Touring
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Ricky Martin jumped for joy when he saw his twin sons, Matteo and Valentino, join him on stage during his show in Switzerland on Monday (July 17).
In a video the Puerto Rican superstar posted on social media, his 14-year-old boys take the stage to hype up the crowd and start jumping along with their father, whose facial expression says it all. “What a beautiful surprise! When my twins jumped on stage with me for the first time in Locarno, Switzerland,” he captioned the short clip with a crying emoji.
The “Tiburones” singer has been touring in Europe with shows in Spain, Switzerland and Monaco, where Martin posted another video with Matteo and Valentino writing, “Bonding time w the twins, before the show tonight.”
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Earlier this month, Martin and Jwan Yosef announced in a joint statement that they are divorcing after six years of marriage. “For some time, we have considered transforming our relationship, and it is after careful consideration that we have decided to end our marriage with love, respect, and dignity for our children — preserving and honoring what we have experienced as a couple all of these wonderful years.” Martin and Yosef share two kids: daughter Lucia, born in 2018, and son Renn, born in 2019. Before meeting Yosef, Martin welcomed twin sons Matteo and Valentino in 2008.
Following his show dates in Europe, Martin will co-headline The North America Trilogy Tour with Enrique Iglesias and Pitbull. The 19-date arena trek is set to kick off Oct. 14 in Washington, D.C., and will make stops in major cities such as New York, Miami, Houston and Las Vegas before wrapping up Dec. 16 in Vancouver, B.C.
Watch Martin’s sweet video of his twins joining him on stage.
A whole generation of live music fans is being trained to expect the worst when it comes to purchasing tickets for concerts, according to National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) president Dayna Frank.
“It’s imperative to the future of live music, especially for the emerging class and the emerging artists, to be able to make buying a ticket and going to a show at even club level venues easy and simple,” Frank said at the NIVA ’23 conference in Washington, D.C. “It’s devastating what we’ve trained young people to expect when they go buy a ticket: how hard it is, you’ve got to be online at a certain time, you might not get it, you might pay $85 when there are $25 tickets available.”
Frank was speaking on the panel “Fix The Tix: How We Stop Predatory Ticketing Practices from Harming Fans and Artists,” which was held at The Anthem on July 10. Appearing alongside her was Lyte CEO Ant Taylor, who agreed with Frank’s assessment of the bleak ticket-buying process for music fans in 2023.
“The thing that we forget about or that we frequently don’t talk about is that on the other side of all this bulls— is the fan,” said Taylor. “How many fans aren’t even coming to an onsale anymore because they’ve given up because of all the points of friction?”
Since concerts restarted following COVID-19 lockdowns, obtaining tickets for high-profile artists like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé has become a game of uncertainty and chance due to factors including bots, unscrupulous brokers and high demand from fans who have waited years to see their favorite artists. And while neither of those superstars will have their livelihoods affected by ticketing issues, smaller artists, venues and promoters in the live music ecosystem can be severely impacted, particularly by brokers who scoop up tickets and place them on the secondary market at markedly higher prices. Because fewer fans are willing to buy tickets at those higher prices, post-pandemic “no-show” rates — or the percentage of people who buy tickets but don’t attend a show — have remained frustratingly high.
“I don’t know how many folks are tracking how many of their tickets are on the secondary markets the day of the show, but we’ll easily see 20-30 tickets just sitting there, unsold,” said Frank, who also owns famed independent venue First Avenue in Minneapolis.
Frank stated that a common no-show rate was around 7% prior to the pandemic. Now, even though no-shows have gone down from their pandemic high, independent venues are continuing to see rates of 12-15% regularly. That means fewer bar and merch sales, which can often be the revenue that makes or breaks a show for small artists and venues.
The current state of concert ticketing in the United States was a major concern for attendees of the second annual conference that hosted independent venues, promoters, agents and ticketers from July 9-12 in the nation’s capital. The “Fix the Tix” panel focused on issues facing the ticketing industry and possible solutions – many of which can be found in the Fix the Tix Act NIVA is lobbying for the federal government to pass. The legislation would ban the sale of speculative tickets (tickets that brokers don’t have in their possession) and the use of bots, as well as require up front pricing and caps on resale prices while providing funds for enforcement.
