Touring
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In recent weeks, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Doug Stone, John Michael Montgomery, Ray Stevens and Lee Greenwood have all publicly announced plans to wrap the road portion of their careers. They’re hardly alone.
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The Oak Ridge Boys started their farewell tour this past fall, though tenor Joe Bonsall, suffering from a neuromuscular disorder, was forced to hang it up at the end of December. Dolly Parton recently revealed that she had decided not to return to the road since she wrapped her last tour in 2016. Additionally, country/rock band The Ozark Mountain Daredevils and the Eagles, whose current lineup includes country artist Vince Gill, are also concluding their regular concert routines. (Gill will continue to work as a solo act.)
Retirement is a well-earned rite of passage for most people in later life, though there are plenty of musicians — Willie Nelson and the late Tony Bennett and B.B. King are good examples — who maintain a road life until their bodies give out. They find it difficult to stop, spurred by fan adoration, good paychecks and/or the simple joy of performing.
But this new wave of retirees is generally finding it easier to hang it up after experiencing an extended home life during the pandemic. Once their tours were canceled in 2020, most country artists found themselves anchored for 12 to 24 months. Artists in their prime couldn’t wait to get back out, but those on the back end of their careers began to recognize that if they ended their road-warrior phase, it wasn’t necessarily the end of the road.
“We got a dose of our real life,” Nitty Gritty Dirt Band co-founder Jeff Hanna says.
The benefits include the kinds of everyday events that can’t be experienced from 1,000 miles away: dinner with a spouse, attending a daughter’s graduation or playing with the grandkids in the backyard. Making music for a living is attractive — none of the retirees wish they’d dug ditches or balanced books instead — but it involves sacrifices, and they discovered the opportunity exists to stop and smell the roses at home.
“We’ve got enough to retire on, so why not enjoy the rest of my life with my family?” asks Stone, whose 13-year marriage has produced a 7-year-old daughter. “We love going to Disney. I want to go see the redwoods and stuff like that.”
That yearning to explore the world is part of the attraction for young musicians, and in the early years, America’s topographic diversity can help keep a touring job interesting. But heavy concert schedules don’t usually allow much time to play tourist. Stone remembers one trip in upstate New York when the bus came within a 10-minute drive of scenic Niagara Falls. They had to bypass it stay on time, and he has never been back.
“I didn’t get to see America,” he says. “I got to see the back seat of a bus.”
The current wave of road retirements is actually a sign that some of Nashville’s structural changes have worked. Many of country’s previous legends — Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers or 1960s/1970s-era George Jones — faced financial problems after spending lavishly during their peak commercial years. Since then, business management companies have sprouted, helping modern acts plan their financial futures. Where many of their predecessors were required to tour until they couldn’t stop, modern acts have options.
“Most of them over the decades have gotten smarter in terms of managing their finances,” says Action Entertain Collective booking agent Travis James, who represents Montgomery and several other ’90s-associated acts. “Are there exceptions to that? Sure. There’s always going to be people that piss their money away with divorce or drugs or whatever the case may be. That’s in accounting and that’s in the NFL — it’s in everything. But by and large, the artists that were viable enough to have long careers and a show full of hits, even if they didn’t do it right the first half of their career, they figured out how to do it right the second half.”
Not that everyone is thrilled about hanging it up. During the COVID-19 break in the concert schedule, The Oaks missed the stage, missed seeing their fans and longed to make music again.
“That’s all we do in our lives,” bass singer Richard Sterban says. “We go out and entertain people and help people with our music. And we were not able to do that, so we didn’t necessarily like that feeling.”
Still, long rides on a sedentary tour bus and the repetitive motion involved in making music take a toll. Greenwood has titanium knees after several surgeries and had back surgery in 2020. Hanna blew an Achilles tendon in 2019 and now walks for exercise instead of running. And he has experienced some issues with his left hand — “which is kind of the money hand on the guitar,” Hanna says. “I have to play a little differently now.”
The body sort of makes retirement inevitable for most — “Like [Jimmie] Fadden says, ‘Do the math,’ ” Hanna quips — but modern artists’ money management makes it easier to take that step.
Greenwood, Stevens and Stone all plan to conclude their regular concert schedules in 2024, while Montgomery expects to wrap in 2025. The Oaks and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band could go on for years, in some cases picking the venues based on sentiment rather than income.
