Touring
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While rehearsing for its 2013 Las Vegas residency, Mötley Crüe instructed Nicolai Sabottka, its new pyrotechnics specialist, to set the venue on fire — walls, ceiling, floor, everything. But when flames exploded behind Tommy Lee’s head, the drummer, believing he was on fire, freaked out and ran off. Everyone laughed. Lee returned and demanded of Sabottka: “What the f–k is going on here?” To which an unfazed Sabottka replied: “We tried to warn you.”
Sabottka, CEO of Berlin-based FFP Spezialeffekte und Veranstaltungslogistik (which translates to “Special Effects and Event Logistics”), has spent the past 26 years mastering the art of blowing stuff up at concerts while ensuring everybody remains safe. Although he earned a degree in pyrotechnics at a Dresden school specializing in explosives technology, his true studies came from working with Rammstein, the electro-metal band known for towering flames and violent explosions.
He joined Rammstein’s crew in 1997 as a tour manager, monitoring rhythm guitarist Paul Landers. “He would just put gasoline onstage and set it on fire,” Sabottka recalls. “We thought, ‘That’s not a good idea.’ ” Over time, Sabottka learned to be safer and more intentional, innovating flamethrowers attached to guitars and face masks, as well as an exploding backpack for frontman Till Lindemann. One of his proudest inventions was to shoot flames up the delay towers used to spread audio through a stadium.
“I can text [Sabottka] and go, ‘I have this idea to have a wrecking ball, and it hits a car and the car explodes,’” says Robert Long, Mötley Crüe’s production manager. “And 10 minutes later, I’ll get a video of him experimenting with something.”
Over the years, beginning with work for British pop star Robbie Williams, Sabottka and FFP have expanded beyond the Rammstein Universe, working not only with reliably pyro-friendly hard-rock bands like Mötley Crüe and KISS but Lady Gaga and, on the Brit Awards over the years, Taylor Swift and Sam Smith. And while rock concerts have set off explosions since the late ’60s, Sabottka and FFP are evolving the look, feel, sound and even smell of stadium concerts.
“Rammstein brought a whole other level to what you can do from a pyro standpoint,” Long says. “It changed the face of the industry more than most people would admit, because every company is doing it now.”
Sabottka, 57, started working with Rammstein in 1997 as a tour manager, referred by his brother, Scumeck, a German promoter. Nicolai declined, believing the press he’d read that Rammstein had fascistic tendencies. But he met with the band in an East Berlin cafe and, as he says in an email, “found out there were no Nazis but a pretty intense bunch.” The Berlin band was on the brink of international success, scoring an MTV hit with its anthem “Du Hast.”
He accepted the job. Sharing a bus with band and crew, Sabottka and frontman Till Lindemann bonded on long European trips. They’d “sit and drink and talk sh-t: ‘Oh, we could do this and we could do that,’” he recalls.
Sabottka earned the band’s respect, in part because he sweet-talked European fire officials into approving extreme effects. “He has the right logistics and permits to make it happen at all,” Landers says, calling from a Cape Town wind-surfing vacation. “He came up with flames at a height I’d never seen before. I knew, ‘OK, he is our guy.’ The small, student-looking guy [is] now a serious, professional deadly weapon. He’s a big, big part of our show.”
Sabottka won’t leak details about the effects for Rammstein’s upcoming European stadium tour, opening May 20 in Vilnius, Lithuania, but says the pyro will be “more impressive.” He’ll likely employ a favorite tool, lycopodium, a yellowish powder that creates giant flames that are relatively easy to control.
His pyro obsession began when he was a kid, hunting mice with friends in an open field near his home in Germany where he “managed to set the entire area on fire,” he says. Finding World War II ammunition in canals near his house, he drilled into it in his bedroom, with explosive results. Later, his father found black, ashy residue on his car, because Sabottka had tried to make napalm bombs out of a plastic bag to drip onto his toy soldiers. Police occasionally escorted 16-year-old Nicolai home from school. “I launched the largest smoke bomb in school, and everyone knew it was me, but they couldn’t prove it,” he recalls.
When Rammstein took a break from touring in the early 2000s, Sabottka formed FFP, and worked with other artists, beginning with British pop star Robbie Williams, who requested 100-foot-tall flames and a crucifix catching fire in a stained-glass window. “Most people [in the pyro business] can do what Nicolai can do. What they can’t do is talk the fire marshal into accepting it,” says Wob Roberts, production manager for Williams, as well as for Smith’s recent Brit Awards performance. “He’s really calm. Even when he raves about something, he barely raises his voice.”
