Concerts
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As North Carolina natives Luke Combs and Eric Church organized the Concert for Carolina benefit held Oct. 26 in Charlotte, the only question anyone asked was “How can I help?”
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“All egos went out the door,” said Chris Kappy, Combs’ manager. “It was just everybody working together, AEG and Live Nation, all the managers, all the teams. It never got territorial.
The six-hour concert, which also featured James Taylor, Keith Urban, Sheryl Crow, Billy Strings, Scotty McCreery, Avett Bros., Chase Rice, Parmalee and Wesko, has raised $24.5 million (and counting) for western North Carolina victims of Hurricane Helene.
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While many benefits take several weeks, if not months, to plan, Concert for Carolina was held less than a month after the worst natural disaster to ever hit North Carolina ravished mountain towns, including Asheville and Boone, and left close to 100 people dead.
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said at an Oct. 26 press conference that more than 100,000 people in the state had damage to their homes and thousands of businesses had been affected. The estimated financial damages of the storm to North Carolina are $53 billion.
The day after Hurricane Helene hit on Sept. 27, Combs called Church about organizing a benefit and they immediately started calling their artist friends. “I remember sitting at home in Nashville and wanting to figure out how I can be of service, how I can help the place that raised me,” said Combs. “There was no question that this was going to happen come hell or high water.”
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The next step was for Kappy to call David and Nicole Tepper, who own the Carolina Panthers, FC Charlotte and Bank of America stadium, where the NFL and soccer teams play in Charlotte, to see if they could use the stadium. “The yes was so fast,” Kappy said. “David and Nicole said, ‘We’ve got the stadium. We’ve got everything covered.’ David and Nicole would have moved heaven and earth to make it happen for us.”
The Teppers were already looped into hurricane relief via their work with the American Red Cross and had started giving what has now become close to $6 million toward relief efforts for both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, which hit Florida just days after Helene passed through. “When [Kappy] called us, it was like, ‘Okay, what do we have to do to do it and it’s three weeks,’” David Tepper told Billboard. “It’s hard from [Combs’ and Church’s] end to get the artists, but on this end, we had to make sure we didn’t get scheduled with [a soccer playoff game.]” Luckily, the Panthers were playing away from home and FC Charlotte could also play away from home. Also fortuitously, Morgan Wallen played two shows at the stadium the weekend before the Concert for Carolina and production could just keep the field covering down.
Ultimately, with Tepper’s encouragement, the stadium’s concession, merchandise and parking vendors all donated their proceeds as well. All the other participating companies, including those providing sound, stage, lighting and video, also donated their resources. Ticketmaster also donated its services and put plans in place to keep tickets out of the secondary market. The show sold out quickly, setting a new venue record of more than 82,000 attendees. Veeps donated all proceeds from a $24.95 streaming option. The acts all paid their own expenses and were not paid to play.
While Combs’ and Church’s teams dealt with the show aspects, Tepper was dealing with logistics. “There’s contracts, there’s the police, there’s who’s holding the money and where’s the money going and making sure it’s flowing the right way,” he said. “Usually there are long negotiations, but everybody was trying to make sure everything was done right. It was a lot of people putting everything aside just to get this done.” Tepper had some experience, having helped organize New York’s 12-12-12 benefit in 2012 following Hurricane Sandy, which hit the east coast in late October 2012.
Even rivals AEG and Live Nation joined together to co-promote the show. “We really looked at it and said, ‘We just need the smartest minds in the room’ and this was an opportunity for everybody,” Kappy said. “You can show everybody that you can put down your swords and you can all put your arms around each other and lift each other up to lift everybody else up.”
The goodwill was infectious. “Everybody wanted to be part of something special and saw what we were doing. They said, ‘We want to be part of that,’” Kappy said. Kappy and Church’s manager, John Peets, worked in “lockstep,” on the benefit, staying in constant communication. “It’s been awesome to go back and forth with him on this and for him to be like, ‘Whatever Kappy says,’ and for me to be like ‘Whatever John says.’ Same with our two agents at WME and our production managers working hand in hand.”