“We would prefer to go back to familiar places, to go back to people that we know,” Sterban says. “Basically, we want to perform in front of people that have helped make us who we are today.”
But the demand goes up once promoters and fans realize the artist’s shows are coming to an end, which also increases the price for many bookings. That’s the good news for the agents, though farewell tours are bittersweet for them, as they lose valuable clients.
“When they tell me they can cut back, that doesn’t help my financial bottom line,” James says. “I can’t sit here and tell you that I’m necessarily happy about it, but I sure am proud that I was part of the solution in helping them fulfill their goals professionally.”
If they retire early enough, the artists may be preserving themselves, too. Extended travel is physically challenging at any age. They’ll very likely miss the stage, but maybe not the wear and tear required to get there.
“I want to be on the planet,” Stone says, “not in it.”
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Drag-focused management firm Producer Entertainment Group (PEG) is officially expanding their stiletto-shaped footprint in the entertainment industry. On Thursday (Feb. 1), PEG announced their acquisition of Five Senses Reeling (FSR), a touring and events agency catering to LGBTQ audiences, Billboard can reveal. FSR joins PEG’s growing suite of businesses, including music label PEG Records, SERV […]
No Doubt and Sublime will each reunite at this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival for the first time in years, but there’s one massive reunion promoters couldn’t pull together: the Talking Heads.
Last September, festival curator and Goldenvoice president Paul Tollett traveled to the Toronto International Film Festival for a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Talking Heads’ seminal concert film, Stop Making Sense. For the first time in over 30 years, David Byrne sat alongside his former bandmates Jerry Harrison, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth to discuss the film project in a live panel moderated by Spike Lee.
Tollett tells Billboard he had traveled to Toronto to potentially discuss having the Talking Heads perform at Coachella and met with members of the band and their representatives, but that he “sensed there were no shows happening, so I didn’t make an offer.”
Tollett emphasized that he never broached the subject of payment with the band and ultimately went home empty-handed. He would not discuss how much he was willing to pay for a reunion show at Coachella, though a source familiar with how much artists are paid to headline the mega-festival says the gig could have earned the group as much as $10 million.
Shortly after Tollett returned from his trip, a second offer came through, this time from Live Nation. The promoter told the Talking Heads it was willing to pay the band $80 million to headline six to eight festival gigs and headlining slots, sources close to the group say. The Talking Heads ultimately rejected that offer as well. Live Nation declined to comment when asked about the offer.
Ever since Jane’s Addiction agreed to reunite at Coachella in 2001, the Indio, Calif., music festival has become the go-to platform for reunion gigs, with acts like Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Pixies, Rage Against the Machine, The Specials and dozens more all finding a way to come back together for one more show in the desert. But as the event ages — it’s now in its 23rd year — and competition in the festival market intensifies, pulling these kinds of comeback concerts together has become increasingly difficult.
More than two months after the Toronto Film Festival, in early December, Tollett found himself at the center of a controversial dispute around Sublime’s reunion. Mike “Cheez” Brown, who managed the group Sublime with Rome, had learned that music manager Kevin Zinger with Regime Music Group had joined forces with Vandals bassist and musician-turned-executive Joe Escalante to stage an official Sublime reunion with original bassist Eric Wilson, original drummer Bud Gaugh and late singer Bradley’s Nowell’s son, Jakob Nowell, on vocals.
Brown also learned that Zinger and Escalante were targeting Coachella for the band’s first major reunion show and called Tollett to discuss. Just months earlier, Tollett had booked Sublime with Rome atop the Cali Vibes reggae festival, slated for this February in the band’s hometown of Long Beach, Calif.
While Tollett and many other festival talent buyers had heard about the effort to launch a Jacob Nowell-fronted reunion, at the time Brown called him, Tollett had not yet submitted any offers for the group, who had not yet performed live together. A test gig eventually came together weeks later as part of a charity event, and by late December, Sublime with Rome and the new Sublime had reached a settlement. Brown and Sublime with Rome agreed to end the band’s 13-year run after it played the festivals and dates they had already booked for 2024, while the newly re-formed Sublime would prepare for its first comeback gig as a band, scheduled for Apr. 13 at Coachella.
The No Doubt reunion, largely negotiated in late December and early January, would turn out to be easier and more straightforward than Sublime and the Talking Heads.