Today, FFP has 70 employees worldwide across the company’s offices in Berlin, Los Angeles and London. Using artists’ own ideas as a guide, Sabottka and his staff are constantly tinkering. “They know how to take things right up to the limit,” says LeRoy Bennett, production designer for the Chromatica Ball Tour. “They’re super safety-conscious, but they’ll do things that are pretty intense.”
Rammstein pays attention to Sabottka’s excursions into pop and classic rock. “Sometimes I see a TV show, some band is playing, Mötley Crüe, and I see big flames and I say, ‘Wow, I didn’t know they had such big flames,’” Landers says. “Then it turns out Nicolai did the show.”
In a zoom call from his Los Angeles office, the bearded and bespectacled Sabottka laughs off his incendiary history. “I just like to set things on fire,” he says. “It’s surprising I’m still alive.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the March 11, 2023, issue of Billboard.
At some point, music fans of a certain age inevitably ask the same question: why do shows have to start so late? Maybe you’re too cool to admit it, but Oscar-nominee Jamie Lee Curtis isn’t. The 64-year-old acting legend recently told The Hollywood Reporter on the Independent Spirit Awards red carpet and the Today show that as an early riser, she’s annoyed that there are no rock show matinees.
“I would love to go see Coldplay. I would love it,” she said. “The problem is, I’m not going to see Coldplay if they start their show at 9 and there’s an opening act. I want to hear Coldplay at 1 p.m.” Coldplay, on break from their mega Music of the Spheres world tour — which, for the record, has them taking the stage around 9 p.m. most nights — could not be reached for comment at press time.
The Halloween star has a point, though. So, since she asked, Billboard reached out to some prominent venue owners and promoters to ask them why JLC can’t sing a “Hymn For the Weekend” and still be home in time for the evening news.
“Just like when Jamie Lee Curtis’ movies play in theaters, they need to sell popcorn. Most of our margin is on drinks,” says Peter Shapiro, owner of Relix magazine, as well as the Brooklyn Bowl venues in New York, Las Vegas and Nashville and a number of other clubs. “It’s hard to sell drinks at 1 p.m.”
Shapiro says with the majority of ticket revenue and service fees going to the band (and ticketing agencies), the headliners take home most of the night’s haul, leaving the venue to live off ancillary revenue, most of which comes from the bar.
And while drinks play a huge part in keeping the lights on, Shapiro says there is another crucial element keeping shows after dark: mystique. “You can see a show in the afternoon, but at the end of the arc of the day it works going to a show in darkness,” he says. “The lights, being indoors… that’s all part of the impact. The lighting just doesn’t work as well at 1 p.m.”
After all, when Curtis is on set, she needs proper lighting to make a scene pop, just like headliners need their strobes and lasers to help amp up that going-out energy. “It’s the arc of the day, the moon… rock n’ roll lives at night. It’s in the DNA of rock n’ roll,” says Shapiro.
In a twist that might make JLC feel Everything Everywhere All At Once, however, that might slowly be changing, according Sound Talent Group agent John Pantle. As artists and their teams increasingly dive into the data behind their audience’s preferences, he says STG has found that some of his clients — and their fans — are into daytime gigs.
“Those shows are easier and cheaper to put together and through the use of metrics and social data, artists are better understanding the psychographics of their fanbases and tailoring performances to where those audiences are,” he says. As an example, he pointed to a recent sold-out show at L.A.’s Echoplex by Japanese metal band Nemophila, at which the headliner promptly started at 8 p.m.
“Younger audiences and teen audiences like that and we do matinee shows as well as headliner shows,” he says. “I have no problem doing an afternoon show because that proves artists are getting smarter about understanding their fanbase,” he says, adding, “it’s not all just working Joes who get off at 7 p.m.”
One of the few upsides of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Pantle, is that there is a greater understanding of the work-from-home atmosphere and how we’ve all gotten a better handle on how we want to spend our time playing. “The days of concerts being solely for an all-night experience and leaving at 1:30 in the morning are over,” he says, noting that by wrapping before 11 or midnight, the bands and their crews can load-out earlier and get on the road at a decent hour.
He’s seen the results by booking a number of earlier gigs for acts such as Japanese rockers Radwimps, virtual pop star Hatsune Miku and singer-songwriter Julieta Venegas. “I know the Hatsune Miku crowd, I know their demos, so not all shows are gonna be starting at 11 p.m. and not all shows are gonna be at 1 p.m. But data reflects audience. And if artist’s actions don’t reflect audience, artists will lose audience.”
That’s all fine and good for shows that might appeal to a younger, less hard-drinking crowd, but what about the midnight marauding EDM audience, who are used to, and expect, the party to go all night long?
