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I am always pretty cautious when it comes to seeing rap performances live, as sometimes acts just really do not translate well to the environment. A lot of rap artists try different things to spice up their act since standing there and rapping is not always the most exciting, but this can result in a very different feel from the original music sometimes. So coming into the show for 360 I wanted to manage my expectations and keep from getting disappointed. That ended up not being at all necessary though, as right from the start the show hit hard with bright lights and exciting noises.It was definitely not the same thing as sitting at home or in a car listening to his songs, but the different feel worked out for the better to say the least. The whole audience reacted really well to all of the theatrics and excitement, so the atmosphere was really intense and exciting from start to finish. Getting to see the full show, between the crowd and the special effects, really brought this music to a new level. The actual musical performance was great too, he let it feel personal and unique without straying too far from the original versions we all loved.

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Former Average White Band members, Hamish Stuart, Molly Duncan & Steve Ferrone are 360 Band.

Steve Ferrone played with Molly and Hamish at his induction into the Drummers Hall of Fame in 2014. That reunion led to the formation of 360 and the recording of a new studio album bringing the founder members together again.

Aft er the demise of the AWB in 1982, Steve joined Duran Duran: followed by a long spell with Eric Clapton. Steve subsequently became the drummer in Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers – where he has remained for the last 24 years! Molly has been much in demand as a session player and soloist all over Europe and has toured with the likes of Ray Charles, Buddy Guy and Eurythmics. Hamish joined Paul McCartney’s band in the late 80’s for 6 years of record-breaking world tours and 5 albums. He has since peppered his own solo career with US tours as part of Ringo’s All Starr’s – in addition to writing and touring with his own band and producing albums for an array of artists.

In early 2014 Steve was inducted into the Drummer’s Hall Of Fame in LA. Molly and Hamish flew out to join up with a handful of stellar musicians to honour their old band mate and friend. All three clicked as if no time had passed since they’d last played together and enjoyed the experience so much that they vowed to do it again when schedules allowed. July 2015 provided the perfect window of opportunity. The guys were getting ready for a handful of sell out shows at Ronnie Scott’s and Edinburgh Queen’s Hall, when the offer to record an album materialized – so they returned to the recording studio to do what they do best.

Molly and Steve each brought a song to the album and the rest is made up of a handful of songs from Hamish’s recent repertoire, plus a couple of classic covers. “Too Hip” is the final track on the album and an epic story about their friend and AWB’s original drummer: Robbie McIntosh, clocking in at seven minutes long.

360 will be performing songs from their new album (also entitled ‘360’) plus a selection of AWB classics during a series of live concerts. Molly, Steve and Hamish will be joined on stage by a host of the UK’s finest musicians (many of whom also played on the studio album) including: Steve Pearce (bass) Adam Phillips (guitar), Ross Stanley (keyboards), Andy Caine (guitar and vocals), Tom Walsh (trumpet), and newcomer Patrick Hayes (trombone).

This reunion of three highly regarded musicians who have achieved so much together and separately, has produced a landmark album showcasing how their various talents have matured.

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360 Band Concert Setlists & Tour Dates

360 band at 606 club chelsea, london, england.

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360 Band at Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival 2015

• Love Your Life
• I'm the One
• A Love of Your Own
• Queen of My Soul
• Soul Searching
• Goin' Home
• Everybody's Darling
• Would You Stay
• Sunny Days (Make Me Think of You)
• Digging Deeper (finale)

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• I'm the One ( 1 )

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10-piece band who've been shifting and changing lineups for some years now! Now featuring Hamish Stuart, Steve Ferrone and Malcolm 'Molly' Duncan more...

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U2 360 Tour Comes Full Circle: Band Returns to U.S. With Denver Blowout

By Steve Knopper

Steve Knopper

Fortunately, U2 was prepared for the end of the world. “Sounds like fun to me!” Bono told a crowd of 70,000 at Denver’s Invesco Field at Mile High, after breaking out, appropriately, “Until the End of the World.” The Rapture was no match for opening night on the final leg of U2 ‘s 360 Tour – with its massive, metallic, green-and-orange claw structure and tornado-shaped video cylinder suspended above the band – which returned to the U.S. Saturday after a year-long delay. Even two years after the tour’s debut, its sensory overload impact remains thrillingly undimmed, with lights everywhere, from LEDs flashing on U2’s jackets to the neon-target microphone from which Bono swung during “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” and “With Or Without You.”

The two-and-a-half-hour show was delayed gratification for the Denver crowd, which had bought tickets for the concert last summer, before Bono had emergency back surgery and had to postpone the entire last U.S. leg of U2’s tour. “Things could have been very different. I was in a lot of trouble,” he declared before “All I Want Is You.” “Through the wonders of science, I’m not just fixed – I’m better.” So is the 360 tour, which has sold 7 million tickets and grossed $700 million since it began in Europe two years ago, making it the biggest-selling tour of all time.

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Musically, the show was stripped-down, minimalist U2. No machine could match the energy of Bono, dressed in black, who sprinted the elaborate maze of catwalks and rotating bridges, delivering Amnesty International speeches and cracking jokes about Judgment Day. He modulated his voice from hymnlike moaning (especially soulful on “Miss Sarajevo,” an obscurity from 1995’s Passengers album, and the Frank Sinatra tribute “Stay (Faraway, So Close!)”) to sharp, anthemic vocals (“Beautiful Day,” “Vertigo,” “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and the opening “Even Better Than the Real Thing”).

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The Edge wordlessly provided texture, from his classic ringing melodies in “Where the Streets Have No Name” and “Pride (In the Name of Love)” and the slide solo on “Magnificent” to the soulful wah-wah licks on a downtempo version of “Mysterious Ways” and Pete Townshend-ish power chords on a soaring “Beautiful Day.” Bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr., both in white, shifted easily from the electro-bombast of “Zooropa” to the more subtle rhythms of the closing “Moment of Surrender.”

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The show opened with an intense, amped sequence: “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” “I Will Follow” and “Get On Your Boots” (one of four songs from 2009’s No Line On the Horizon ). A lean, tough “Vertigo” led into a reworked, bongo-spiced mash-up of “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” and “Discotheque.” “Sunday Bloody Sunday” – immortalized not far from Denver on 1983’s Live at Red Rocks – was followed by “Scarlet,” a deep track from 1981’s October .

During his end-of-the-world spiel, Bono wryly suggested that it would be the Edge, not himself, Mullen or Clayton, who would ascend to the heavens during the rapture. “But then I’d be here with you,” he said. Luckily for the rest of us, Edge decided to stick around.