It was Tollett who initiated talks with Stefani’s manager, Irving Azoff, about the idea. The discussion with bandmates dragged out longer than expected as talks delved into band business outside of the reunion, but eventually, the group agreed to reunite in large part because of its long relationship with Goldenvoice, who promoted some of the band’s first shows. The $10 million payday would be significant for bandmates Adrian Young, Tony Kanal and Tom Dumont, whose current band, DREAMCAR, is led by AFI singer Davy Havoc and booked to play Goldenvoice’s Cruel World festival in May.
For her part, Stefani was already booked to play Cali Vibes in February when she agreed to play Coachella. A source close to Stefani tells Billboard not to expect a major No Doubt tour to follow the one-time reunion set, as she already has plans in place for the second half of the year to promote new solo music she plans to release this summer.
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As the music industry prepares to gather next week in Los Angeles for discussions on how to address climate change within the sector, a new initiative to better understand the scope of the challenge is underway.
On Monday (Jan. 29), MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative announced that it’s launching a comprehensive study of the live music industry’s carbon footprint. Co-funded and supported by Warner Music Group, Live Nation and Coldplay, the report will suggest solutions to reduce the environmental impact of live music events across all venue sizes, from, a statement says, “pubs and clubs to stadiums.”
Focused on the U.S. and U.K. markets, the partnership will begin with an initial research phase, with the resulting Assessment Report of Live Music and Climate Change expected to be complete by this July.
The report aims to provide a comprehensive assessment of the relationship between live music and climate change, to identify key areas where the industry and concertgoers can make tangible improvements to reduce emissions, to foster positive outcomes and to provide a detailed analysis of the latest developments in green technology and sustainable practices.
“I’m delighted that we will be working with our partners to co-create recommendations for a sustainable future in music,” says Professor John E. Fernandez, director of the ESI at MIT. “As well as jointly funding the research, I applaud the spirit of openness and collaboration that will allow us to identify specific challenges in areas such as live event production, freight and audience travel, and recommend solutions that can be implemented across the entire industry to address climate change.”
Coldplay has also committed to manufacturing all physical records for their forthcoming 2024 album from recycled plastic bottles, which a statement claims is the first initiative of its kind.
Coldplay is a longtime sustainability leader, with the band saying last June that its Music Of The Spheres tour has so far produced 47% fewer CO2e emissions than its previous tour and that it’s planted five million trees to date.
With fan travel being one of the biggest carbon emissions drivers in the music industry, in 2022 the band partnered with Live Nation and major public transportation providers to offer fans free or discounted rides to foster more sustainable travel. A study found that this initiative fostered a 59% average increase in public transport ridership on show days across four U.S. cities.
Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO) once again rules Billboard’s monthly Top Tours chart in December, with the act now ringing the No. 1 bell for the final month of the year in 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2019. (Of note, there was no chart in 2020 due to COVID-19’s impact on touring.) Over 73 shows between Dec. 1-30, the classical holiday collective grossed $51.5 million and sold 657,000 tickets according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore.
With ensembles on both the East and West Coasts, TSO was able to play at least two shows per day — and used the additional bandwidth to its advantage, squeezing the most performances into this December than it has in any year since 2016. Despite a 6% dip in attendance compared with last year, revenue increased by 1%, marking the highest grossing month for TSO in its illustrious 25-year touring history.
Overall, TSO grossed $68.2 million and sold 873,000 tickets on its 2023 tour. The group saw consistent increases in its annual grosses through the end of the 2010s, up 10%, 13%, and 18% in 2017, 2018 and 2019, respectively.
The 2021 season, flanked by the first wave of COVID-19’s Omicron, dipped back by 18%, while last year’s tour came within half a percentage point of the 2019 peak. Finally, with the effect of COVID in the rearview mirror, this year’s revue establishes a new high dating back to the collective’s 1999 touring debut.
TSO hit 21 markets in November and another 42 in December. As always, major markets prime for double-headers are saved for mid-to-late December when seasonal hype reaches its apex. The average gross per city in November was $835,000, while December’s pace rose to $1.2 million.
Cleveland and Tampa were standout markets, and the first to ever generate more than $2 million in TSO history. Two shows at the former’s Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse grossed $2.02 million from 26,000 tickets, and a double-header at the latter’s Amalie Arena earned $2.08 million from 25,600 tickets.