Sorry, that’s changing too, according to veteran dance promoter James “Disco” Donnie Estopinal of Disco Donnie Presents. “When I first started doing shows in the ’90s they used to go until 8 a.m. and you can imagine how that looked… it was like The Walking Dead before that show even existed.” Lately, the DDP boss has slowly been moving up the end time of some of his festivals and events to midnight, or even 10 p.m., “depending on what I can get away with.”
Estopinal says so far he hasn’t seen any effect on attendance numbers, and, like Pantle, he also loves getting his team and venue staff home earlier. “Most people know you probably can’t get a venue in the middle of a city that will let you go until 2 a.m.,” he says, noting that there are, of course, exceptions such as Eric Prydz, whose legendarily trippy 3D hologram images just won’t fly at lunchtime.
He also says there is a younger audience of EDM fans who grew up going to Las Vegas daytime pool parties — or as his college-age son has informed him, “dartys” — that are a win-win for artists and crews used to breaking gear down when the sun comes up; the up-charge on drinks at such Vegas events doesn’t hurt the house’s bottom line, either. “I was just in New Orleans for Mardi Gras where we did two shows and I took a nap before both shows so I could make it until 4 a.m. and people made fun of me,” he jokes. “But I told them ‘I’m not gonna make it unless I get that nap.’”
Shapiro is already prepping the next generation of hard-dartyers for their turn with his long-running series called “Rock and Roll Playhouse.” The series has brought the music of Prince, Queen, The Beatles and Taylor Swift to more than two dozen venues around the country for morning and early afternoon shows at 500-1,500-capacity rooms that would otherwise be idle at that time.
“The weekend afternoon shows are a nice augmentation to Saturday night shows and it’s a good intro to cue the next generation into rock n’ roll,” Shapiro says. “But it’s an addition. It can never replace the DNA [of nighttime shows]… people won’t come at 3 and drink a bunch of beers, and that’s the money that powers the venues and the way venues can pay artists more money.”
So, take heart Jamie Lee — you might be getting your darty wish after all.
When Suga announced his Agust D tour in February, Japan was notably the only country on the trek whose dates were labeled “to be updated.” Now, BTS fans in the island country have a chance to catch the rapper on his global trek, as the BTS official fan club announced on Friday (March 10) how fans in the country can secure tickets.
Suga will perform a series of three dates — June 2-4 — at the Pia Arena MM in Kanagawa. Fans who secure tickets through the BTS Japan official fan club presale advance will pay 15,400 yen including tax ($114.33 USD), while non advance tickets will cost 16,500 yen including tax ($122.50 USD). VIP seats for the Japan dates will cost 26,400 yen ($195.99 USD).
A fan club lottery reception will be held on March 16 at 1 p.m. Japan standard time (11 p.m. ET March 15) through March 23 11:59 p.m. Japan standard time (10 a.m. ET). Tickets are not on a first-come, first-served basis; results of the lottery will be revealed March 31 through April 4. Fans are allowed up to two tickets per member, and applying for the same performance more than once will result in disqualification from the lottery.
See the full list of Suga’s Agust D tour dates, including Japan, below.
April 26 — Belmont Park, NY @ UBS Arena
April 27 — Belmont Park, NY @ UBS Arena
April 29 — Newark, N.J. @ Prudential Center
May 3 — Rosemont, IL @ Allstate Arena
May 5 — Rosemont, IL @ Allstate Arena
May 6 — Rosemont, IL @ Allstate Arena
May 10 — Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum
May 11 — Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum
May 14 — Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum
May 16 — Oakland, CA @ Oakland Arena
May 17 — Oakland, CA @ Oakland Arena
May 26 — Jakarta, ID @ Indonesia Convention Exhibition Hall 5-6
May 27 — Jakarta, Indonesia @ Indonesia Convention Exhibition Hall 5-6
May 28 — Jakarta, Indonesia @ Indonesia Convention Exhibition Hall 5-6
June 2-4 — Kanagawa, Japan @ Pia Arena MM
June 10 — Bangkok, Thailand @ Impact Arena
June 11 — Bangkok, Thailand @ Impact Arena
June 17 — Singapore, SG @ Singapore Indoor Stadium
June 18 — Singapore, SG @ Singapore Indoor Stadium
June 24– Seoul, KR @ Jamsil Indoor Stadium
June 25 — Seoul, KR @ Jamsil Indoor Stadium
Live Nation president/CFO Joe Berchtold might have been the sole defender of his company’s 2010 merger with Ticketmaster at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January, but behind the scenes, he wasn’t alone.