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360 – Regional Tour - Part 1

November 2023.

360 Returns to Regional Australia for his First regional Tour in 5 Years

Back and more potent than ever, beloved Australian rapper 360  is set to bring his electrifying stage presence and extensive touring chops to regional Australia this November for Part 1 of his 12 date Back To Life regional tour, with special guest Drest .

Following the fully sold out first official run of shows in just under six years in June, 360’s extensive upcoming tour will kick off on Friday November 3 at Village Green Hotel in Mulgrave, before journeying through regional Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales and the ACT, with more dates to be announced for Part 2.

- Pre-register now to access pre-sale tickets from 9am AEST on Monday August 28.

- Tickets go on-sale to the general public at 10am AEST on Tuesday August 29.

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U2’s ‘360’ Tour Gross: $736,137,344!

Tomorrow night in New Brunswick, U2 will perform the 110th and final show of its monster "360" tour, wrapping up not only epic technological and musical achievements, but also going into the history…

By Ray Waddell

Ray Waddell

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Tomorrow night in Moncton, N.B., U2 will perform the 110th and final show of its monster 360 tour, wrapping up not only epic technological and musical achievements, but also going into the history books as the biggest tour ever.

When the final numbers are tallied, U2 360 will record a gross of $736,137,344 and total attendance of 7,268,430, Billboard.com/biz has learned, both the highest tour tallies ever reported to Billboard. U2 broke the Rolling Stones’ previous gross record of $558 million on April 10 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, as first reported on Billboard.biz on April 8 .

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The success of 360 is a testament not only to the enduring global appeal of the band, but also its ground-breaking-and risky-360-degree production, which increased the capacities of stadiums by as much as 25%. Details of the tour were first revealed on Billboard.com in March of 2009, when the tour, in support of the band’s 2008 album “No Line On The Horizon,” was still operating under the working title of “Kiss The Future.” By the time it was officially announced on March 9 of that year, the tour carried the “360” title, which longtime band manager Paul McGuinness says is a reference not only to the unique production of the tour, but also a sly nod to U2’s long-term multi-rights deal with promoter Live Nation, “a little private joke to amuse myself at one point.” This was the band’s first tour under that deal, steered by long-time U2 tour producer Arthur Fogel , chairman of Live Nation Global Touring and his Toronto-based team.

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The tour began June 30, 2009, in Barcelona, Spain, and swept across Europe before landing on North American shores on Sept. 12 in Chicago. This was the first time the band had played stadiums on the continent since the PopMart tour in 1997/’98.

As popular as U2 is worldwide, launching a never-before-attempted 360 configuration that would put 7 million tickets in the marketplace in a treacherous global economy was ambitious, to say the least. “I remember when everything was first laid out, the production was conceived, and we came to the realization of what it did to the capacities,” Fogel told Billboard.com/biz backstage at the tour’s 100th stop in Nashville earlier this month. “We were in a meeting in New York, we saw the design, and talked about all the different angles. There was a moment of sitting there and everyone thinking, ‘do you think we’ll sell the tickets?’ My gut was ‘absolutely yes,’ and I remember leaving the meeting and thinking, ‘oh shit.'”

Beyond the huge financial commitment the band and producers had made in launching the massive tour (not to mention a daily nut of $750,000 on the road, according to McGuinness), the aesthetic success of the production and the staging known as “the claw,” which literally surrounds the band with fans, depends on full houses. “There’s nowhere to hide,” Fogel says. “It was definitely scary.”

But sell those tickets they did, all over the world, and Fogel says what he learned form 360 was “probably more so than any other tour, to trust my instincts.”

The launch and execution of 360 were meticulously planned for more than a year, but those best-laid plans were blown up when news came last spring that the tour’s second North American leg would have to be scrapped due to an injury and resulting back surgery for U2 front man Bono. Producers were already on the ground at what was to be the tour’s first stop on that round in Salt Lake City when the news came.

Rejiggering the tour midstream was “challenging,” says Fogel. But the team moved quickly from the initial shock to rebuilding the North American leg for a year later, and did that so expertly that they not only were able to put most fans in the exact seat they would have been had the tour gone off as planned, but also found seven more shows, including the band’s first Nashville stop in 30 years.

“It was difficult at the time, but the most amazing thing through it all was the refund rate across all the shows was only about 9%, which is ridiculous,” says Fogel. “And we resold all those tickets.”

The final North American dates are considered by those involved to be among the band’s best on the tour, and mark a triumphant return to stadiums on this continent after the last stadium run in PopMart, which struggled to sell tickets in some markets. U2 played stadiums internationally but arenas in North America on the Vertigo tour in 2005-2007 the Elevation tour of 2001.

“After PopMart, the strategy was definitely to build back up North America, under-play, create that buzz and that demand, and I think we did a great job with that,” says Fogel, who has now produced four of the top five highest-grossing tours of all time. “To go outdoors in America this time, particularly with this production, is a story in itself. This thing, apart from, obviously, the band, great musicians, great music, great songs, was about creating that buzz in the world about this production. That was the hook.”

Now that U2 360 is set to close, Fogel says the magnitude of the accomplishment, which he calls a “career highlight,” is “finally starting to sink in.”

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Home › Live Sound

U2 360 Tour Profile

SEEKING INTIMACY ON A GRAND SCALE

By By Kevin BeckaPhotos: Steve Jennings

The 170-foot-tall steel structure and stage at University of Phoenix Stadium (Glendale, Ariz.)

The U2 360° tour that recently ended its first leg in the U.S. has taken the stadium show to a new level. The sheer scope of the production is mind-boggling. It took two years to design and develop, travels on 180 trucks, employs more than 400 people — including 12 system engineer/techs — and uses an astounding amount of audio and video gear. The best thing about the show is the communication and contact between the band and the audience provided by the 170-foot-tall steel structure perched over the stage.

Originally inspired by the Theme Building at Los Angeles’ LAX airport, the four-legged “spider” incorporates all of the lighting, some of the 12 manned cameras and spots, massive speaker arrays and a huge 360-degree vertically expandable LED video screen. And as ridiculous as it sounds, once the show starts, you forget it’s there: Instead of being the elephant in the room, the structure focuses attention on the band and how they interact with the crowd, both near and far. The inner ring nearest the main stage gives more than 3,000 fans close proximity to the band, while the outer ring gives the band access to standing and seated concertgoers farther out. At different times during the show, The Edge, Bono, Adam Clayton and even drummer Larry Mullins Jr. use two moving bridges to perform between the areas and are followed by video and audio all the way.