Including its Y2K launch (Dec. 10, 1999, to be exact), TSO has grossed a reported $802.4 million and sold 15 million tickets from 1,893 shows. While that situates it just outside the top 20 grossing acts in Boxscore history, its rank based on attendance makes it one of the top 10 artists since Boxscore’s late-‘80s start.
TSO’s fourth month at No. 1 ties Bad Bunny and Beyoncé. Only Elton John has spent more time on top, having reigned for seven months, spread between 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023. While its annual touring window is limited to holiday months, its dominance is reliable, likely to be repeated in Decembers to come.
Given the sheer abundance of shows in TSO’s calendar throughout all of December — compared with most tours wrapping up halfway through the month — the group’s victory this time of year can feel inevitable. Still, the No. 1 spot was claimed by just a 3% margin, narrowly fending off U2’s eight-show run at Las Vegas’ Sphere.
U2 earned just over $50 million and sold 133,000 tickets during the Dec. 1-16 leg of its residency at Sphere, claiming the No. 1 spot on Top Boxscores. Combined with the first leg, which stretched from late September to early November, the rock legends have earned $159.8 million at the groundbreaking Vegas arena. Beginning this weekend, Bono & Co. are slated for 15 more shows through March 2.
U2 isn’t the only Vegas residency act to impact the December recap. Bruno Mars is No. 4 on Top Boxscores with a five-show return to MGM’s Dolby Live. The pop-R&B chart-topper grossed $10.3 million toward the end of the month, including a New Year’s Eve performance. At the same venue, Usher is No. 30 with the final two shows of a 12-date leg that began in early November. At Resorts World Theatre, Carrie Underwood pops up at No. 22, with $4.1 million from eight of nine shows that kicked off on Nov. 30.
While Vegas leads the way, half of the 30-position Top Boxscores chart took place outside of the mainland U.S., ranging from Latin America (RBD) and Europe (Madonna) to Asia (SEVENTEEN) and Australia (50 Cent). Paul McCartney takes up the most real estate with four appearances, all of which were in Brazil. Shows in Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba rank at Nos. 3, 12-13 and 18, respectively. Three shows at Allianz Parque lead the pack with a $16.2 million gross and 149,000 attendance count over three shows.
And while Sphere enjoys a commanding lead over the Top Venues (15,001+ capacity) chart, it’s a New York theater that reigns over all concert halls in December. Radio City Music Hall crowns the Top Venues (5,001-10,000 capacity) list with $80.6 million and 133 shows. Even more efficient than TSO, The Radio City Rockettes headlined this year’s annual Christmas Spectacular, earning a gargantuan $116.7 million over 193 shows between Nov. 17 and Jan. 4.
Elle King has rescheduled four additional concerts following the backlash she faced for a recent performance at the Grand Ole Opry in honor of Dolly Parton. On her Instagram Stories Thursday (Jan. 25), the singer-songwriter revealed newly rescheduled dates for shows in Indiana, Illinois and Michigan, in addition to the now Sept. 21 date for her previously rescheduled show at Billy Bob’s Texas in Fort Worth, Texas.
The Stories post noted that her show in Shipshewana, Ind. is now slated for March 21, followed by a March 22 show in Waukegan, Ill., and two shows on March 29-30 in Harris, Mich. The shows were originally scheduled for Feb. 22, Feb. 25 and Feb. 23-24, respectively.
“Your tickets will be valid for the new dates. If you can’t make the new date, refunds are available at point of purchase. See you there!” the post read.
King’s website currently shows tour dates running from March 1 through Oct. 18.
Billboard has reached out to King’s rep for comment.
The news comes after King’s recent profanity-laced performance during a tribute show at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in honor of Dolly Parton’s 78th birthday. Video from the performance shows her attempt to cover Parton’s “Marry Me,” during which King slurs her words and forgets the lyrics to the song. At one point, King herself tells the audience that she is “f–king hammered.”
The singer has yet to offer a statement on the performance, though the Grand Ole Opry did share a public apology on X in response to a fan comment, saying, “We deeply regret and apologize for the language that was used.”
In 2023, King released her debut country album, Come Get Your Wife, which includes the Dierks Bentley collaboration “Worth a Shot.” She earned a top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2015 with “Ex’s & Oh’s,” and has since had two No. 1 Country Airplay hit collaborations: “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home)” with Miranda Lambert, as well as “Different for Girls” with Bentley.