Advising Berchtold and managing key relationships on Capitol Hill is a small army of over 30 lobbyists, deployed to defend the company from growing criticism by senators like Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. Klobuchar, who serves as the chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights, has made repeated calls to the Department of Justice to investigate Ticketmaster and break up the company if any wrongdoing is uncovered during a DOJ review of the consent decree it created to foster competition in ticketing. That review is expected to wrap up soon.
While Live Nation’s lobbying spending has been historically low for a company of its size and domi- nance, that’s changing. Last year, the company spent nearly five times as much on lobbying as it has in the past, according to data from Open Secrets, which uses public records to track such spending. From 2012 to 2018, Live Nation spent an average of $225,000 annually to lobby federal officials. In 2022, its annual lobbying expenses had increased to $1.1 million.
The company’s agendas include defending criticism regarding Ticketmaster’s handling of the Swift presale last November.
One of those insiders is Seth Bloom, a former longtime general counsel for the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee and advisory board member for the American Antitrust Institute. Another is Jonathan Becker, a former chief of staff and chief counsel to Klobuchar who now serves as a partner at law firm Mayer Brown and represented a dozen big-name clients in 2022, including Meta, Microsoft and Phillip Morris.
Live Nation now spends significantly more than its competitors in the touring sector. Last year, enter- tainment conglomerate AEG spent $140,000 on federal lobbying, according to Open Secrets, while secondary-market ticketing competitor SeatGeek spent $170,000 and Viagogo, the British company that bought StubHub in 2020, spent $140,000. Live Nation partner company Oak View Group spent $570,000 on lobbying, while Spotify, which has rolled out a new ticketing offering for concert promoters and is hoping to broaden its reach within the live space, spent $710,000.
Live Nation could spend even more this year as it ramps up efforts to exit the consent decree once the five year extension ends in 2024. The company now has more than seven lobbying firms working for it on issues that include ticketing, event safety and Federal Aviation Administration rules on the use of drones at events.
After weeks of strategizing how to salvage Ticketmaster’s reputation in the wake of last November’s Taylor Swift presale debacle and Live Nation president/CFO Joe Berchtold’s January grilling by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the ticketing giant’s parent company has settled on an approach that will ramp up lobbying to hit back at scalpers while educating consumers about ticketing fees.
Despite breaking two company records with the Nov. 15 The Eras Tour presale — the most tickets ever sold in a single day (2.4 million) and, according to the company, keeping 95% of those tickets off secondary sites like StubHub and SeatGeek — Ticketmaster found itself cast as the villain and Live Nation as a monopoly after a cyberattack disrupted over 100,000 transactions.
The outcry has led to a mixture of disbelief and self-reflection at Live Nation’s global headquarters in Beverly Hills, Calif. “The company enables music fans to connect with the world’s greatest artists through concerts and events that often become the cornerstone moments of people’s lives,” says a Live Nation executive who was not authorized to speak on the record. “Why the fuck do people hate us so much?”
Although the controversy over the Swift presale had to do with ticket availability rather than price — the prime complaint of Ticketmaster’s July 2022 Verified Fan sale of tickets to Bruce Springsteen’s 2023 tour — the executive says that Live Nation has determined that redeeming itself with consumers “starts with the fees,” which can add over 30% to the final price of a concert ticket.
“We’ve got to now go out and do a much better job so policymakers and consumers understand how the business operates,” Live Nation president/CEO Michael Rapino said during the company’s most recent investor call. “We’ve historically not had a big incentive to shout out loud that venues are charging high service fees or artist costs are expensive. But I think now [that] education is paramount.”
Ticketmaster’s main source of revenue comes from the fees it charges to process ticket transactions. A ticket’s face value goes to the artist, while the ticketing giant shares the fees it collects with the venues that contract for its services.
Ticketmaster typically keeps $2 to $5 per ticket for processing costs and a small portion of the fees it collects to recoup any loans, advances or bonuses it may have paid the venue to win its ticketing contract. Contracts for large venues can be worth millions of dollars. The balance of the fees collected goes to the venue, which uses the money to cover the cost of the show.
Traditionally, promoters book venues for artists, pay rent to use the space and hire its staff. What’s left over as profit is divvied up with the act, which typically receives 80% to 85% of that amount.
But as competition to book top-shelf headline talent has increased over the last decade, venues have reduced the rent they charge and promoters have agreed to take a smaller percentage of base ticket sales — sometimes as little as 5%.
As Rapino said on the investor call: “The artist takes most of that ticket fee base. So the way that the venue, the promoter or the ticketing company [earns its] revenue fees is through that extra fee.”