Of course, you’d expect the audio system used for such a massive setup to be huge — and it doesn’t disappoint. The setup comprises the latest in digital tech offered for live sound and, surprisingly, some tried-and-true analog gear. The tour’s look and systems design was a collaboration between the band and audio director/front-of-house Joe O’Herlihy, show designer Willie Williams, production architect/designers Jeremy Lloyd and Mark Fisher, and Clair Global R&D and engineering teams.

Front-of-house engineer Joe O’Herlihy (left) with senior systems engineer Jo Ravitch

The speakers used are all Clair and comprise FOH left/right hangs of 36 i5 and 36 i5B; 24 i5 and 24 i5B rear; 16 i5 and 16 i5B at house left; and 16 i5 and 16 i5B at house right. Main stage front-fills include 24 FF2 and 24 BT218 subs, while the “B” stage area carries 72 S4 subs. There are also two towers carrying 32 iDL delay cabinets. That’s 336 separate enclosures, all powered by Lab.gruppen PLM 10000Q and PLM 14000s and Powersoft K10 amps that are positioned at each leg of the structure and are fed audio from the stage racks. All EQ and control is via Lake/Dolby I/O software Version 5.3, with most of the processing resident in the Lab.gruppen PLM 10000Q and PLM 14000 amplifiers; system tuning is via EAW Smaart software.

Consoles at FOH are redundant DiGiCo SD7s, each running identical shows. Jo Ravitch, senior systems engineer/Clair Global crew chief, says, “There are two main stage racks, one of them distributes AES to each leg and there’s a backup system of analog feeds to each amp, as well. If we have an issue with anything in this setup, I walk over here and switch to analog and Joe [O’Herlihy] walks over to the other board and picks up the mix.”

The front end for Bono and The Edge’s vocals and some of the compression for the guitars called for some unusual gear choices. Ravitch says, “When the tour started, there wasn’t very much [processing] available on the board so we’re using outboard stuff.” For Bono’s vocals, O’Herlihy calls on the Manley Vox Box; The Edge’s vocals take an Avalon 737. Compression for the guitars is on a Summit Audio DCL-200 comp/limiter, with the rest of the limiting provided by the SD7.

In monitor world, from left: Niall Slevin, Alistair McMillan and Dave Skaff

The system was a game-changer for O’Herlihy, who has been with U2 for more than 25 years. “The approach to the mix in the context of the way the sound is distributed has been enlightening, to be perfectly honest,” he says. “The size of the system has created an experience that is incredibly responsive. We now have something that’s almost touch-sensitive. When you make a move, there’s a large physical element of immediately hearing what you do.”

Because of the staging’s scope and design, the textbooks had to be thrown out and a system designed that would cover everyone. O’Herlihy says, “From the mix perspective, you have to get your head around the whole concept of having an inside column and an outside column, and how you distribute your gain structures accordingly.”

The players’ audio experience onstage was an essential element in the system design. “Any time you do things in 360 degrees, the apex of that circle is right where the drummer is,” O’Herlihy continues. “It would normally be a difficult place to perform while being hammered with all that bass.” This is where the use of the 72 Clair S4 cardioid subs around the outer ring comes in. “The cardioid movement works extraordinarily well in nullifying bass, so it’s a clean, clean stage that is a good performance area,” the FOH engineer adds.

O’Herlihy has seen an exponential evolution in tour sound technology. He had his digital education on the DiGiCo D5, which was innovative at the time. On the Vertigo tour, he had the benefit of the D5 being around for a few years before he took it out. He did not have that luxury with the SD7, but trusted that it was the only console that could get the job done. The SD7 was the only solution that let him put each and every individual channel where he wanted it without using external equipment that would have meant another link in the chain that could possibly fail. Still, the SD7 was a leap of faith and trust in DiGiCo. “We’ve had our glitches along the way with software updates, but like everything else, we’re in virgin territory here and we felt that that the SD7 is what made this whole thing work.”

Underneath It All

Monitor mixers Dave Skaff, Alistair McMillan and Niall Slevin make their home under the massive stage, which is also where offstage keyboardist Terry Lawless plays. Because all three mixers don’t have a view of the stage, they watch what’s going on via TV monitors at each station. And as the band is moving around so much, each station gets a four-camera split specially switched for their benefit, resulting in the band being visible at all times.

Skaff mixes for bassist Adam Clayton, drummer Larry Mullins and Lawless on a Digidesign D-Show Profile. The tour’s redundancy mantra carries on below stage with Skaff mixing on one Profile with another right next to it ready to go. “With just a couple of switches hit at the same time, I’m fully up on the second rig,” says Skaff, who worked for Digidesign on the VENUE console project from the beginning. In his mixes, he uses a variety of plug-ins from Waves, McDSP and the Phoenix plug-in from Crane Song, and also records every show to Pro Tools HD.

Using digital consoles has made it easier to provide specific mixes for each bandmember. The Edge has six guitar amps onstage and two under, while Clayton has five bass guitar feeds, and they rely on the team to provide the specific balances they need for each song. Skaff points out the advantage: “Without digital, it would be a madness of markers and 3×5 index cards. At soundcheck, Bono will do half a song, shout out another song, do 12 bars of that song and shout out another. It would be impossible to get all that to come back without the digital consoles.”

Mixers Slevin and McMillan provide audio for The Edge and Bono on two DiGiCo SD7s, each running dual engines fed via MADI. Each desk runs both mixes, the thought being that if one console quits, the engineer can jump to the second engine on the working console and continue to work until the downed desk can be revived. The stage racks and local racks used for processing are also duplicated and can be quickly switched if needed. McMillan is recording the show to Steinberg Cubase on two independent Apple G5s, which top out at 90 tracks, 20 of which are ambience. “I feed [Bono] quite a bit of ambience,” says McMillan. “He enjoys hearing the audience reaction.”

To help with latency, McMillan keeps Bono’s vocal on an analog path by getting a split from the stage, which he sends through a Rupert Neve-designed Amek preamp and then into a channel on a Midas Verona analog console. The rest of the band and effects are sent to a second channel on the Verona, which all go directly to Bono. For the singer’s reverb, he’s using the Bricasti M7, McMillan’s favorite new toy. “It’s more like glue than a reverb,” McMillan says. For Bono’s delays, he uses a TC Electronic 2290 and a variety of verbs from Lexicon and Yamaha across the rest of the band.

