Earning Stripes.

Billy Bob's Launches Crowd-Funding Campaign To Convince Jack White To Return to North Texas.

It's been six years since Jack White has played in North Texas. But even then, at that 2009 show at the House of Blues in Dallas, White was somewhat relegated to secondary figure status; it was, after all, a show from his The Dead Weather outfit and, in turn, he spent most of his night playing drums behind singer Alison Mosshart.

This, however, could be the year Mr. White stops snubbing DFW. Well, maybe.

Earlier today, the folks at Billy Bob's launched a crowd-funding campaign to bring Jack White to Fort Worth. Per Chris Spinks, director of marketing for the “World's Largest Honky-Tonk,” the move has less to do with the fact that the popular venue can't afford to pay White's booking fee itself; rather, it's more or less a method being used to put some public pressure on the ex-White Stripes frontman to end his long Metroplex drought.

“I don't think it's a matter of funding,” Spinks says. “It's a matter of trying to show Jack that the people of Fort Worth really enjoy his music and appreciate what he does, that they're willing to fund this themselves in hopes of bringing him here.”

And though Spinks says he's not necessarily expecting White to necessarily follow through with the hypothetical Fort Worth show even if the campaign does manage to sell a proposed 2,750 tickets at $50 a pop in the next 30 days, there's at least a few reasons to believe the performer just might. Last summer, a similar campaign proved successful in convincing the Foo Fighters to play a show in Richmond, Virginia, for the first time in 16 years. So, yeah, it could happen.

“That definitely gives us a small glimmer of hope,” Spinks says. “We're not just sitting here banking on the fact that it's going to happen. There's a lot of factors that go into booking an artist, so there's a number of reasons that this could or could not happen. The Foo Fighters deal in Virginia is a cool example of when it does work, it turns into a pretty cool deal that's fun for everybody. What we'd like to happen is that this is fun for not only the Metroplex, but for Jack as well.”

On the flipside, says Spinks, there's no harm in trying. The way the campaign is currently set up, contributors' credit cards will only be charged if the show sells out entirely. And they'll be fully refunded if White doesn't play the Fort before 2016.

To us, though, it looks like a lock. I mean, America's No. 1 guacamole company is located a mere 5.4 miles away from the venue. Just saying.