“Everybody in the city, at the stadium, on the artist side…quite frankly, all their better angels were working together to put this together in three weeks,” Tepper said.
All proceeds from the benefit show, auction and livestream are going to organizations selected by Combs and Church, including Samaritan’s Purse, Manna Food Bank, Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC, Eblen Charities and the organizations supported by Church’s foundation, Chief Cares. At the show, Church also stated his intention to build more than 100 houses for those who lost their homes in the hurricane.
The focus now shifts to how to keep awareness on the area and the ongoing need as the recovery will take years. “The biggest thing for Luke and I is we continue to shine a light on this,” Church said. “This concert’s a great way to do it, but these people are going to need help long after tonight and long after next month and long after six months. So, it’s about, how can we continue to put this up front to make people be aware of what happened there, and we help the people.”
Even before Charli XCX dominated the summer with her acclaimed album brat, there was internal chatter about a joint arena tour with her and Troye Sivan. “I was pretty unsure how it would work, honestly,” recalls creative director Imogene Strauss, citing how unusual it is for two artists to alternate within the set list. “I was like, ‘This is going to be a challenge’ — and I think everyone felt that way.”
Ultimately, fusing two separate tours — Charli had debuted her solo brat shows during album release week at Primavera Sound in June while Sivan had embarked on his own European/U.K. headlining tour in support of his third album, Something To Give Each Other, in May — for a fall co-headlining run proved easier than expected. The Sweat tour kicked off Sept. 14 in Detroit and quickly became one of music’s hottest tickets, with sold-out dates at Madison Square Garden and Kia Forum with surprise guests including Lorde and Kesha, respectively. The trek concluded in Seattle on Oct. 23.
“It’s been an interesting morphing, shifting thing because of the scale, but also because of the collaboration element of it,” says Strauss, who has worked with Charli since 2019. Along with Jonny Kingsbury of Cour Design, the pair leaned heavily on lighting as a unifying element for the tour. “That ultimately became the thing that could tie the two shows together,” she says. Adds Kingsbury: “Traditionally with a pop artist, you would use bright key light and lots of downstage wash, but instead we light her very strobe-y, almost as if you were watching someone walk through a club in a movie throughout the entire show.”
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Another early decision the creative team made was to enlist a Steadicam operator from the music video world and to hire a focus puller, which Strauss says is “expensive and specific, but I think it’s added this cinematic level that has been so positive.” (Plus, as Kingsbury says, the concept paired well with the brat aesthetic, “with [Charli] pushing the camera man aside, spitting on the catwalk and licking it up. All of that feels very brat.”)
Fittingly, Strauss’ favorite part of Sweat showcases that creative synergy: Midway through the show, as Sivan is wrapping up “Stud” on the main stage and Charli is gearing up for “365” from the scaffolding, the screens are turned off and Charli’s iconic “bumpin’ that” line blares from the speakers. “Musically, the worlds are so well tied together, and being able to express that visually… it’s just so cool to see the worlds collide in a way that really works,” she says. Both she and Kingsbury credit music director Mitch Schneider for “expertly” putting Charli and Sivan’s music together, ultimately laying the foundation for the entire show.
“I think most people were expecting this tour to be like, Troye plays a set and then Charli plays a set,” says Strauss. “But Troye and Charli and all of us involved were like, ‘If we’re gonna do this, it’s gonna be intertwined musically, visually, everything.”
As a result, Kingsbury says a lot of the feedback he’s been hearing about the tour was how polished the show was. Both he and Strauss say many arena tours today rely on “gags” or “interstitial content” to help with costume or staging transitions, whereas Sweat was “very dialed in,” says Kingsbury. “Everyone is always trying to go bigger and more ridiculous — we went the opposite direction.”
“[This tour] doesn’t take itself too seriously — people dance like crazy,” adds Strauss. “Turning an arena into a club was the No. 1 challenge, and when the arena was literally shaking, I was like, ‘OK, success.’”