McMillan, who has mixed monitors for Van Morrison, came primarily from a studio background, having worked extensively at Windmill Lane in Dublin. “These guys have made me raise the bar within myself,” McMillan says. “After 20 years, you get set in your ways. Here, I had to start again and I love that.”

For The Edge, Niall Slevin runs 40 inputs per engine into his SD7, sharing the same rack feeds with McMillan. He uses an AMS reverb and a Lexicon PCM 80 for his mixes but duplicates his rack effects with onboard equivalents in case of failure. He also has duplicate analog processors in his rack for McMillan’s mixes should Alistair need to jump over to his console. Slevin feels the SD7 is a big sonic improvement over the SD5, but he is realistic about its abilities. “It still has a few reliability issues, but we’re pushing it to the max, especially with the redundancy. Effectively, we’re throwing it out the top floor and seeing if it will fly. At the moment, it’s gliding, but it’s getting there. No one has had these consoles and pushed it as much as we have. When we find things out, DiGiCo has been very good about fixing it. I can’t imagine a situation at the moment in a rock ‘n’ roll theater or any other audio application that this couldn’t deal with.”

The band is using Future Sonics in-ear systems transmitted over newly upgraded Senn- heiser G3 wireless systems, which the crew credits with adding more definition and top end. With this large of a setup, RF is a big challenge and the team has found themselves going back to old-school techniques of placement using line-of-sight and shorter cables. Skaff says, “The wilder it gets, the more we seem to go back to basics to make things happen.”

A show of this scale being launched during tough times is easy to pick on. But it’s hard to argue with its success both in record-breaking attendance and integration of new technology. At a time when album sales are not driving revenues, live performance has stepped into the spotlight and blazed a trail where other methods have failed. Did the band achieve “intimacy on a grand scale” as Bono proposed during the show? Only you can be the judge, but from my seat, it was dazzling.

Kevin Becka is Mix’ s technical editor .

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‘The working class can’t afford it’: the shocking truth about the money bands make on tour

As Taylor Swift tops $1bn in tour revenue, musicians playing smaller venues are facing pitiful fees and frequent losses. Should the state step in to save our live music scene?

W hen you see a band playing to thousands of fans in a sun-drenched festival field, signing a record deal with a major label or playing endlessly from the airwaves, it’s easy to conjure an image of success that comes with some serious cash to boot – particularly when Taylor Swift has broken $1bn in revenue for her current Eras tour. But looks can be deceiving. “I don’t blame the public for seeing a band playing to 2,000 people and thinking they’re minted,” says artist manager Dan Potts. “But the reality is quite different.”

Post-Covid there has been significant focus on grassroots music venues as they struggle to stay open. There’s been less focus on the actual ability of artists to tour these venues. David Martin, chief executive officer of the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), says we’re in a “cost-of-touring crisis”. Pretty much every cost attached to touring – van hire, crew, travel, accommodation, food and drink – has gone up, while fees and audiences often have not. “[Playing] live is becoming financially unsustainable for many artists,” he says. “Artists are seeing [playing] live as a loss leader now. That’s if they can even afford to make it work in the first place.”

Potts, who works at Red Light Management – home to everyone from Sabrina Carpenter to Kaiser Chiefs and Sofia Kourtesis – feels like there is an industry equivalent of the Spider-Man meme in which they are all pointing to one another. “People who work at labels think bands make loads of money touring, while booking agents think they make loads of money on publishing and so on,” he says. “Everyone thinks artists make money from the other side of the industry they’re not involved in.

“Artists are the biggest employers in the industry. They pay for the tour manager, session musicians, agent, manager, crew, insurance, travel, accommodation, equipment, rehearsal space, production. Everything. I don’t think people know this is all the stuff that the artist pays for and does.”

“Greater transparency is needed,” says Lily Fontaine, lead singer of Leeds band English Teacher. On paper, the four-piece appear to have made it. They are signed with a major label, Island, have played on Later With … Jools Holland, get healthy BBC Radio 6Music airplay, their debut album has received five-star reviews and they are about to embark on their biggest tour to date, which includes an 800-capacity home-town show.

“The reality is that it’s normal for all of these achievements to coexist alongside being on Universal Credit, living at home or sofa surfing,” says Fontaine. During the making of their debut album, she and bandmate Lewis Whiting did the latter while unable to afford rent.

In their four years of existence, English Teacher have yet to turn a profit from touring. “We’ve never directly paid ourselves from a gig,” says Whiting. “A headline tour usually comes out with a deficit. The only thing that we ever make any kind of profit on is festivals, because the fees can be higher, but any money left over just goes towards the next outgoings.” A successful show for the group in the past has been defined by whether they can flog enough merch to afford a supermarket food shop.

So how do they survive? “In the world of artists, we’re in a lucky position,” says Whiting. “We try to pay ourselves £500 a month each from the band pot.” However, they’ve been reliant on their advance for this, which is now gone. “We’re now in that stage where we’re gonna have to figure out where that £500 a month is gonna come from,” says Fontaine. “Because the gig fees won’t be able to cover that.” The band estimate that their 16-date UK tour in May will generate roughly £800 profit. But, says Fontaine, “realistically, I don’t think there will be any profit because things always go over budget”.

For many artists, fees aren’t increasing in line with costs. “There’s been no real incline at all,” says Potts. “For support slots, I don’t think the fees have changed in the last 10 years or so that I’ve been managing, whether that’s £50 at the smaller end or £500 quid for some of the biggest shows.” Fees for headline shows can vary enormously for bands, even on the same tour. Playing a 200-capacity club in Newcastle may land you £600, while a 1,500 cap in London may net you £3,000.

And fewer people are coming to shows at the small-to-mid-sized end of things. “In our audience data, we see there is a gap in new audiences coming through post-pandemic,” says the FAC’s Martin. “As well as a bit of a drop-off in some of the older audiences returning to live shows.” However, despite stagnant fees and shrinking audiences, touring activity in the UK is at a peak. Due to the costs of touring Europe (which can be thousands in taxes and carnet alone) 74% fewer UK bands are now touring Europe post-Brexit. “It’s much more difficult to tour in Europe so there are more artists trying to perform domestically,” says Martin. “That creates a saturation problem.”