The increasing costs of concert production, which are borne by the promoter, have also wid- ened the gap between a ticket’s face value and the final amount charged after fees, which can induce sticker shock when two $100 tickets can end up costing $265. While it has been very profitable for Ticketmaster to cover more of a concert’s costs through these fees, it has helped turn ticket buyers against the company.
Ticketmaster executives are hoping a simple fix can solve the problem — showing the total cost of a ticket, face value plus fees, at the be- ginning of the checkout process. That method is already used in New York, where it is mandated by state law.
“We all want to know what is the true cost to see the show when we start shopping,” Rapino said on the call. “We wish that would be mandated tomorrow across the board [because] that would relieve a lot of the stress [and] the consumer’s perception that there’s this magical extra fee added on” that isn’t part of the overall show cost.
Ticketmaster and other ticketing companies have long debated whether to abandon what’s known as a “drip pricing” model but haven’t pulled the trigger because studies show that fans are more likely to make a purchase if the fees that are tacked onto the face value of a ticket don’t appear until checkout. Secondary-market ticketing companies have also adopted the practice, advertising tickets at prices below those sold on the primary market, then hitting consumers with a 35% to 45% markup at checkout.
In a move more closely tied to the Swift situation, Ticketmaster has also decided to target scalpers through legislation and proposed legislation called the FAIR Ticketing Act that would outlaw drip pricing and grant artists the ability to ban scalper websites from reselling their tour tickets. Support for the initiative includes all four major talent agencies, Universal Music Group and a number of management companies.
Pro-ticket scalping groups have proposed their own counter-legislation, effectively banning Ticketmaster from using its proprietary technology to stop scalpers. Neither bill has a congressional sponsor in either chamber of Congress, however, and unless that happens, neither has any chance of passing.
Ticketmaster does appear to have some serious muscle in its corner when it comes to the scalp- ing issue. In a February interview with Billboard, Gregg Perloff, founder and CEO of independent promoter Another Planet Entertainment, which produces San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival, said: “My question for [Congress] is, ‘Why are you picking on Ticketmaster and Live Nation when you should be outlawing brokers?’ They are the ones who screw up everything. Does every promoter take a few tickets? Does every venue have a few tickets? … Sure. But it’s the scalpers that make it so no one can get a decent seat except the rich. The Senate didn’t do the research they should have done before they started pontificating and acting like they knew what they were talking about.”
In addition, Perloff suggested that touring artists were partially responsible because they “really want to go on sale for the whole tour at once because they can advertise the whole tour at once and make a bigger splash.” Regarding Swift’s tour, he said, “There’s no system in the world — and this is where I have to defend Ticketmaster — that could have handled the onslaught.”
Also in February, at the Pollstar Live conference in Los Angeles, music mogul Irving Azoff and Madison Square Garden Entertainment chairman James Dolan took on pro-scalping journalist-podcaster Eric Fuller when he argued that scalping made tickets cheaper, citing discredited media reports of bargain bin-priced tickets available for Springsteen’s North American tour dates.
“It’s about a half-hour conversation, but you’re dead wrong,” Azoff told Fuller, who also operates a consulting business in ticketing.
“You got to take your hat off to this paid lobbying group that’s working for the scalpers,” Dolan chimed in. “These guys are pretty good. Maybe we should hire them.” In response, Fuller says Dolan’s comments are “grossly inaccurate.”
More than 20 live music organizations are calling on lawmakers to reform the ticketing space and crack-down on scalping,.
Today (March 8), a coalition of talent agencies, management companies, labels and promoters have joined Live Nation and Ticketmaster in support of the Fans & Artists Insisting on Reforms — or FAIR Ticketing Reforms, for short. Signatories include Universal Music Group, Red Light Management, all four major music talent agencies (CAA, UTA, Wasserman and WME) and groups like Black Music Action Coalition in calling on Congress to “ensure a fair ticketing experience for live music fans” by handing more control to the creators.
The letter, however, is missing a few key names including rival promoter AEG and its ticketing arm AXS as any independent US promoters like Another Planet Entertainment, Jam or Outback Presents. The letter is a followup to proposed legislation last month and appeals appeals to policymakers for a handful of “common sense” improvements to the ticketing space, drafted into five principles, which, combined, would “protect fans, artists and the vitality of the live entertainment industry.”
They include giving artists the right to decide how their tickets can be sold, transferred and resold; making “speculative” ticket selling and other “deceptive practices” illegal; expanding and creating stricter enforcement of the 2016 BOTS Act; policing and fining resale sites that serve as a safe haven for scalpers and “knowingly sell tickets that are illegally acquired”; and mandating all-in pricing across all ticketing marketplaces nationally, so that concert-goers know the full out-of-pocket cost of a ticket plus fees right upfront.
