After a decade away from touring, Jet is back—and apparently, all it takes to become an honorary member of the band is a tambourine and a willingness to commit.
The Australian rockers kicked off their new tour at Ballpark Village in St. Louis, technically coming in with one warm-up show under their belts after performing at Rocklahoma the night before. But this was opening night of the tour proper, and if there was any rust from spending ten years off the road, you certainly couldn’t hear it.
Opening the night was The Retrogrades, setting the tone for an evening that felt less like a massive rock production and more like being invited into one really loud, really fun room with a few hundred new friends. The intimacy of Ballpark Village ended up being one of the night’s greatest strengths. Jet has songs built for enormous crowds, but hearing them in a setting where the band and audience could genuinely interact made the entire show feel different.
And interactive it became.
First, Jet had what might be one of the most badass pieces of concert merchandise I’ve ever encountered: an actual tambourine.
Obviously, I HAD to have one.
At that point, as far as I was concerned, I was in the band.
Apparently I wasn’t the only person who had this revelation, because more tambourines started appearing throughout the crowd. Suddenly the audience wasn’t just watching Jet—we had become the world’s least-rehearsed auxiliary percussion section.
And somehow, it worked.
Every shake, rattle and questionable attempt at keeping time added to what became one of the most immersive and interactive concert experiences I’ve had. There’s something incredibly fun about a band essentially handing its audience an instrument and saying, “Alright, you’re part of this now.”
As if the night hadn’t already delivered enough surprises, Jet knew fellow Australians AC/DC would soon be coming through the area and decided St. Louis deserved something a little different. They broke out “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll)”—a song you certainly wouldn’t expect to hear at a typical Jet show.
It was a perfect nod to their Australian rock roots and one of those wonderfully unexpected concert moments that makes a set feel specific to the city instead of simply another stop on a tour.
Then came another surprise.
Meet-and-greet passes were handed out to select people in attendance—and somehow, unbelievably, we were included.
Mind. Blown.
But for all the fun and chaos of the evening, Jet saved its most powerful moment for the encore.
Nic Cester acoustically performed “Shine On,” the deeply personal song he wrote following the death of his father. During the moment, he realized that back home in Australia, it was Father’s Day.
The emotion hit him.
Cester broke down onstage, and suddenly the energy in the room completely changed. There was no rock-star barrier, no polished performance to hide behind—just a son singing a song about his dad on a day when that loss undoubtedly felt a little closer.
It was beautiful, vulnerable and incredibly human.
Those are the moments live music can give you that a recording never will. You can know every lyric and have heard a song a hundred times, but then one night, in one room, something happens that permanently changes the way you hear it.
After ten years away from touring, Jet could have simply shown up, ripped through the hits and reminded everyone why songs like “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” helped make them one of Australia’s biggest rock exports of the 2000s.
Instead, St. Louis got something far more memorable.
We got surprises. We got AC/DC. We got tambourines. We got to become part of the show. We got a deeply emotional encore. And a lucky few of us even got to meet the band afterward.
Ten years was a long time to wait.
Jet made damn sure it was worth it.
10/10. Would absolutely join the tambourine section again.
Melissa O’Rourke aka WickedWitchofSTL is a jack of all trades. By day she’s an established tattooist and piercer, by night a mother to her amazing son (who is a hell of a guitarist). Melissa has a musical background and can often be found at a local karaoke joint, or a concert when she’s not driving across the country for an adventure. This social butterfly always welcomes conversation so come say hi! See y’all at the next gig!