For this article, the Guardian has seen 12 tour budget sheets for various bands and artists varying from up-and-comers to firmly established and successful acts, all of whom regularly undertake headline tours across the UK in venues ranging from 150 to 2,500 capacity. Almost all of these result in losses. Understandably, most shared their balance sheets on the condition of anonymity. One four-piece indie band, whose last two albums went Top 10 in the UK charts, reported a loss of £2,885 from a six-day UK tour. The only tour that shows anything resembling healthy profit was a 29-date tour for a solo artist who came away with £6,550. Not bad going for a month’s work but, as Martin points out, “that’s then his touring done for the next six months. So it’s not enough money.”

Nubiyan Twist are a nine-piece Afro-jazz outfit who have a loyal following and tens of millions of streams on Spotify, “We pride ourselves on being able to put on a big show, like your Fela Kutis or James Browns, these epic spectacles,” says bandleader Tom Excell. “But it’s getting more difficult, without a shadow of a doubt.” For an upcoming eight-show tour of Europe, they are predicting a loss of £4,931.28. The only way they can justify doing it is because they got funding from the BPI Music Export Growth Scheme. “I would have just pulled the plug if it wasn’t for that,” says Excell. “I’ve got a two-year-old and I can’t be away from home for that long and come back with a loss.”

Even when the band get more lucrative fees for festivals it’s still tough. They will be paid £5,000 for a festival performance this summer but the total profit after band wages (as Excell pays all his band members in full first) expenses and commissions are paid out will be £277.60. “After four albums and 15 years doing this, to still be having to gamble on whether I’m going to make anything, while everyone else gets paid a guaranteed amount, is a struggle,” admits Excell.

Such thin margins leave little wiggle room, as the space-surf band Japanese Television (who headline 100-300 capacity venues) found out when their booking agent reduced their 13-date UK and EU tour to eight shows with a five-day gap in the middle that will add a further loss of around £1,200 to a tour that is already set to lose them around £700. “Records and T-shirts are basically what keeps us going,” says the band’s Tim Jones. “The only way this tour is working for us is because we just put out our second album and we did about 60 presales on the vinyl and that was basically enough to pay for the van. It’s a hobby that just about pays for itself.”

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The question is: who else will be able to afford to pursue music as a hobby? “It depresses me how many middle and upper class people there are in the music industry,” says manager Potts. “Because the working class just can’t afford to fork out £150 a day for van hire. The only artists doing that are people who have deeper pockets and can afford to take the hit.”

Of course, every act is different in terms of what they justify as reasonable outgoings and not everyone has the same costs, but Potts says from his experience, generally speaking, bands with four or five members now need to be playing 2,000+ capacity venues nationwide to “really start to see things tip”. That tipping point is out of reach for the majority. “Most people don’t actually get to that level,” Potts says. “Just look back at any festival lineup from 10-20 years ago and see which names are still on festival bills and how many you’re like: what happened to them?”

The gap between those who are flying and those who are floundering has become even more stark. “It feels like the top 1% have become the top 0.5%,” says Martin. “The level of artists we’re talking about here that are struggling to make things stack up financially would really surprise people.”

In 2022, the Grammy-winning Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab posted on X: “Touring has been amazing. We headlined a ton, had massive turnouts and have proven ourselves in all the markets. Yet still, running tens of thousands in debt from the tour and I’m being told that it’s ‘normal’. Why is this normal? This should not be normalised.”

I’m told that one US artist – who released one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2023, which went Top 10 and placed very highly on numerous year-end polls and was nominated for a major award – worked out that the only way she could make her UK tour work was by sub-letting her home.

It’s a far cry from Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras jaunt. “The very high end of the live industry is reporting record profits,” says Martin. “You can’t have a healthy music ecosystem where at one end you’ve got people going ‘we’ve made more money than we’ve ever made’ and at the other end you’ve got relatively successful artists that are sofa-surfing while signed to a major label.”

Is there an answer? “When you’re touring Europe, you realise how much state funding in the arts there is,” says Excell. “It really needs more state funding and support from the top down.”

Martin echoes this. “The government needs to start looking at spending money on the music industry as an investment rather than as a cost,” he says. “But you also need to support a sector in a time of crisis. And this is a time of crisis.”

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Rock trailblazer Heart reunites for a world tour and a new song

N EW YORK (AP) — Heart — the pioneering band that melds Nancy Wilson’s shredding guitar with her sister Ann’s powerhouse vocals — is hitting the road this spring and fall for a world tour that Nancy Wilson describes as “the full-on rocker size.”

“I’ve been strengthening. I’ve got my trainer,” she says. “You go one day at a time and you strengthen one workout session at a time. It’s a lot of work, but it’s the only job I know how to do.”

The Rock & Roll Hall of Famers who gave us classic tracks like “Magic Man,” “Crazy on You” and “Alone” will be playing all the hits, some tracks from of their solo albums — like Ann Wilson's “Miss One and Only” and Nancy Wilson's “Love Mistake” — and a new song called “Roll the Dice.”

“I like to say we have really good problems because the problem we have is to choose between a bunch of different, really cool songs that people love already,” says Nancy Wilson.

Like “Barracuda,” a sonic burst which first appeared on the band’s second album, “Little Queen” and is one of the band’s most memorable songs.

“You can’t mess with ‘Barracuda.’ It’s just the way it is. It is great. You get on the horse and you ride. It’s a galloping steed of a ride to go on. And for everybody, including the band."

The tour kicks off Saturday at the Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, South Carolina, and will hit cities including Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Detroit, as well as the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado. International dates include stops in London, Oslo, Berlin, Stockholm, Montreal and Glasgow.

The band's Royal Flush Tour will have Cheap Trick as the opening act for many stops, but Def Leppard and Journey will join for three stadium dates in Cleveland, Toronto and Boston this summer.

Ann and Nancy Wilson will be filled out by Ryan Wariner (lead and rhythm guitar), Ryan Waters (guitars), Paul Moak (guitars, keyboards and backing vocals), Tony Lucido (bass and backing vocals) and Sean T. Lane (drums).

The tour is the first in several years for Heart, which was rocked by a body blow in 2016 when Ann Wilson’s husband was arrested for assaulting Nancy’s 16-year-old twin sons. Nancy Wilson says that's all in the past.

“We can take any kind of turbulence, me and Ann, and we’ve always been OK together,” she says. “We’re still steering the ship and happy to do it together. So we’re tight.”

The new tour will take them to Canada, which was warm to the band when they were starting out as what Nancy Wilson calls “a couple of chicks from Seattle.” She recalls Vancouver embracing Heart, and touring in one van across Canada in the dead of winter on two lane highways.

The Wilson sisters broke rock's glass ceiling in the '70s and Nancy Wilson says they only had male influences to look to, like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Moody Blues.