“Opponents to these common sense reforms have an agenda to continue to keep tickets flowing directly to both scalpers and the secondary market.” reads a statement in which FAIR Ticketing Reforms is announced.
“Scalpers are fighting hard for unlimited resale – and, unfortunately, they are winning, as there are 12 states where these laws are already in effect or going to a vote for passage soon,” the message continues, noting that through scalper lobbyists, and clever branding, ticket touts are “ultimately harming fans”.
The campaign is a national one, but is sure to catch the attention of live music industries around the world which have long grappled with organized scalpers.
FAIR Ticketing launches as ticketing faces extraordinary scrutiny in the United States. Some of that heat has come from Ticketmaster’s record-busting presale for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, during which 2.4 million tickets were sold in a single day. The Swift Eras presale was spoiled by a cyberattack, which disrupted over 100,000 transactions, and resulted in fingers pointed (and lawsuits targeted) at Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
Following that debacle, Live Nation and its sister company decided on a strategy to hit-back at scalpers while educating consumers about how fees are assessed. Through that, Ticketmaster targeted scalpers through legislation and drafted a bill, the FAIR Ticketing Act, that would outlaw drip pricing and grant artists the ability to ban scalper websites from reselling their tickets.
FAIR Ticketing, an extension of that mission, is “not about locking down resale to any one ticketing site, it’s about letting artists set the terms on which their tickets are sold,” reads the official launch statement.
“If all resellers would play by the rules of the content owners, the problem would be solved, and that’s what FAIR reforms aim to make happen.”
Visit FairTicketing.com for more information.
Comedian Bert Kreischer is ready to go back out with a blackout, pulling himself up to the bar for round two of his party-driven Fully Loaded Comedy Festival beginning June 14 and hitting 16 ballparks and arenas across the country.
Aside from Kreischer, this year’s lineup includes Mark Normand, Shane Gillis, Tiffany Haddish, Stavros Halkias, Fortune Feimster, Dave Attell, Lewis Black, Jim Norton, Andrew Santino, Big Jay Oakerson, Jay Pharoah, Dan Soder, Chad Daniels, Ralph Barbosa, Rosebud Baker and Tammy Pescatelli.
“Fully Loaded is the best ticket you can buy in entertainment this summer – Indoors, outdoors, baseball stadiums, arenas, and The Gorge,” Kreischer says, calling the traveling festival “an absolute no-brainer for any comedy fan.”
The concept for the Fully Loaded Comedy Festival, promoted by Outback Presents, was conceived during Bert’s 2020 Hot Summer Nights Tour while performing outdoor shows at drive-in venues (a pandemic consideration). The idea was to created a traveling comedy festival inspired by the original Lollapalooza touring festival and encompass everything he loves: “comedy, the outdoors, good times, and drinking with friends to give fans an experience they will be talking about for years to come,” a release announcing the festival explains.
This year the festival will partner with the charity Comedy Gives Back, an organization founded as a safety net for comics by providing them with financial crisis relief, mental health support and more.
On March 14, he will release his highly anticipated fifth stand-up special, Razzle Dazzle on Netflix and will star in the Legendary/Sony Picture film, The Machine, premiering May 26.
“Set 23 years after the study abroad experience he chronicled in his 2016 Showtime stand-up special, the movie follows Kreischer as the Russian mafia finally catches up with him after all these years and seeks retribution for the crimes that he committed in their country as a rowdy, drunken college student,” according to a press release.
Kreischer is also a popular podcast host with several top comedy podcasts including Bertcast and Two Bears One Cave that he co-hosts with Tom Segura. He also hosts the popular YouTube cooking show, Something’s Burning.
Presale passes are now on sale with a public on-sale scheduled for March at 10 AM. FULLY LOADED COMEDY FESTIVAL 2023:06/14/23 – Forest Hills, NY – Forest Hills Stadium06/15/23 – Baltimore, MD – CFG Bank Arena06/16/23 – Moosic, PA – PNC Field06/17/23 – Gilford, NH – Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion 06/22/23 – Traverse City, MI – Turtle Creek Stadium06/23/23 – Fort Wayne, IN – Parkview Field06/24/23 – St. Louis, MO – Enterprise Center06/25/23 – Lincoln, NE – Pinnacle Bank Arena 07/06/23 – Huntsville, AL – The Orion Amphitheater07/07/23 – New Orleans, LA – Smoothie King Center07/08/23 – Memphis, TN – AutoZone Park07/09/23 – Oklahoma City, OK – Paycom Center 07/12/23 – Las Vegas, NV – T-Mobile Arena07/13/23 – Salt Lake City, UT – Vivint Arena07/14/23 – Boise, ID – ExtraMile Arena07/15/23 – George, WA – Gorge Amphitheatre
Summer is just a few months away, which means Slightly Stoopid, the veteran San Diego band celebrated for helping create the Cali reggae sound and lifestyle, is preparing to hit the road again.