A version of this story appears in the Oct. 26, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Wednesday (Oct. 23) evening in New Orleans, a white SUV tentatively peeks around the corner of Chartres Street in the French Quarter. Though Taylor Swift’s “Fearless” is the song wafting from its window, the man behind the wheel is visibly uneasy as he drives his family past boozed-up revelers stumbling toward Bourbon Street.
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By Friday (Oct. 25), however, Swift’s presence in the city has made all the tables turn. SUVs sporting song titles scrawled in marker (“Getaway Car” is a popular choice) and decals of Taylor’s face clog the streets as tens of thousands of tourists descend upon the city for the first of three sold-out shows at Caesars Superdome.
Fans wearing Eras Tour merch (or unofficial t-shirts playing on the tour’s distinctive color palette) are everywhere from the Bywater (Swift ordered her Lavender Haze birthday cake from Bywater Bakery in 2022) to Frenchman Street to the Instagram-friendly Skeleton House way over by Audubon Park, which this year is themed “Terror Swift: The ScEras Tour” (sample offering: a skeleton in a yellow evermore dress clutches a guitar next to a “No Body, No Crime” sign).
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“Taylor Swift Takes Over New Orleans” trumpets a “visitor’s guide” pamphlet crafted by The Times-Picayune and NOLA.com. The infamous Bourbon Street is almost family-friendly. Aside from “Blank Space,” “You Belong With Me” and “Anti-Hero” playing on repeat, nearly every bar and restaurant is boasting tie-in programming (karaoke, trivia, look-alike contests offering the winner as much as $500) or themed drinks (Taylorita, Lavender Haze fizz, Holy Ground hurricane).
Even the city’s music hotspots, places that skew toward jazz and the blues, aren’t immune to the pop star’s impact. Over on Frenchman, d.b.a. is hosting a friendship bracelet-making station; at the Mahogany Jazz Hall on Chartres, one of the bartenders is slinging lyrical references along with sazeracs (“I knew you were trouble when you walked in,” he quips while serving a customer two cocktails); while Esplanade Studios, where Swift recorded three songs from The Tortured Poets Department (“Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me,” “Fresh Out the Slammer” and “Florida!!!”), serves as an incentive for Swifties to explore the Treme neighborhood.
Back in the French Quarter, Antoine’s Restaurant — the oldest eatery in the city and the birthplace of oysters Rockefeller – is getting in on the fun, doling out pink to-go cups and writing “Eras Tour 2024” in frosting on their signature dessert, baked Alaska.
“[Right now is] as big and as busy as Mardi Gras and that’s the busiest time of year,” says Lisa Blount, who handles publicity for Antoine’s and is married to the CEO of the fifth-generation family-run business. “In the next three days we’ll do over 3,000 guests.”
“New Orleans always enjoys a busy pre-Halloween weekend,” says Steve Pettus of Dickie Brennan’s, a New Orleans restaurant group that includes Tableau, a French-Creole spot that hosted a Swiftie “balcony bash” on Saturday. “This weekend is more than double what we have traditionally seen. The requests for reservations have not stopped. I’ve never felt so popular in my life — I have more ‘friends’ than I realized.”
“We had guests start calling over the summer asking when they could book a table, so we knew what was coming,” says Kyle Brechtel, president & CEO of Brechtel Hospitality, which hosted a Swift-themed rooftop soiree on Friday. (Thanks to on-staff Swifties, “Taylor Tenders & Seemingly Ranch” were on the menu, referencing a viral Swift-related tweet from Sept. 2023.) “[Halloween] is always a big weekend in the city, but this is a whole different level.”