“The Fix the Tix proposal says that promoters and artists should be able to put terms and conditions on the tickets as they transfer hands,” said Frank, who added that brokers have been lobbying the federal government to make non-transferable tickets illegal for well over a decade. The brokers’ argument, according to Frank, is that they own a ticket and have the right to do anything they want with it — but live music professionals believe the ticket is actually a license, she says.
“That ticket can change hands 25 times, but ultimately the product is the show that we’re responsible for,” Frank continued. “As the people responsible for the product, we should be able to have terms and conditions on this license…Our product involves people coming into our houses which we are legally responsible for. We have to have oversight of how those tickets are transferred.”
Fellow panelist Frank Riley of High Road Touring agreed. “The only way to put this genie back in the bottle is to regain control of who’s in charge of the ticket, and that’s been the artist and the promoter,” said Riley. “Any other solution that’s out there will not work.”
Riley said that putting a cap on how much a ticket can be resold for would be a major hit to brokers on the secondary market. “If you eliminate the profit motive out of the secondary market [as we know it], it will disappear,” he said.
As NIVA, the National Independent Talent Organization, Universal Music Group and many other music industry entities who have signed on to the Fix the Tix legislation are fighting for federal regulation over ticketing, University of Chicago Booth School of Business professor of economics and entrepreneurship Eric Budish suggested that transparency about where the funds go could bolster those efforts.
“Congress or somebody else should figure out who made how much money on the Taylor Swift tour. Taylor Swift made a lot of money and good for her,” Budish said. “But if a ticket got resold for $2,000, there’s 35% fees on that, give or take, so the resale platform probably made more on that ticket than Taylor Swift did. The broker made more money on that ticket than Taylor Swift did. The search engines made a bunch of money in aggregate on those tickets. I’d love to see that money added up. I think that could be really persuasive to a large number of consumers.”
Another approach to tackling the issue came from panelist Neeta Ragoowansi, executive director of Folk Alliance International and president of Music Managers Forum in the United States. Ragoowansi explained that selling fake tickets or listing tickets that a seller does not actually own constitutes copyright infringement, since the seller is using the name of an artist and/or venue to sell an item without permission. She suggested taking legal action against brokers or search engines who are allowing them to operate these illegal practices, similar to how the National Music Publishers’ Association filed suit against Twitter for copyright infringement over its failure to license music.
Naming NIVA, NITO, Music Managers Forum and the Recording Academy, Ragoowansi said, “There’s a variety of interested parties that have members who have standing to file suit there. File suit on mass, class action or even just 15-20 parties who have a variety of causes of action.”
A class action against the brokers or search engines could make substantial headlines, says Ragoowansi, adding it would “allow for the parties to come to the table and start talking about settlement and creating a precedent so that others don’t come in.”
From show-stopping vocals to eye-popping choreography and production, Beyoncé‘s Renaissance World Tour is one of the grandest shows happening right now. In the midst of all the show’s opulent elements stands one special surprise for select dates: a dance performance by Grammy winner Blue Ivy, the eldest daughter of the superstar and husband Jay-Z, and grandma Tina Knowles-Lawson couldn’t be prouder.
“Well, this is a heels family. You’re trained early to walk in heels,” Knowles-Lawson, mother to Beyoncé and grandmother to Blue Ivy, told People. “She’s having the time of her life, and I couldn’t be more proud of her because she really worked hard.”
Blue Ivy, the second-youngest Grammy winner in history, seamlessly fit into Beyoncé’s crew of seasoned dancers, featuring ballroom powerhouse Honey Balenciaga and renowned dancer-choreography Aliya Janell.
At the tour’s Paris stop (May 26), Blue surprised the sold-out stadium with some dazzling dance moves set to a pair of her mother’s most empowering anthems: “My Power” and “Black Parade,” both from 2019’s The Lion King: The Gift (Deluxe Edition). Blue’s flawless execution of the “My Power” choreography went viral and sparked a dance trend on TikTok.
Knowles-Lawson, a credited costume designer for the Renaissance World Tour, told the publication, “She is 11 years old, and she had one week to prepare, and she’s just getting better and better. So I’m the proud grandma, always.”
Blue is the eldest Carter child; she is the big sister to 6-year-old twins Rumi and Sir Carter. According to her grandmother, the tween’s confidence has soared “to the sky” since joining the Renaissance Tour. The young dancer made her debut on the tour’s North American leg at the Philadelphia show on July 12.