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The “Collie Men” of Slightly Stoopid have linked up Sublime with Rome for the Summertime 2023 tour, produced by Live Nation and slated to kick off in July. Joining the two bands are special guests Atmosphere and The Movement.
For Slightly Stoopid, the pairing with Sublime with Rome represents a return to the band’s early roots, when frontmen Miles Doughty and Kyle McDonald were teenagers living in San Diego’s Ocean Beach neighborhood. As the legend goes, Bradley Nowell (Sublime’s original frontman) was staying at Doughty’s house trying to quit drugs when he heard some noise coming from the garage. Nowell stuck his head in, saw Doughty and McDonald rehearsing and famously asked, “You guys got a band?
Nowell signed Slightly Stoopid to his indie label imprint Skunk Records while the band members were still in high school and produced and released their debut studio album Slightly $toopid in 1996. Nowell appeared on the hidden track “Prophet,” now a staple in the Slightly Stoopid live repertoire more than 25 years after it was released.
Nowell passed away later that year from a reported drug overdose, devastating his young protégés and music fans around the world, many of whom would not discover Sublime until after his passing. In 2010, Sublime with Rome was formed by Rome Ramirez and Eric Wilson in an effort to carry on the musical tradition of Nowell.
“We couldn’t be more excited for the Summertime 2023 tour,” said Doughty in a statement. “We haven’t toured with Sublime since the early years of Stoopid and we are really excited to be back with our brothers on what we like to call the ultimate summer band camp. We’re stoked to debut some new songs and play new venues and cities we haven’t hit for a while. And most importantly we can’t wait to be playing music for all of you this summer…between the on-stage collabs and the backstage hangs it’s gonna be insane! The Stoopidheads are what fuels Slightly Stoopid. Should be an epic summer of madness!!!”
Fans can gain first access to the artist presale starting today at SlightlyStoopid.com/tour. Local presales begin Thursday (Mar. 9) at 10 a.m. local time and the general on-sale will take place Friday (Mar. 10) at 10 a.m. local time.
The Summertime 2023 tour kicks off at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn, Wash. on July 6, followed by stops at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, Calif.; Germania Insurance Amphitheater in Austin; Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island in Chicago; Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek in Raleigh, N.C.; Merriweather Post Pavilion in Colombia, Md.; and iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, Fla., where the tour wraps Sept. 3.
Backed by legions of supporters known as Stoopidheads, Slightly Stoopid has built a mini-empire with their Stoopid Records indie label, annual Closer to the Sun destination music festival in Mexico, Stoopid Strains cannabis line and Tangie Summer Haze lager, a new beer collaboration with Buzz Rock Breweries in Southern California.
Slightly Stoopid and Sublime with Rome Summer Traditions 2023 tour dates:
Jul 06 – Auburn, WA – White River AmphitheatreJul 07 – Bend, OR – Hayden Homes AmphitheaterJul 08 – Nampa, ID – Ford Idaho CenterJul 09 – West Valley City, UT – USANA AmphitheatreJul 14 – Mountain View, CA – Shoreline AmphitheatreJul 15 – Irvine, CA – FivePoint Amphitheatre #Jul 16 – San Diego, CA – Petco ParkJul 21 – The Woodlands, TX – The Cynthia Woods Mitchell PavilionJul 22 – Austin, TX – Germania Insurance AmphitheaterJul 23 – Irving, TX – The Pavilion at Toyota Music FactoryJul 27 – Somerset, WI – Somerset AmphitheaterJul 28 – Chicago, IL – Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly IslandJul 29 – Sterling Heights, MI – Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom HillJul 30 – Indianapolis, IN – TCU Amphitheater at White River State ParkAug 03 – North Charleston, SC – North Charleston ColiseumAug 04 – Virginia Beach, VA – Veterans United Home Loans AmphitheaterAug 05 – Raleigh, NC – Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut CreekAug 06 – Wilmington, NC – Live Oak Bank PavilionAug 17 – Holmdel, NJ – PNC Bank Arts CenterAug 18 – Columbia, MD – Merriweather Post PavilionAug 19 – Pittsburgh, PA – Forbes Avenue *Aug 20 – Camden, NJ – Freedom Mortgage PavilionAug 24 – Gilford, NH – Bank of New Hampshire PavilionAug 25 – Mansfield, MA – Xfinity CenterAug 26 – Wantagh, NY – Northwell Health at Jones Beach TheaterSep 01 – Jacksonville, FL – Daily’s PlaceSep 03 – West Palm Beach, FL – iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre
Logic is coming to a city near you. On Tuesday (March 7), the rapper announced that he will be embarking on a tour across the United States this summer in support of his recently released album, College Park.