A growing New Orleans’ Halloween tradition is the witches’ luncheon, where locals don black robes, pointy hats and grab brunch. While the witches were out in force earlier in the day on Friday (even belting “Cruel Summer” at a karaoke bar in the crossover spirit of the weekend), by 5:00 p.m. the witching hour had given way to the Swifting hour. Taylor Swift costumes – from the purple “Enchanted” gown to the gold-tasseled “Fearless” dress to variations on the “22” t-shirt (“A Lot of Potholes Going on at the Moment,” “A Lot to Vote on at the Moment”) – and Kansas City Chiefs jerseys became as inescapable as Mardi Gras beaded necklaces.
Fortunately, New Orleans is a city that’s used to hosting massive cultural events. Case in point: Next year’s Super Bowl will take place at Caesars Superdome on Feb. 9, bringing halftime headliner Kendrick Lamar to the same venue Swift just sold out for three nights. So even with the Eras Tour bringing an estimated extra 100,000-150,000 people to New Orleans, the city doesn’t miss a beat.
“We have a lot of practice with this,” says Walt Leger, president and CEO of New Orleans & Company, the city’s official sales and marketing organization. “We have a lot of great professionals on the public safety side who know how to coordinate traffic and other issues that may impact us when we have an influx. Our city excels at these events – we have a professional hospitality community. It’s muscle memory.”
Still, the Eras Tour hits different. “This weekend will be more foot traffic, whereas the Super Bowl is a lot of corporate events scattered around town,” Brechtel says. “I haven’t seen anything rival the impact of a Super Bowl [here] until now.”
“The Super Bowl is very much a corporate event,” Blount echoes. “Large parties, a lot of VIPs. They buy out the restaurant, things like that. This is a different type of busy.” She offers a point of comparison: “We love those weekends where it’s the Saints vs. the Dallas Cowboys. We have massive amounts of people in town, the restaurants are busy, everybody is busy. A friend of mine said, ‘You know what’s great about this? It’s like a football weekend but we’re all rooting for the same team.’”
Not everyone is fully onboard the Taylor train, however. During a Halloween-themed drag show on Wednesday, one of the performers announced they would be hosting a series of Swift-themed drag shows over the weekend and was greeted with light boos. “I know, I know, she’s ruining Halloween,” the queen declared. “I feel the same as you, but I gotta pay rent.”
Another local, after getting off her work shift and finding herself in a sea of Swifties, put it more bluntly: “I’m sick of these motherf—kers and their t-shirts.” (To be fair, if your coffee shop suddenly had a line of 150 people waiting around the block to get a themed plastic cup, you might be irked, too.) Karen-coded behavior reared its head on occasion, too — such as a pair of Swifties telling a local street musician playing blues instrumentals to sing Swift songs instead. Or a table of adults at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop chanting Taylor’s name at the piano player, despite the pianist politely stating that song requests should come with a couple bucks (they did not tip, and their chants went unanswered).
But those brief bad blood moments were few and far between. The city is more than accustomed to tourists, and most locals were more than happy to strike up a conversation with visiting Swifties to offer food recommendations or share bits of the city’s history.
“Our city recognizes that we benefit greatly from who invest in our community by spending dollars and supporting jobs and infrastructure,” Leger says. “Data shows that in the first leg of the Eras Tour, we’re expecting an excess of $200 million in extra spending, conservatively. It’ll probably be more than that.”
Ultimately, the Taylor Swift New Orleans takeover – like the Eras Tour itself – is about something that runs deeper than dollars, though. Walking down a cobblestone street on Friday, a young woman on her smoke break stops a first-time New Orleans visitor with quiet but eager question: “Are you a Swiftie?” Putting out her cigarette, she reveals a wrist covered in friendship bracelets. “Wanna trade?”
“Everybody is walking around having a great time,” Blount says. “It’s a great positive time. In this world today, having it be happy? My God, with the election in two weeks and all the caustic things with the election, it’s so nice to see people smiling.”
Christian Nodal electrified the stage, evoking a torrent of emotions at New York’s Barclays Center on Saturday night (Oct. 26), leaving no doubt about his unmatched vocal prowess.