Blue Ivy has earned one entry on the Billboard Hot 100: 2019’s “Brown Skin Girl” (with Beyoncé, Wizkid & SAINt JN), which won the 2020 Grammy Award for Best Music Video and peaked at No. 76.
Bruce Springsteen was 34 in 1984 when he released “Glory Days,” a deceptively upbeat song about looking back at the high school years rock songs cast as the prime of our lives. He was almost 50 when he reunited the E Street Band in 1999 and gradually turned what seemed like it would be a celebration of his past into the second half of his career. Now, at 74, he’s taken some time to look back – in his memoir, during his one-man Broadway show, and on his album Letter to You – but his July 15 concert at the Volksparkstadion in Hamburg, Germany was a joyous celebration of the power of rock n’ roll.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Yes, Springsteen has slowed down a bit. Concerts on this tour clock in at less than three hours, with relatively stable set lists, and he doesn’t slide across the stage on his knees anymore. Who could? It’s inevitable. But he still delivers the greatest show on earth. He’s not playing the kind of concerts he did four decades ago, but — let’s face it – no one else is, either.
The band endures. Video segments during “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” honor late band members Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, but the band tours on. That seems to be the point of these shows, many of which open with “No Surrender” and its vow of dedication, followed by “Ghosts” and its salute to a lost bandmate. It’s a look back, but in Hamburg, Springsteen leaned into its statement of purpose: “By the end of the set we leave no one alive.”
Springsteen played four songs from Letter to You during the show, which (along with his spoken introduction to “Last Man Standing”) were presented with German subtitles onscreen. The implication was clear: These are the important ones. (They’re probably easier for foreigners to understand than any of his lyrics about the New Jersey turnpike.) Really, though, they’re all important. Some went by fast (“Working on the Highway”), while Springsteen stretched others into extended jams, including “Out in the Street,” during which he showcased the horn section; “Kitty’s Back”; and “Backstreets.”
Springsteen is one of the only rock musicians – truly one of just a few figures in pop culture in general – to chronicle the arc of his life in an art form usually obsessed with teenage concerns. Over the years, he’s turned his creative attention from escaping the life he grew up with (Born to Run) to the difficulties of building his own (Darkness on the Edge of Town) to the challenges of sharing it with someone else (Tunnel of Love) – then, later, to the brotherhood he finds with his band. Over the last few years, his attention has turned to his own mortality, in a way that’s free of the hope-I-die-before-I-get-old mythology but still cast in his usual rock n’ roll terms.
The band endures – even, perhaps, beyond its members. Before he played “Last Man Standing,” from Letter to You, Springsteen told a story about his first rock band – the same way he might have on Broadway, only to about 70,000 people – and how he’s the last one of the members still alive. He compared the situation to standing on railroad tracks, looking at the headlight of an oncoming train and how it “brings a certain clarity of thought, of purpose.” Back then, he remembered, life was full of hellos and “later on there’s a lot more goodbyes.”
Any resignation was immediately followed by defiance in the form of “Backstreets,” which could be about the time he formed that first band, followed by “Because the Night” and soon “Badlands” – both of which are essentially about seizing the day. Springsteen is old enough to confront the idea of hanging up his rock n’ roll shoes, but he’s not ready to do it. It seemed the crowd could relate: Sounds of recognition greeted the line in “Thunder Road” about how “you’re scared and you’re thinking we ain’t that young anymore,” a line Springsteen wrote almost half a century ago.
The concert paused there, then continued with a six-song encore – “Born to Run,” a Born in the U.S.A. triple-header of “Bobby Jean,” “Glory Days” and “Dancing in the Dark,” and then that joyous, extended “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.” His final song was more subdued: “I’ll See You in my Dreams,” a goodbye about goodbyes, “For death is not the end.” At once stark and hopeful, it circled back to “No Surrender” and the start of the show. “Now young faces grow sad and old,” Springsteen sang just after he took the stage, “And hearts of fire grow cold / We swore blood brothers against the wind / Now I’m ready to grow young again.” Then he spent the next two hours and forty-five minutes doing exactly that.