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The College Park tour will see Logic — real name Sir Robert Bryson Hall II — performing across 23 dates. The tour will kick off on May 25 at The Sylvee in Madison, Wisc., and will make stops in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Houston, New Orleans and more before concluding the trek on June 30 at Phoenix’s Arizona Financial Theatre.
Juicy J will serve as the special guest on The College Park tour, while Logic’s BobbyBoy Records signees C Dot Castro and Travis Stacey will open all shows on the tour.
Fans looking to score tickets early can sign up for the Citi card presale, which begins on Tuesday, March 7, at 12 p.m. local time, and will conclude on Thursday, March 12, at 10 p.m. local time. General onsale for the tour commences on Friday, March 10, via livenation.com.
See Logic’s tour announcement, as well as the full list of dates, below.
Logic’s The College Park Tour dates:
May 25 — Madison, Wis. — The Sylvee
May 27 — Chicago, Ill. — Byline Bank Aragon Ballroom ^
May 28 — Detroit, Mich. — Fox Theatre
May 31 — Akron, Ohio — Akron Civic Center
June 2 — Boston, Mass. — MGM Music Hall
June 3 — Bridgeport, Ct. –Hartford Healthcare Amphitheater
June 4 — New York, N.Y. — Hammerstein Ballroom
June 7 — Philadelphia, Pa. — The Met
June 8 — Washington, DC — Echostage ^
June 10 — Charlotte, N.C. — Skyla Credit Union Amp
June 11 — Jacksonville, Fla. — Daily’s Place
June 12 — New Orleans, La. — Fillmore
June 14 — Houston, Texas — 713 Music Hall
June 15 — Austin, Texas — Moody Center
June 16 — Dallas, Texas — South Side Ballroom ^
June 19 — Denver, Colo. — Fillmore Auditorium
June 20 — Salt Lake City, Utah — Union Event Center
June 22 — Seattle, Wash. — WAMU Theater ^
June 23 — Portland, Ore. — RV Inn Resorts Amp
June 25 — San Francisco, Calif. — The Masonic
June 28 — Los Angeles, Calif. — YouTube Theater
June 29 — San Diego, Calif. — Gallagher Square at Petco Park
June 30 — Phoenix, Ariz. — Arizona Financial Theatre
^ without Juicy J
Lewis Capaldi told his fans he was gutted about postponing two European shows this week due to illness. “Zurich & Milan, I’m absolutely devastated to be typing this,” the singer wrote in a note. “As lots of you know for the past few nights of tour I’ve been really struggling with my voice, last night in Stockholm I tried my best to sing through the show even with it feeling really uncomfortable because I was desperate not to let any of you down.”
The 26-year-old star said he visited a voice specialist in Sweden who told him that he has bronchitis and that he should get at least three days vocal rest to make sure he doesn’t damage his voice and can continue touring.
“I’m so very sorry to say that means that the shows in Zurich tomorrow night and in Milan the day after will be postponed,” Capaldi continued. “I’ve already checked with the venues free days they can do as well as dates I can make it back over to play these sold out shows that I’ve been buzzing for for so long!” He announced that the Zurich show at the Hallenstadion — which was originally scheduled for Tuesday (March 7) — will take place on June 28 and the Milan show at the Mediolanum Forum — originally scheduled for Wed. (March 8) — will be pushed to May 31; original tickets for the shows will be valid at the make-up dates.
“Hate letting you all down and this is the last thing I want to be writing,” Capaldi concluded. “Going to be doing everything I can with rest and medication to be ready for Barcelona awards.”
Back on Feb. 21, Capaldi got a helping hand from fans after his Tourette’s syndrome affected him mid-song. The moment occurred as the Scottish singer was performing his No. 1 hit “Someone You Loved” for the packed crowd in Frankfurt. In fan-captured footage from the show, Capaldi appeared to be struggling with tics as he sang, “And I tend to close my eyes when it hurts sometimes/ I fall into your arms/ I’ll be safe in your sound till I come back around.”
From there, the fans picked up the song’s chorus, singing, “For now, the day bleeds into nightfall/ And you’re not here to get me through it all/ I let my guard down and then you pulled the rug/ I was getting kinda used to being someone you loved” back at him en masse.
Capaldi’s next scheduled tour date is on Friday (March 10) at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona, Spain.
See Capaldi’s post about his postponed shows below.