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Unlike many of today’s concerts — especially in the música urbana landscape, which often rely heavily on pyrotechnics, costume changes, and choreography — Nodal’s performance, part of his Pa’l Cora tour, spotlighted his commanding voice above all.
Opening the concert at 9 p.m. with “El Mariachi” from the Antonio Banderas-starring Desperado soundtrack, Nodal immediately set the tone for the evening. Dressed sharply in beige snakeskin pants with turquoise accents, a matching vest, and a white long-sleeved shirt unbuttoned to reveal a silver chain with a cross and his tattoos, he embodied his signature cowboy rocker aesthetic. The Sonoran singer’s stage was embellished by a mariachi troupe in elegant deep-red outfits, an accordionist, backup singers, a brass section, and an electric guitarist — perfectly merging mariachi with norteño into his famed “mariacheño” fusion.
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One of the many performance highlights was when Nodal seamlessly delivered a medley of Vicente Fernández classics, including “El Rey,” “Volver Volver,” “Acá Entre Nos” and “Mujeres Divinas.” Again, the tribute showcased his extensive vocal chops and ability to emotively convey pain, sadness, and elation, leaving the audience spellbound.
Further amplifying the night, Christian Nodal brought out surprise guest Ángela Aguilar, his wife, who only the night before made an appearance in Bogotá, Colombia, with her father, the legend Pepe Aguilar. Nodal playfully asked the crowds, “¡¿You all want her to sing?!” Ángela, donning in a sleek black outfit, pranced out and they sang their duet on “Dime Cómo Quieres.” She then exclaimed, “Because you are my husband, Christian!” showing off her ring, during the song, and by the end of it they shared a kiss before her exit, drawing cheers and applause.
Nodal’s affection for his audience was evident as he addressed them between songs, expressing a special anticipation for his New York performance. “Not to be a nice guy, but I’m going to tell you something. On the tour, there were 26 dates around the United States. But among all of them, the one I was dreaming about the most was with you, New York. Something I love about here, about New York, is that it’s a beautiful place for Latinos,” he said.
He further customized his set for the New York crowd, acknowledging the significant Dominican presence and performing a bachata live for the first time with “La Bachatita.” Additionally, unexpected covers like Maná’s “Clavado en un Bar” and Hombres G’s “Devuélveme a Mi Chica” showcased his versatility, while his renditions of “Como la Flor” by Selena further demonstrated his broad appeal.
Nodal concluded his over two-hour performance without a vocal break — a testament to his impressive stamina. His performances of “La Intención” originally with Peso Pluma, and “Por El Resto de Tu Vida” originally with TINI, were climactic points that underscored a night of intimate connection.
The Mexican music hitmaker will continue his Pa’l Cora tour, making stops in Boston, Orlando, Atlanta, Baltimore, and more. See the remainder tour dates here.
Perhaps it was the ultimate irony that Concert for Carolina, Saturday night’s (Oct. 26) benefit for Hurricane Helene relief organized by Luke Combs and Eric Church, was delayed for nearly two hours because of severe weather as patrons were sent to shelter in the concourse at Charlotte’s Bank of America stadium, home of the Carolina […]
With Billboard Hot 100 hits like “Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Union of the Snake,” “New Moon on Monday” and “A View to a Kill,” Duran Duran’s catalog is frighteningly fitting for spooky season. So in 2022, when the English quartet found itself playing a Halloween-night gig in Las Vegas ahead of its induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the band decided to don costumes, sprinkle in seasonally appropriate covers and embrace the darkness.
The show was successful enough to inspire the band’s 2023 album, Danse Macabre, a top 10 hit on the Top Album Sales chart. With an expanded version of the album out now, the veterans — who have grossed $118.6 million and sold 1.8 million tickets since 1987, according to Billboard Boxscore — are set to play a show at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Oct. 31 that keyboardist Nick Rhodes promises “will be entirely different than any other Duran Duran show you will ever see.”
Is Halloween as big in the United Kingdom?
