety of genres" — and booking a pub-rock legend into a former community hall on Newark Avenue is that ethos in action.
Why it matters: shows like this are the argument against ever leaving North Jersey for your live music. You don't need a Manhattan marquee to see a genuine legend at close range — you need a PATH ride or a parking spot in the Village and a Friday night free. Downtown Jersey City has, quietly, become a place where artists of this caliber choose to play the mid-size room instead of the arena, and that choice is a gift to anyone who values actually seeing the person on stage.
Go early, grab a spot near the front, and prepare for a masterclass in doing a very hard thing while making it look easy. Masks optional. Reverence mandatory.
Sources: White Eagle Hall — Songkick; White Eagle Hall calendar; White Eagle Hall history