Now she says she looks out and loves seeing generations of female rockers. “You have boygenius and you have Billie Eilish and you have Olivia Rodrigo and so many amazing women — Maggie Rogers and Sheryl Crow, who calls us her big influence. And then Billie Eilish might have Sheryl Crow as her influence. So it’s a really nice legacy to pass along. I like to say we’re the OG — the original gangsters — of women and rock.”

Heart has made it into the Rock Hall, won Grammys, sold millions of albums and rocked hundreds of thousands of fans but Nancy Wilson has one place she'd still like to shine.

Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of their debut album, “Dreamboat Annie,” which was the same year that “Saturday Night Live” started. “So we’re actually kind of putting it out there — Heart never played on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ But what about the 50th birthday party with Heart?”

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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Animated metal band Dethklok brings tour with Babymetal to the Masonic for two nights

By Dave Pehling

Updated on: April 24, 2024 / 5:39 PM PDT / CBS San Francisco

The popular death metal band led by Brendan Small, the creative force behind popular Adult Swim animated show "Metalocalypse," Dethklok comes to the Masonic in San Francisco for two shows with co-headliners Babymetal.

Arguably the second most popular virtual band behind Gorillaz (the animated group helmed by Blur singer Damon Albarn), Dethklok made their as the stars of "Metalocalypse" when the show created by Small and partner/voice actor Tommy Blancha debuted in 2006. The world biggest death metal band in the program's absurd and surreal alternate universe, Dethklok stands as the planet's seventh largest economy despite the fact that the group's members are idiotic incompetents incapable of doing anything besides writing and performing brutal metal songs.

The quintet of singer Nathan Explosion (who was inspired by Cannibal Corpse vocalist George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher), guitarists Skwisgaar Skwigelf and Toki Wartooth, bassist William Murderface and drummer Pickles live and work in their massive fortress-like home and studio Mordhaus, venturing into the world to secure lucrative sponsorship deals and play huge concerts for their legions of fanatical followers with outlandish stage theatrics like over-the-top pyrotechnics, lasers and a giant swinging pendulum blade, inevitably resulting in widespread death and destruction.

Over the course of four seasons and a special broadcast on Adult Swim, "Metalocalypse" became one of the network's more popular shows and a favorite among musicians, with such notable figures as King Diamond, Alice Cooper, Jon Hamm, Werner Herzog, Jack Black and members of Metallica, Exodus, Emperor and Mastodon appearing on the show. Dethklok further built on its fanbase with a series of studio albums featuring the satirical songs featured the show like "Murmaider," "Bloodrocuted" and "Duncan Hills Coffee Jingle." The band also delivered entertaining live performances with widescreen clips of the animated band projected behind Small and his talented band including monster drummer Gene Hogland (Dark Angel, Death, Strapping Young Lad, Testament, Devin Townsend) and former Frank Zappa collaborator Mike Kenneally on guitar.

Dethklok would make regular festival appearances and tour with the likes of Mastodon, High On Fire, Machine Head and the Black Dahlia Murder. After the broadcast of the hour-long rock opera special, "Metalocalypse: The Doomstar Requiem" in 2013, the band continued to perform, but the project went on hiatus after the show was cancelled two years later.

The band returned to action in 2019, playing the Adult Swim Festival to ecstatic crowds. Dethklok also returned to the festival post-pandemic in 2022. The following year, Smalls was at last able to release the final chapter in the Dethklok story with the film Metalocalypse: Army of the Doomstar , which was accompanied by both a soundtrack and the band issuing its acclaimed fourth studio recording,  Dethalbum IV .

With the show having run its course, the band's current tour could be Dethklok's last hurrah as it takes to the road with previous touring partners and co-headliners Babymetal which stops at the Masonic for two nights starting Wednesday . A sensation in their native Japan since first forming in 2010, the group mixes elements of heavy metal with elements of J-Pop and "kawaii" -- the Japanese "culture of cuteness" as exemplified by Hello Kitty and Pokemon. Singer Suzuka Nakamoto had impressed producer Kobametal (aka Key Kobayashi) in her earlier girl groups Karen Girl's and Sakura Gakuin when he wanted to start a new band performing a heavier style of music.

Initially a successful offshoot of Sakura Gakuin, Babymetal became independent in 2013 and enjoyed growing popularity with the release of their self-titled debut the following year. Featuring Nakamoto along with fellow singers Moa Kikuchi (also a member of Sakura Gakuin) and Yui Mizuno executing synchronized dance moves and melodic vocals backed by a group of shredding metal session players known as the Kami Band, the album delivered a dizzying juxtaposition of sunshine pop and metallic crunch. The band rocketed to success in Japan and were playing sold-out shows to thousands when the girls were still in their teens.

The notoriety in their native land soon led to international touring in Europe and North America, with Babymetal appearing at major metal festivals and opening for Lady Gaga. By the time the band was set to release their sophomore album Metal Resistance in 2016, they were headlining Wembley Arena in London and the huge Tokyo Dome to 55,000 screaming fans. More high-profile support gigs with the Red Hot Chili Peppers followed.

While the band suffered some hardship with the accidental death of guitarist Mikio Fujioka late in 2017 after he fell from an observation deck and the departure of Mizuno due to health reasons the next year, Babymetal continued to tour and in 2023 announced the addition of Momoko Okazaki as Fujioka's permanent replacement. The band plays fan favorites and songs from its fourth album The Other One  at the Masonic. Opening acts on the two nights will be different, with hyper-technical British power metal band DrangonForce playing Wednesday and theatrical LA-based melodic death metallers Nekrogoblikon kicking off the show Thursday. 

Dethklok and Babymetal Wednesday-Thursday, April 24-25, 6 p.m. $75.75 The Masonic

Dave Pehling started his journalism career doing freelance writing about music in the late 1990s, eventually working as a web writer, editor and producer for KTVU.com in 2003. He moved to CBS to work as the station website's managing editor in 2015.

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Bon Jovi docuseries 'Thank You, Goodnight' is an argument for respect

Eric Deggans

Jon Bon Jovi at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn., in 2013. David Bergman/Hulu hide caption

Jon Bon Jovi at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn., in 2013.

Hulu's docuseries Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story , spends a lot of time building up the Bon Jovi legend — exploring the band's almost unbelievable 40-plus-year run from playing hardscrabble rock clubs in New Jersey to earning platinum albums and entry into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

But what moved me most in the four-part series was something more revealing: its close look at the struggle by lead singer Jon Bon Jovi to overcome vocal problems which nearly led him to quit the band.