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We don’t celebrate it in such grand style as you do in America. I remember the first time I came to America was over the Halloween period. I literally thought, “Wow, they’re so far ahead of us. Why don’t we have these giant blow-up things outside our houses? Why can’t bats be 20 feet wide?” I love the sense of fun, the absurdity and that everybody gets to be a villain for a day.
The deluxe Danse Macabre has “New Moon (Dark Phase),” a moodier take on one of your classics; a cover of ELO’s “Evil Woman”; and “Masque of the Pink Death,” which I’m guessing is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe.
I’ve always been a great admirer [of Poe]. We grew up in England in the ’70s, where Hammer horror movies on [TV on] a Friday night, whether it was a Dracula or a mummy movie, were the thing you looked forward to all week. Plus, [I love] Tim Burton’s great contribution to everyone who loves goth. Those things shape the way you feel about life and the possibilities creatively. That’s what makes artists unique — their influences and the different areas they take from, even if it’s subliminal.
The Madison Square Garden show will be your second Halloween-themed concert. Do you see this becoming a tradition?
I don’t know. It’s a lot of work for one show. But Madison Square Garden just happened to be available, and New York is such a good place to be for Halloween. It was irresistible. We are going to make it something unusual and special. It won’t be like a regular show at all. The fans in Europe have been writing in already saying, “When are you going to do one in Europe? This is the second one in America; that’s not fair.” I sympathize with that. We always like to try to balance things, so maybe [we’ll do] one in Europe next year.
You have several other U.S. shows this fall beyond MSG. Will Halloween elements work their way into those?
I suspect some of them will feature a few bits that we’re preparing for Halloween. We didn’t think we’d be back in America this year, but when we decided to do the Halloween one, we slotted some more in. I rather like that way of working. For many years, we haven’t been a band that announces big world tours and ends up on the road for 18 months. But we do seem to play a lot of shows. We just add them when we want to, and somehow the chaos is working.
This story appears in the Oct. 26, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Stevie Wonder used his Detroit homecoming as an opportunity to clap back at presidential candidate Donald Trump for disrespecting the city during the campaign.
“I just gotta say for the record, I don’t like nobody talking bad about Detroit,” the Motown icon told a sold-out crowd on Tuesday night at Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena on the latest stop of his Sing Your Song! As We Fix Our Nation’s Broken Heart tour. He then led the audience in a chant of “Don’t cha do it!,” pointedly aimed at Trump.
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Wonder was referencing the Republican candidate’s disparaging remarks during an Oct. 13 speech to the Detroit Economic Club, where he warned that if his Democratic opponent, Vice-President Kamala Harris, is elected, “the whole country will end up being like Detroit — a mess.”
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He also called Detroit “a developing area more than most places in China.” His remarks generated equally harsh criticism from Detroit and Michigan civic leaders as well as labor leaders.
Wonder, who has publicly, endorsed Harris as “not just any woman, a wonderful woman, and she has done the work consistently.”
He announced the Sing Our Song! tour less than three weeks before its Oct. 8 opening in Pittsburgh, playing 11 shows in mostly swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the wake of his surprise single, “As We Fix Our Nation’s Broken Heart.”
The swipe at Trump — on a night former President Barack Obama was campaigning for Harris nearby at Detroit’s Huntington Center (introduced by Eminem) — was not Wonder’s only political comment on Tuesday.
Later in the show he recited, for the first time ever, the lyrics of a new song, “Politic Playa,” which Wonder said will appear on his next album, Through the Eyes of Wonder, slated for release in March. T
he pointed song includes verses such as “you campaigned throughout the nation, saying you’ll unite the land/But when you get in office, you completely change the plan,” with a chorus that runs, “Politic playa/Why you playin’ politics so wrong/Politic playa/You get what you want, then you’re absent, up and gone.”
Introducing “Village Ghetto Land,” on which he sang accompanied only by a 12-piece string section, Wonder, who was born in Saginaw and moved to Detroit when he was four years old, recalled the violence and poverty he witnessed in the neighborhood in which he grew up.