Anyone who has attended a music festival has experienced the frustration of attempting to send and receive calls and texts amid tens of thousands of other phone-wielding fans. Messages often don’t go through, arrive an hour after being sent or show up en masse when the night is over, creating confusion and leaving meet-ups unmet.
Anyone who has attended many of the leading U.S. music festivals over the past few years has likely noticed improvements, however, with cell service approaching real-time efficiency. This isn’t a fluke, but the result of focused improvements in how service is provided both generally and at music-related mass gatherings specifically.
“Frankly, I consider phone conductivity kind of like running water these days. Venues have to have it,” says Matthew Pasco, who as vp of information for the Las Vegas Raiders oversaw construction of the distributed antenna system (DAS) at Allegiant Stadium, which has hosted major tours from Taylor Swift, Metallica, The Rolling Stones and Garth Brooks since opening in summer 2021.
That’s because while cellphones used to just be a way of connecting with (or trying to connect with) friends at shows, they’re now seen as part of the concert and festival experience, with mobile ticketing, venue apps and digital payment systems demanding fully functional coverage. Connectivity also fosters greater safety, allowing fans in need of assistance to dial out during emergencies. Social media is another important consideration, with coverage at events now expected to keep up with the ballooning data demands of TikTok, Instagram and even fans livestreaming entire shows, as has happened recently on tours by Swift and Bruce Springsteen. According to Verizon, at Governors Ball 2022, its subscribers alone used roughly 14.5 terabytes of data, which equates to one person streaming 3 million songs continually for over 10 years. So, too, do fans arrive with phones, Apple Watches and iPads — and the expectation all of them will work.
Until recently, cell coverage has been wonky at big events as the demands of smartphones collided with networks designed before devices burned through so much data. With upwards of 125,000 people squeezed into a square mile (the size of Coachella’s site), all of whom texting and posting simultaneously, carriers — primarily AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile in the United States — would often overload. Event organizers, who sought to solve this by providing Wi-Fi, found those networks crashed easily due to high volume.
Enter Irvine, Calif.-based tech company MatSing. Founded in 2005, the company builds antennas that, instead of reflecting signals like a traditional antenna, refracts them, creating multiple independent signals beamed in multiple directions. Instead of implementing 10 individual antennas, an event can then employ one MatSing lens antenna that creates 10 separate coverage sectors and allows multiple carriers to utilize it.
“Festivals are the hardest thing to create coverage capacity for,” says MatSing executive vp Leo Matytsine. “That was our best way of getting a foot in the door.”
The first music carrier to use MatSing’s technology at a festival was AT&T at Coachella in 2014. “People actually got connectivity that year,” says Matytsine. “After that, Verizon and T-Mobile saw what was deployed, and it started to snowball because the technology worked.” Indeed, it’s how networks function — or don’t — in high-demand settings like festivals that typically cause carriers to lose subscribers, making performance at mass gatherings crucial to customer retention.
MatSing sells its 150-plus antenna models directly to carriers, and they are now permanently installed at 32 U.S. stadiums, arenas, raceways and venues including the Hollywood Bowl, with temporary deployments at myriad Super Bowls, presidential inaugurations and festivals including South by Southwest, Austin City Limits, Lollapalooza, Outside Lands, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Burning Man. The lattermost employs one antenna — incorporated by law enforcement as a safety measure, but which provides many attendees with service — while Coachella uses a few to cover its entire festival grounds. Prices vary depending on size and range from a couple of thousand for smaller models to tens of thousands of dollars for larger ones.
Carriers have also caught up with demand. While companies previously deployed mobile cell towers (along with MatSing tech) at mass gatherings to supplement coverage, Verizon representative Karen Schulz notes that “the network has evolved significantly over the past several years.” Improvements include fiber network expansion, carrier aggregation (which lets data flow freely across multiple spectrum bands) and U.S. deployments of high-speed 5G networks starting around 2019.
Unsurprisingly, venues themselves are now building and retrofitting to suit coverage requirements. Allegiant paid for the venue’s eight-figure DAS to maintain ownership over this asset, which the three major carriers rent out. (“I don’t want to sign away all the plumbing in my building so every time someone flushes the toilet, someone else gets paid,” says Pasco.) This DAS system also utilizes 28 MatSing antennas that hang from the roof around the ring of the stadium and service the 60,000-capacity bowl. (This option was chosen over deploying mini antennas under every seat, an option Los Angeles’ 3-year-old SoFi Stadium went with for its DAS.) At Allegiant, traditional cellular antennas have been installed in walkways, VIP suites and other areas MatSing antenna signals can’t reach. The stadium also offers Wi-Fi that has a 60% to 70% adoption rate among fans.