Footage of the singer croaking through vocal exercises, undergoing laser treatments, enduring acupuncture and finally turning to surgery is sprinkled throughout the series, which toggles back and forth between his problems in 2022 and a chronological story of the band's triumphs and tragedies from its earliest days.

Refusing to be Fat Elvis

Jon Bon Jovi was interviewed for Thank You, Goodnight . Disney/Hulu hide caption

Jon Bon Jovi was interviewed for Thank You, Goodnight .

Through it all, a question hangs: Will Bon Jovi ever recover enough vocal strength to lead a 40th anniversary tour?

"If I can't be the very best I can be, I'm out," he tells the cameras, still looking a bit boyish despite his voluminous gray hair at age 62. "I'm not here to drag down the legacy, I'm not here for the 'Where are they now?' tour ... I'm not ever gonna be the Fat Elvis ... That ain't happening."

Filmmaker Gotham Chopra — who has also directed docuseries about his father, spiritualist Deepak Chopra, and star quarterback Tom Brady — digs deeply into the band's history, aided by boatloads of pictures, video footage and early recordings provided by the group.

Former Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora in Thank You, Goodnight Disney/Hulu hide caption

Former Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora in Thank You, Goodnight

Chopra gets folks from the group's tight inner circle to speak up, including former manager Doc McGhee and guitarist Richie Sambora, who quit the band in 2013. ("Are we telling the truth, or are we going to lie, what are we going to do?" Sambora cracks to his offscreen interviewer. "Let's figure it out.")

But anyone expecting gossipy dish will walk away disappointed. Even major scandals in the band's history are handled with care, including the firing of founding bassist Alec John Such in 1994 (and the admission that his replacement, Hugh McDonald, already had been secretly playing bass parts on their albums for years), drummer Tico Torres' stint in addiction treatment and Sambora's decision to quit midway through a tour in 2013, with no notice to bandmates he had performed alongside for 30 years.

Alec John Such, a founding member of Bon Jovi, dies at 70

Sambora's explanation: When issues with substance use and family problems led him to miss recording sessions, Bon Jovi got producer John Shanks to play more guitar on their 2013 record What About Now . And Sambora was hurt.

"[Bon Jovi] had the whole thing kinda planned out," Sambora says, "which basically was telling me, um, 'I can do it without you.'"

Building a band on rock anthems

Jon Bon Jovi with guitarist Phil X. Disney/Hulu hide caption

Jon Bon Jovi with guitarist Phil X.

The docuseries shows how young New Jersey native John Bongiovi turned a job as a gofer at legendary recording studio The Power Station – owned by a cousin — into a recording of his first hit in the early 1980s, Runaway . His song eventually caught the ear of another little-known artist from New Jersey called Bruce Springsteen.

"The first demo I got of Jon's was a good song," says Springsteen, a longtime friend of Bon Jovi. "I mean, Jon's great talent is these big, powerful pop rock choruses that just demand to be sung by, you know, 20,000 people in an arena."

Music Interviews

Rock star jon bon jovi comes full 'circle'.

Thank You, Goodnight shows the band really took off by honing those rock anthems with songwriter Desmond Child, while simultaneously developing videos that showcased their status as a fun, rollicking live band. Hits like You Give Love a Bad Name, Livin' on a Prayer and Wanted: Dead or Alive made them MTV darlings and rock superstars.

Through it all, the singer and bandleader is shown as the group's visionary and spark plug, open about how strategically he pushed the band to write hit songs and positioned them for commercial success.

"It wasn't as though I woke up one morning and was the best singer in the school, or on the block, or in my house," he tells the camera, laughing. "I just had a desire and a work ethic that was always the driving force."

I saw that dynamic up close in the mid-1990s when I worked as a music critic in New Jersey, spending time with Jon Bon Jovi and the band. Back then, his mother ran the group's fan club and was always trying to convince the local rock critic to write about her superstar son – I was fascinated by how the band shrugged off criticisms of being uncool and survived changing musical trends, led by a frontman who worked hard to stay grounded.

Bon Jovi was always gracious and willing to talk; he even introduced me to then-New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman at one of his legendary Christmas charity concerts. (And in a crazy coincidence, the band's backup singer Everett Bradley is an old friend from college.)

I think the docuseries captures Bon Jovi's skill at leading the group through challenges musical and otherwise — from metal's slow fade off the pop charts to the rise of grunge rock — something the singer rarely gets credit for achieving.

Still, much of Thank You, Goodnight feels like an extended celebration of the band and its charismatic frontman, leavened by his earnest effort to regain control of his voice. If you're not a Bon Jovi fan, four episodes of this story may feel like a bit much (I'd recommend at least watching the first and last episodes.)

More than anything, the docuseries feels like an extended argument for something Bon Jovi has struggled to achieve, even amid million selling records and top-grossing concert tours – respect as a legendary rock band.

The audio and digital versions of this story were edited by Jennifer Vanasco .

Boy band icons will unite for opening night NYS Fair concert

• Updated: Apr. 26, 2024, 7:41 p.m. |
• Published: Apr. 26, 2024, 1:39 p.m.

AJ McLean and Joey Fatone, here last month in New York City, are coming to Syracuse this summer. Getty Images

• Hank Domin | [email protected]

Members of two of the biggest boys bands of all-time will come together for an opening night concert at the New York State Fair .

Longtime friends Joey Fatone of NSYNC and AJ McLean of The Backstreet Boys will play on the Suburban Park Stage at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 21. The show is free with admission to the NYS Fair.

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Bruce Springsteen and E Street Band alive and well in 3-plus hours of thunderous hits

The pent-up demand for Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band had put ardent fans on edge.

Would the Boss' energy be the same after the rocker was forced to cancel last year's show in March due to illness and then a rescheduled performance in September due to a peptic ulcer?

Did the 74-year-old still have the stamina to navigate a stage for more than three hours? To gyrate with his guitar and hit the high notes of ballads and rock classics? To remember the lyrics as he's done for more than four decades in over 1,300 concerts with the band?

The answer, from about 20,000 devotees at Sunday's concert at Nationwide Arena, was a resounding, deafening "Yes." It was the band's first show in Columbus since 2016.

The tone was set in the opening bars of "Youngstown," a nod to the Rust Belt factories that build the weaponry "that won this country's wars," but then died off to leave empty shells and unemployment. A searing guitar solo by Nils Lofgren infused the song with powerful shards of despair.