“I just remember all this stuff was going on…a lot of what we saw then is what we’re seeing now, and that’s unacceptable. We gotta fix that,” he said, turning his attention to politicians as he added, “It’s not about what they say; it’s what they do. And my freedom and my rights for what I want can’t be bought.”
Wonder took one more shot at Trump while vamping during “Do I Do,” referencing the Economic Club remarks again before saying, “All this has gotta stop…Let’s make America LOVE again.”
Wonder’s Detroit show was also distinguished by some special moments, including a bit of fellow Motowners the Four Tops’ “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” early on and the tour debut of “My Eyes Don’t Cry,” which had a line of fans on the arena floor doing an impromptu hustle.
During his mid-show break from the stage, meanwhile, Detroit’s Perfecting Greater Grace Singers choir performed Aretha Franklin’s “Until You Come Back to Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do)” before Wonder’s six backing vocalists paid tribute to the late Frankie Beverly with a rendition of Maze’s “Before I Let Go.”
Wonder also had to overcome some technical problems that shorted out the PA system three times during the night.
After the first — which interrupted “Master Blaster (Jammin’)” — was resolved he thanked the fans “for being patient, ’cause we can work it out, right?” before launching an impromptu rendition of the Beatles’ “We Can Work It Out,” which he covered for a Top 20 single in 1970. The second and third came in rapid succession during “Don’t You Worry ’bout a Thing,” and an exasperated Wonder, while remaining composed, commented, “I’m sure the sound crew feels messed up.”
When it was finally fixed, he quipped “Oh, Stevie, Stevie, we forgive the mess up, and we’ll never mess up like that again.”
Wonder has four more dates on the Sing Your Song! tour, which wraps up Nov. 2 in Chicago.
Jason Isbell is leaving the 400 Unit at home next year for what is being billed as an “Intimate Evening” with the six-time Grammy winner.
The tour begins on Feb. 15 in Chicago and runs through the end of March, with select stops in smaller markets, including Portsmouth, NH, and large cities like New York City, Los Angeles and Nashville.
Isbell recently wrapped an eight-show residency at Music City’s Ryman Auditorium to mark the release of Live From The Ryman Vol. 2, a collection of recordings from four of the last six years of sold-out shows at legendary venue.
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Earlier this year, Isbell won his fifth and sixth Grammy when 2023’s Weathervanes (recorded with the 400 Unit) earned best Americana album and the track “Cast Iron Skillet” scored best American roots song. The Alabama native and former Drive-By Trucker first broke out in solo form in 2013 with his Dave Cobb-produced fourth LP Southeastern. His next two albums, Something More Than Free (2015) and The Nashville Sound (2017), were Grammy magnets and each won awards for best Americana album and roots song (for “24 Frames” and “If We Were Vampires,” respectively).
Tickets go on sale Friday, Oct. 25 via Isbell’s website.
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JASON ISBELL SOLO DATES
February 15 – Chicago, IL – Auditorium Theatre
February 16 – Ithaca, NY – State Theatre
February 17 – Portsmouth, NH – The Music Hall
February 18 – Providence, RI – Providence Performing Arts Center
February 21 – New York, NY – Beacon Theatre
February 22 – New York, NY – Beacon Theatre
February 28 – Washington, DC – Warner Theatre
March 1 – Washington, DC – Warner Theatre
March 14 – Los Angeles, CA – Walt Disney Hall
March 15 – Santa Barbara, CA – Arlington Theatre
March 20 – Nashville, TN – The Pinnacle
March 21 – Nashville, TN – The Pinnacle
March 22 – Nashville, TN – The Pinnacle
March 28 – Nashville, TN – The Pinnacle
March 29 – Atlanta, GA – Fox Theater
Jason Isbell
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Cruel World festival will return in 2025 with headliners New Order and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Southern California promoter Goldenvoice (the folks behind Coachella) will head back to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., on Saturday, May 17, with additional performances from legendary acts Devo, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Death Cult, Garbage, […]