Some older stadiums and arenas, which are often “cement monstrosities,” says Pasco, “really struggle with deploying premium DAS systems because they don’t have the pathway to run cabling.” When such retrofits happen, they’re often “a little bit ugly,” he says.
However this coverage is implemented, its evolution is fostering increased connectedness among individuals in massive crowds, between attendees and venues themselves and with audiences well outside the confines of a show. This festival season, attendees might not even have to ask, “Hey, U there?”
07/14/2023
Now that the Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour has ended, a slew of competitors is racing up the road to $940 million.
07/14/2023
The time has come: Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road played its final show on Saturday, July 8. Almost five years after launching, the tour grossed $939.1 million and sold 6 million tickets according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore.
John announced his impending retirement from touring with the Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour back in January 2018, ultimately kicking off the jaunt in September of that year. He presented it as a three-year goodbye, and other than extending the timeline by two years due to COVID-19’s global shutdown, he stuck to his promise. John maintains that he does not want to tour again, but noted he might play sporadic shows in the future.
After claiming the title of the highest-grossing tour in Boxscore history earlier this year, John extended his lead with 49 arena dates in Europe, following an arena run in the Spring of 2019 and a sweep of stadiums last year. There were four North American stints, also volleying between arenas and stadiums, plus two blocks of shows in Oceania.
After all of those shows, all around the world, John made it to the top of the heap. Watch below as, from September 2018 to July 2023, the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour surpassed the biggest tours ever on its way to No. 1.
John has been patient, ranking among the biggest acts on various Boxscore charts since 2018. Starting that year, he was No. 22 on the year-end Top Tours chart, then No. 4 in 2019, No. 1 in 2020, and returned in 2022 at No. 2. In between, he was No. 1 on midyear charts for 2019 and 2020, and then No. 2 in 2022 and 2023.
John has also been the king of Billboard’s monthly Top Tours chart. He crowned the inaugural list for February 2019 and returned to the top six more times, each time extending his lead for the most months on top. He was No. 2 another eight times, plus five months between Nos. 3-5.
In all, that’s 20 months in the top five of 27 total appearances. Charts for June and July haven’t yet been published, though John will likely score his 28th and 29th appearances when they do.
John’s world tour divides its 330 shows (one of those, his set at Glastonbury Festival, does not factor into his gross or attendance since it’s a multi-artist festival) into 183 in North America, 101 in Europe and 46 in Oceania. See below for how his grosses in each continent stacked on top of one another, combining to more than $930 million.
North America – specifically mainland U.S. and Canada – was the most fruitful region for John’s farewell tour, amounting to $567.7 million and 3.5 million tickets. That’s 61% of the world tour’s total gross. Europe comes next with $218 million and 1.5 million tickets, followed by Australia and New Zealand, combining for $134 million and 889,000 tickets.
When Ed Sheeran set his record and wrapped The Divide Tour in August 2019, John’s tour had only grossed $217.8 million from its first 108 shows. With less than a third of Sheeran’s gross, the Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour was too young to be among predictions for all-time challengers. Plus, the tour had stuck to arenas, limiting its potential ceiling. It wasn’t until May 2022 that John stretched to stadiums.
The arena portion of John’s tour ended last spring, when it had already grossed $488.7 million from 219 shows. In the 61 stadium dates that followed, he added $341.5 million. All said, the stadium portion amounts to just 19% of all Farewell shows, but 36% of its earnings.
After breaking Sheeran’s record, the Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour became the first concert tour to gross $800 million and then $900 million.
Further, John’s final shows further extend his lead as the highest-grossing and best-selling soloist in Boxscore history. Over 1,623 reported shows, he’s grossed $1.98 billion and sold 20.6 million tickets. Farewell tours haven’t always actually been a final farewell, but if this is it, John is ending his historic touring career comfortably on top.
On July 16, Gabe Lee will step into the Grand Ole Opry circle for the first time, just days after releasing his latest album, Drink the River, out July 14.