And like the canon blast after a Columbus Blue Jackets' goal, "Lonesome Days" followed, with a jarring rim shot by drummer Max Weinberg, a percussive human metronome throughout the sell-out concert that lasted about three hours and 10 minutes.

Springsteen, in a short-sleeve denim shirt, black vest and purple tie, appeared to relish the arena crowd. With eyes often closed, he channeled deeply personal songs like "The Promised Land," The Rising," and "Ghosts."

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His grimacing was not from bad joints, but during his guitar solos, thrashing the strings during extended versions of favorites such as "Streets of Fire."

He didn't pause much between songs, often exchanging one guitar for another by tossing it to a stagehand, as Weinberg continued to strafe the crowd with nonstop rhythmic transitions.

During "Spirit in the Night," Springsteen graciously walked behind the stage to focus on those seated behind the band, sauntering at times for effect.

He ended up in front, resting his legs on the edge of the stage and his back against saxophonist Jake Clemons, whose uncle Clarence Clemons, also a sax player, was one of Springsteen's closest friends.

While mortality and distant youth were themes that may have resonated with the older crowd, many of whom were in high school or college when Springsteen blasted into stardom in the late 1970s and early '80s, there were also some younger fans.

Michelle Grinestaff and her husband, Jared Schuetter, brought their daughters, Claudia, 14, and Vivian, 12, both of whom had memorized many of Bruce's hits.

"She's been playing Springsteen their entire lives," said Schuetter of his wife.

Grinestaff's attraction followed her father Jerry's, a rabid fan who, two years ago died of pulmonary fibrosis. The night before his passing, she told him she really wanted him to come to last year's concert with the girls. "He said to just make sure you have a good time," she recalled, halting to wipe a tear.

She vividly recalls that Springsteen's "Racing in the Street" was playing while to spoke to her dad. She hoped she'd hear it Sunday night.

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Sure enough, the concert's 19th song, "Racing in the Street," was a beautiful rendition of love, loss and redemption with exquisite interplay between Roy Bittan's piano and Charles Giordano's organ. The audience quickly silenced, seemingly in hushed awe of Springsteen's meticulous alchemy of music and lyrics, considered by many among his best work.

The Boss still is in top form, telling the audience that his little "bellyache" from last year is a memory. "It's all good now," he said. He even skipped across the stage at one point during "Hungry Heart."

Springsteen seems to thrive on the adulation, but not in a selfish manner. He's keenly aware of audience temperament. And knowing when to end a marathon show is about having empathy for the crowd, which stood most of the night.

Typical of the band's recent encores, the iconic "Born to Run" led a string of hits, including "Rosalita (Come out Tonight)," "Bobby Jean," "Dancing in the Dark" and "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out."

Full, bright arena lighting illuminated the crowd during a medley of oldie covers, including a Detroit medley, "Devil with the Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly and C.C. Rider," among others.

Brothers Darrell and Don Miller, of Hilliard, both in their early 60s, recalled before the concert training for high school basketball with a coach playing the song "Born to Run" endlessly to inspire track workouts.

"It's the one song not on my playlist," said Don, "because I had to run laps to that thing for two years."

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Darrell couldn't help wonder how much longer Springsteen can keep running.

"He's going overseas. This might be his ride off into the sunset," he said.

The blast furnace of a performance is the tour's last in the U.S. as the band now heads to Great Britain to begin its European tour. It returns in late summer, including two shows in Pittsburgh on Aug. 15 and 18.

Toward the show's final encore, "I'll See You in my Dreams," from his 2020 album, "Letter to You," Springsteen bent over in feigned (or likely real) exhaustion.

"I don't think you got anything left," he challenged the crowd, which answered in a deafening roar. "Are you saying you can outlast the E Street Band?"

A test of an artist's emotional reach is often found in the most distant seats. In the upper bowl, at the far end of the Nationwide stage, fans could be seen dancing, pumping their arms and waving.

Springsteen looked skyward, opened his eyes and smiled broadly.

Springsteen's setlist

• "Youngstown," tour debut; first time since 2017
• "Lonesome Day"
• "Prove It All Night"
• "No Surrender"
• "Letter to You"
• "The Promised Land"
• "Spirit in the Night"
• "Hungry Heart"
• "Trapped," Jimmy Cliff cover
• "Streets of Fire," tour debut, first time since 2016
• "I'm Goin' Down," tour debut, first time since 2017
• "Nightshift," Commodores cover
• "Racing in the Street," sign request
• "Last Man Standing," acoustic, with Barry Danielian on trumpet
• "Backstreets"
• "Because the Night," Patti Smith Group cover
• "She's the One"
• "Wrecking Ball"
• "The Rising"
• "Thunder Road"
• "Born to Run"
• "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)"
• "Bobby Jean"
• "Dancing in the Dark," followed by band introductions
• "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out"
• "Detroit Medley"
• "Twist and Shout," The Top Notes cover

Encore No. 2

• "I'll See You in My Dreams," solo acoustic

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J. Geils Band’s Peter Wolf announces summer tour dates around New England

It’s been a minute since Peter Wolf hit the road, but that’s about to change. The former J. Geils Band singer has announced a string of New England dates that’ll give longtime fans a chance to see the Hard Drivin’ Man do what he does better than most: Perform live onstage.

Wolf, who celebrated his 78th birthday last month, is doing a series of unplugged shows he’s calling the “Waiting On The Moon Tour: An Acoustic Evening of Stories and Songs.” He’ll be joined on the July dates by two frequent collaborators — guitarists Duke Levine and Kevin Barry.

Though best known as the electrifying frontman of the J. Geils Band, Wolf has released eight well-reviewed albums under his own name, including 2002′s “ Sleepless ,” which Rolling Stone ranked No. 427 on a list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Lately, Wolf, who grew up in the Bronx but has lived in Boston for several decades, has been keeping a low profile while he writes a memoir. Anyone familiar with the singer’s backstory knows the book could be fascinating. In his late teens, Wolf lived in an apartment around the corner from Club 47, the Harvard Square coffeehouse that became Club Passim, and hung out with the likes of Mose Allison, Bill Monroe, Otis Spann, Howlin’ Wolf, and Muddy Waters.

The first of the seven shows are July 5 and 6 at Stone Mountain Arts Center in Brownfield, Maine. Wolf will also perform in Fall River July 12, Westerly, R.I., July 13, Natick July 18, Norfolk, Conn., July 19, and Rockport July 25. Ticket info can be found at peterwolf.com .

Mark Shanahan can be reached at [email protected] . Follow him @MarkAShanahan .