As alcohol consumption declines among young adults and awareness about the mental health benefits of sobriety grows, nonalcoholic cocktails could prove key to finding new food and beverage revenue for the concert business.
In 2023, CMA Fest, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Danny Wimmer Presents’ Louder Than Life and Bourbon & Beyond were among a dozen festivals to include mocktails and sober spaces at their events; Live Nation introduced the “no-jito” to its venue menus; and Oak View Group launched an elevated nonalcoholic beverage program at its Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, Calif. And while conventional wisdom held that nonalcoholic drinks beyond soda and water would diminish alcohol sales, venues are finding that’s not the case.
“Since launching the mocktail program, our alcohol sales have remained steady, and overall beverage sales have increased by a margin that we are very pleased with,” says Daniel Griffis, president of global partnerships at Oak View Group. It has gone so well that OVG plans to start rolling out the program at other venues.
After launching in October in the premium level and expanding to the entire arena in January, Acrisure has sold more than 2,000 mocktails at $14 each — including the Blackberry Smash and the Firebirds Spritz, which use Lyre’s nonalcoholic spirits — says John Page, senior vp of Acrisure Arena, AHL team Coachella Valley Firebirds and OVG360 Facilities. “There have been a lot of positive comments that we are recognizing people that want to really experience the live event and have something different in terms of the beverage space, not soda or water,” he says. “This is one way that we can continue to show that we are aware and we have something for everyone in the venue.”
These activations were all launched in partnership with the nonprofit Stand Together and its 1 Million Strong initiative founded with sober community The Phoenix. They follow an open letter published in Billboard in January 2023 that featured 50 music industry leaders pledging support to 1 Million Strong.
“What I am excited to see, a year after, are those people actually doing it,” says Colette Weintraub, head of Stand Together Music, Sports & Entertainment.
At Live Nation, the initiative has brought a new corporate focus as well. Last May, the concert giant launched its Sober Nation program focused on fostering sober-inclusivity and destigmatizing addiction at their venues and offices. On Jan. 30 the company will host a Grammy-week brunch with 1 Million Strong and DMC of Run-DMC to raise awareness among staff and connect employees to available recovery and mental health resources.
On Jan. 30 the company will host a Grammy-week brunch with 1 Million Strong and DMC to raise awareness among staff and connect employees to available recovery and mental health resources.
For an industry that places a lot of emphasis on alcohol — from beverage sales to alcohol sponsors — Weintraub says the initiative has received a warm welcome so far. “We’re not saying ‘sober music industry,’ ” she says. “We’re saying this is an opportunity to expand and open the doors to more people and let more people participate in what’s important in life and supporting more people in achieving their full potential.”
A little more than three months since it kicked off at the O2 Arena in London, Madonna’s Celebration Tour arrived at Madison Square Garden this week. While the Celebration Tour previously hit New York City in December for three dates, those were all at the Barclays Center – a venue that opened in Brooklyn 12 […]
Boiler Room is going global, again, in 2024.
The dance culture event series and streaming platform announced a world tour on Tuesday (Jan. 23) that will feature rising acts, local artists and scene stars playing across 25 cities.
Expanding on the platform’s first-ever world tour last year, in 2024 Boiler Room will return to London, Mumbai, Manchester, Milan, New York, Seoul, Toronto, Sydney and Melbourne. The tour will also touch down in cities including Amsterdam, Auckland, Barcelona, Bogota, Buenes Aires, Paris, Tokyo, Glasgow, São Paulo, Shanghai, Delhi, Lagos and U.S. cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas and Miami.
Dates will be announced in the forthcoming months. Organizers say that the 2024 events will be bigger than on the 2023 tour, and will include weekend takeovers in addition to one-off shows.
Artists to be featured on the tour include Avalon Emergson, Chase & Status, Flowdan, Optimo, Rico Nasty, Skream & Benga, Armand van Helden, SHERELLE, Sara Landry and many more. Like the 2023 tour, the 2024 event series will also focus on local artists and rising stars.
Boiler Room’s 2023 tour hosted more than 200,000 attendees across 20 shows. In addition to the live events, streams of the events have aggregated millions of views.
Since launching in 2010, Boiler Room has created an archive of more than 8,000 performances bymore than 5,000 artists across 200 cities. This archive now aggregates more than 283 million streams per month. Boiler Room was acquired by ticketing platform Dice in 2021.
See the complete city and artist roster below.
Courtesy Photo