As Power 106.9 disc jockey Hot Boy said Saturday, Dec. 20, “These two need no introduction.” Most Westside students — and 4.9 million people on Vine— would agree with that statement about Jack Gilinsky and Jack Johnson. And that Saturday night, 3,000 screaming fans agreed, too, as the pair took the stage at the Ralston Arena for their first concert in Omaha.

For those who have missed the buzz about Jack and Jack, as the duo is called, here’s a quick introduction, anyway: a little more than a year ago, the two were typical Westside seniors. But over the course of their final year at Westside, the two amassed first 10,000, then 50,000 and eventually millions of followers on Vine thanks to their comedic six-second videos. Soon, they began releasing singles on iTunes, breaking into the iTunes top 100 before the end of last school year. And after graduating in May, the two moved out to Los Angeles, where they currently live with each other and their videographer Andre Ladon, to create more music and social media content.

And with nearly 2 million Twitter and Instagram followers apiece and 10 singles released on iTunes to go with their 4.9 million Vine followers, the two brought their talents back home for the concert, which was attended by both friends and fans.

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“The week leading up to [the show], I had gotten some texts and they were from people I knew and were like, ‘I can’t wait to see you…’” Gilinsky said. “I was kind of nervous because we knew like 10 percent of the people in the crowd, which was something we’ve never done. It’s always fangirls who obviously know who we are, but we don’t know exactly who they are specifically.”

And while Gilinsky said the two were initially hesitant to do a show in Omaha, they were pleased with the concert and encouragement from their alma mater.

“We had a lot of great support from Westside and from a lot of our hometown friends, teachers and just everyone,” Johnson said. “I think we were definitely very happy with the outcome of the show and it was definitely a good hometown show cause that’s all we could ask for: support.”

The concert featured a Power 106.9 (which promoted the event) team of disc jockeys and EMBLEM3 as an opening act. Once Gilinsky and Johnson took the stage, they performed all 10 of their songs and sang a cover of Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’s hit single Uptown Funk. The show included other Westside alums, including three playing instruments in the ensemble: Adeev and Ezra Potash (on the trumpet and bass trombone, respectively) and Tim Halperin (on the piano). The concert was the first the duo has done with a live band; previously, they have sang to tracks during their DigiTour.

“That is what we want to start incorporating into any upcoming tours, any future shows,” Johnson said of the live band.

As the two return to Los Angeles to continue making music and more, the pair agreed that Omaha, just like Westside eight months ago, is a place to be normal.

“I still feel like Omaha is 100 percent our home,” Gilinsky said.

So, what happens from here for the two? Continuing their music career and improving its quality is on the plate.

“I think the general reaction has been that our music is getting better and that’s great to see and that’s awesome to hear because we have music that we haven’t released yet that I think is even better than the music that is out now,” Johnson said.

Heading into the new year, the pair will be spending their time on music videos for their last five songs. Also on the to-do list for 2015 is releasing an album. They had planned to release their last five songs as an album, but elected to go with singles for a number of reasons.

“A lot of [those five songs] don’t even have similar themes — the ones we’ve been releasing recently — so we want the album to be consistent at least themes-wise,” Johnson said.

The pair have elected to take an independent route rather than sign to a record label, a move Johnson said they made to be “pathfinders, trailblazers.” The two have been releasing their music, which they write themselves, on iTunes through third-party release sites to stay independent. They will continue to be independent, but are working on a pre-order strategy for their album that has been difficult as independent artists.

“We’re going to definitely put in the time and the work before we just throw an album out there because we want it to be really good,” Gilinsky said.

Fans can also look forward to at least one more single called Rendezvous.

“… Rendezvous is still unfinished…,” Gilinsky said. “Every time we go back to LA we’re like, ‘Dude, this song could be so sick.’ But I don’t know, there’s something missing.”

As the two advance their careers, moving further from the halls of Westside and closer to the halls of fame, they still feel a strong attachment to and appreciation for their time at Westside (Johnson even wore a Westside t-shirt throughout the concert).

“The teachers were just so understanding,” Johnson said. “During our senior year, when all of this was going on, they were the only people who actually were like, ‘I get it.’”

Gilinsky gave a nod to his past as an Amazing Technicolor Show Choir (ATSC) member.

“Just from being in ATSC, just from singing and dancing in front of people, even though I [was] one of 50 kids on a stage and now I’m one of two kids on a stage, it still helps,” Gilinsky said. “…I don’t know if I could get up in front of a huge group of people like that if I hadn’t seen what it looked like before…”

And what about their career goals? They’ll let the tides take them away (that one’s for you, Jack and Jack listeners).

“We like keeping it the sky’s the limit, no ceilings as to what we can do with this,” Johnson said.

More On Jack and Jack:

• Justin Bieber and Steve Aoki are their favorite celebrities they have met in Los Angeles. Johnson on Bieber: “JB probably is my favorite just because he’s the only guy that actually took us aside and had a talk with us and was like, ‘Yo, I’ve been going through what you guys have been going through.’ And he was just at our house one night, which is crazy. We just thought he was going to be chilling, but he actually took us aside and was like, ‘I want to talk to you guys.’
• Which Viners are they fans of? They named King Bach, Ben Taylor, Cody Ko, Danny Lepore and even Westside’s own Tats and Tom (seniors Reece Watanabe and Tom Kutilek) among others.
• How much money do they make per iTunes song? While the two didn’t give any specifics, Mashable says that tunecore, which Jack and Jack used to release their first few songs, charges a flat rate to release songs. After that, the duo keep approximately 70 percent of each song’s iTunes price and iTunes keeps the rest.
• On the song Flights: “[When we wrote it], I had never even been to LA,” Gilinsky said.

Westside Wired would like to thank Tom Kutilek for putting us in contact with the Jacks as well as the Gilinsky family for hosting us.