For the Nashville-raised Lee, the Grand Ole Opry—which in its nearly century-long tenure has served as a bedrock for country music but also hosted blues, rock and Americana artists, and at its former Ryman home, served as a foil for the birth of bluegrass—offers a parallel for Lee’s own distinctive blend of country, rock, bluegrass and Americana.
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“The Opry represents the dream, the community,” Gabe says. “The Opry and its stage and history are not only a tradition, but a beacon for all future musicians. It’s just a great honor to perform there.”
The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Lee grew up immersed in classical and church music, as his mother played piano and his father played guitar. “They sacrificed so much, just working hard and saving and believing in me and my music,” he recalls. Absorbing their work ethic and learning in proximity to the ever-heightening stakes of the music industry also gave Lee a clear-eyed perspective on the truths of a music career.
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“A lot of my friends who grew up with musician parents got the hell outta dodge,” he recalls with a chuckle. “They were like, ‘The last thing we wanna be is in music.’ And it’s a joke among players and music people in music, like, ‘If my kids want to play music, I’d let them but I wouldn’t wish it on ‘em,’ because it is a gamble…folks get their dreams made and their dreams broken every day.”
His previous album, 2022’s The Hometown Kid, embodied Lee’s own relentless tugs of both adventure and familiar comforts. He spent a year attending Nashville’s Belmont University, bartending on the side and performing at writers rounds at Bobby’s Idle Hour Tavern, the Listening Room and Whiskey Jam. He then decamped to Indiana University to study literature and journalism, before returning to Music City to continue pursuing his craft.
But where scores of singer-songwriters spend days cranking out radio-friendly songs and seeking major label country deals, and nights networking at any number of guitar pulls and industry events, Lee draws more from cult favorite touchstones such as John Prine and Jason Isbell. Lee is the sole writer on many of his songs, and like his musical heroes, he excels in excavating from everyday moments the raw materials from which he crafts his vivid musical narratives. Drink the River showcases Lee as a troubadour filling his songs with keen observations gleaned from other people’s stories.
The album’s folk-country, acoustic flavor takes cues from Old Crow Medicine Show’s first record, while songs like “Property Line” tip the hat to Prine’s clear-eyed, light-hearted style. “It’s a bit of how John [Prine] was always a master at infusing humor in his songs. A little bit of humor goes a long way,” Lee says.
“Even Jesus Got the Blues,” which Lee began writing nearly four years ago, revels in an early SteelDrivers, blues-meets-bluegrass feel, and was inspired by a friend who succumbed to addiction. The two-year-old “Lidocaine” stems from an Uber ride, as a driver confided in Lee his story of being diagnosed with dementia at 40 years old. He also revisits “Eveline,” from his 2019 debut project farmland.
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Meanwhile, the lyrics and instrumentation of album closer “Property Line” evoke the feel of the popular series Yellowstone; the song is an ode to Lee’s girlfriend’s father Jason, who owns a large plot of land in Alabama.
“I started hanging out down there and what I quickly realized is I may be from the South, but those guys are country,” he says with a laugh. “I’ve learned a lot from them and I really admire their sensibilities and the way they look at the world.”
Lee and his manager, Alex Torrez, founded the indie label Torrez Music Group, under which Lee has issued three albums (with Drink the River to be his fourth) in approximately as many years, including his breakthrough, 2020 roots-rock project Honky Tonk Hell, and last year’s The Hometown Kid. He’s kept a marathon runner’s pace — steady and relentless — as he balances studio time and writing with ever-more prominent performance slots, having shared stages with artists including Isbell, American Aquarium and Molly Tuttle. To date, Lee’s songs have registered 10.5 million official U.S. on-demand streams, according to Luminate.
He is also slated to perform during the Americana Music Association’s annual AMERICANAFEST in September, and was recently added to Tidal’s “Tidal Rising” new artist program, which also includes Sunny War, Kara Jackson and Kassa Overall.
“We’ve been in a double-down mentality for the past few years,” he says. “You get a little momentum, and you don’t want to lose it for a second. As a small label, we work within our means and try to roll most of our revenue from merch and streaming right back into the label in the next project.”
While many of his Nashville counterparts dream of selling out stadiums and dozens of No. 1 hits, Lee’s immediate goals are more economical. “That’s the basic dream for so many artists and writers, just getting to the point where it’s sustainable. Some of my favorite songwriters are those that play the Texas circuit. They make it work, they aren’t living in mansions, but they’ve got a roof over their heads, they keep their businesses alive and their families fed by playing music. We’re just trying to make records, tour, and not go bankrupt. We’re just out here doing the work and hopefully, the work will speak for itself.”
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Bud Light is launching its inaugural Bud Light Backyard Tour summer concert series, featuring headliners OneRepublic, Midland, Dashboard Confessional and Bush. The four-city tour, for fans 21 and older, launches in Nashville on Aug. 10 with headliner OneRepublic and opening act Lindsay Ell.
Country trio Midland will headline a concert in Oklahoma City, Okla., on Aug. 15; followed by Dashboard Confessional in St. Louis, Mo., on Aug. 17; and Bush on Aug. 29 in Charlottesville, Va. Dee Jay Silver will serve as the DJ for the dates in St. Louis, Oklahoma City and Charlottesville. Tyler Braden is also set as an opener on the concert series.
According to Todd Allen, Bud Light’s vp of marketing, the yet-to-be announced venues will range in capacity from 1,000 to 3,000. Tickets are free, and fans can enter to win tickets at budlightbackyard.com.
“We really want to deliver an intimate vibe, and deliver that backyard experience where you’re hanging out with your friends, your family, listening to your favorite artists. So we want try to bring these artists closer to fans through these shows,” Allen tells Billboard.
Allen also notes Bud Light’s history in the music space, referencing the brand’s previous Bud Light Dive Bar tours with artists including Post Malone in 2019, and Bud Light Sessions over the years with artists such as Brad Paisley, Jason DeRulo, Jack Harlow and Teddy Swims.
The tour news comes as Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, has seen sales decline following backlash against the Bud Light brand after transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a video to Instagram on April 1 showing a customized, commemorative Bud Light can featuring Mulvaney’s face sent to her by the company. Artists including Kid Rock, John Rich and Ted Nugent then called for a boycott of the brand or pledged to stop stocking it at their bars and backstage. As a result of the boycott, Bud Light fell from its position as the top-selling beer in America in June.
With the upcoming summer shows featuring performances from country music artists including Midland, Ell and Braden, Allen tells Billboard of Bud Light’s relationship with the country music audience, “First and foremost, we care deeply about all of our customers. I’ve been across this country, visiting with consumers, visiting with our wholesalers, visiting with partners. Consistently, the No. 1 thing people tell me about is the love and passion they have for this brand, and that what they want and expect from Bud Light is to get back to what we do best, and that’s being the beer of easy enjoyment, and that means bringing family and friends together over live music.
“That’s why we’re getting back to what we’re doing with the Bud Light Backyard Tour,” Allen adds, “and we’re going to do that with our country music fans, the same thing we’ve been doing for the past 40 years.”
Billboard reached out to teams for Midland and Ell for additional comments regarding the upcoming shows and the controversy that has surrounded the Bud Light brand. In a statement to Billboard, Ell said, “As an artist who always wants to use my voice for good, I have spent the past few years learning as much as I can about marginalized communities and how we, as humans, can work together to lift each other up. When deciding who to work with or what brands to partner with, I tend to lean into partnerships that encourage larger conversations surrounding the power of considering humanity before all else, including gender or race. Because of that, I recognize that we, as a nation, are in a phase of learning and that we’re inevitably not going to get it right every time. But I also know that doesn’t mean we should stop trying to teach ourselves how to love others better. I am looking forward to the Bud Light Backyard Tour in Nashville and hope that together, OneRepublic and I will bring both music and important conversation to fans there.”
Midland said via a press release, “We’re looking forward to showing up and rocking out for our fans at the Bud Light Backyard Tour. We can’t wait to perform for fans in Oklahoma City, reminding everyone that live music is even better when we can kick back in the backyard with an ice cold beer and all of our friends.”
Playboi Carti announced his upcoming fall and winter Antagonist Tour on Wednesday (July 12), which his Opium label signees Ken Carson, Destroy Lonely and Homixide Gang will be joining. The tour marks their first time hitting the road as an Opium collective. The Antagonist Tour also marks Carti’s first headlining tour since 2021’s Narcissist Tour, […]