Summer Tour Preview 2013
This year's summer concert season has its share of big draws, from Taylor Swift to the Rolling Stones, whose 50 and Counting tour runs through late June. There are also plenty of seasoned road warriors (Jimmy Buffett, Dave Matthews Band), pop sensations (One Direction, Imagine Dragons), country heroes (Brad Paisley) and a bunch of intriguing packages (Bob Dylan/Wilco/My Morning Jacket, Wiz Khalifa/A$AP Rocky, Jay-Z/Justin Timberlake). But there's no U2, Madonna or even Roger Waters – no single massive megastar tour running throughout the summer and raking in cash. That's good news for consumers: What you save from not spending $350 on one of those top-dollar acts can go to five or six shows starring some of the world's biggest pop, rock and hip-hop stars. Read on for this season's live highlights.
By Steve Knopper
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The Rolling Stones
As always, the Stones are doing a greatest-hits playlist, including "Paint It Black, "Gimme Shelter" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash," although they've been playing "Emotional Rescue" on this tour for the first time and recently added "Sway" with old friend Mick Taylor on guitar. Show up for the surprise guests – Katy Perry and Dave Grohl, among others, so far – and because it might be your last chance to see them live.
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Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z
They perform totally different musical styles, but Hova's guest appearance on "Suit & Tie" shows where the hip-hop star and the pop star intersect – in a gently funky, super-polished supper-club vibe. In an era when not many pop stars can sell out stadiums, Jay-Z and Justin are doing a decent job with a short run through late July.
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Bob Dylan/Wilco/My Morning Jacket
This is a perfect summer package. Dylan's 71-year-old voice is more or less shot, but last year's Tempest was resiliently spooky and soulful; Wilco has shed its skronky pain-music from last decade and returned to a sort of breezy, experimental rock; and My Morning Jacket, despite frontman Jim James' solo debut this year, continues to be a cohesive unit on the border between jam bands and indie rockers.
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Lil Wayne/T.I.
Weezy has promised a full band and plenty of hits for his first tour since 2011, when he grossed more than $44 million. The new one runs from July through early September and includes openers T.I. and 2 Chainz – it almost had rising hip-hop star Future, who backed out in early May for his own reasons.
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Wiz Khalifa/A$AP Rocky
Continuing his Under the Influence of Music tour, Pittsburgh rapper Wiz Khalifa teams up with A$AP Rocky, whose Long.Live.A$AP is one of the year's best hip-hop albums. It's unclear what songs they'll do for the tour that begins in early July and runs through late August, but Wiz has opened shows over the past year with "Black and Yellow" and closed them with "Work Hard, Play Hard."
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Beyonce
Now that we definatively know that the R&B superstar is not pregnant, it makes more sense that she's soldiering on with her tour from late June to early August, ending at the House Her Husband Built, Brooklyn's Barclays Center. Sources were unsure whether the glittery leotard with the painted-on nipples would survive, however.
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LL Cool J, De La Soul, Ice Cube, Public Enemy
Ice Cube is stuck in cornball movies, LL Cool J contributed the year's most awkward lyric to Brad Paisley's "Accidental Racist" and neither De La Soul nor Public Enemy has had a hit in decades. But Kings of the Mic is still the best old-school hip-hop tour in years, and though these once-mighty MCs look puffier than they used to, they still rock hard (have you seen live PE clips lately?).
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Bruno Mars
With his album Unorthodox Jukebox lingering in the Top 10 since last fall, Mars is proving to be a surprisingly durable pop star. Overseas set lists from earlier this year suggest he'll lean heavily on Unorthodox, particularly "Locked Out of Heaven," "Treasure" and "Moonshine," while drawing a bit from his 2010 debut Doo-Wops & Hooligans. Mars is playing arenas through late August, with many dates already sold out.
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The National
The National, whose album Trouble Will Find Me is due this week, may be this summer's Arcade Fire – a beloved indie-rock act graduating from theatres to arenas. (The band's sound is small enough to do a date at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, but large enough to headline Brooklyn's Barclays Center on a tour that runs through September.) It's hard to imagine this frequently gloomy band busting out its Springsteen-style anthems for arenas and sheds, but as The Cure once showed us, pain is universal.
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Rush
Check out this encore: "Tom Sawyer," "2112 Part I: Overture," "2112 Part II: The Temples of Syrinx" and "2112 Part VII: Grand Finale." Having finally been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, Rush continues to load its set with old standbys from "Subdivisions" to "Limelight," although the Canadian trio seems to have finally retired "Fly by Night." The tour continues through early August at arenas and sheds alike.
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Paul McCartney
With his crack rock 'n' roll band cranking through "Live and Let Die" and (if you're lucky) "Helter Skelter," Macca expands from arenas to stadiums this summer, playing a handful of them through mid-August. The show isn't Springsteen, but McCartney gives fans nearly three hours per night, generously sampling the Beatles' catalogue as well as familiar and obscure stuff from his own ("Mrs. Vandebilt").
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Ke$ha/Pitbull
Numerous cheap lawn tickets (and others) are available throughout this double-pop-star amphitheatre pairing, which perhaps indicates it's not selling as briskly as promoters hoped. Maybe the audiences don't fit together – Pitbull's roots are in Miami dance culture and Latino hip-hop, while Ke$ha is repackaging the Beastie Boys' raps for rebellious tweens. All they have in common is the Top 40.
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Kid Rock
The big news about the Detroit rocker's tour is the ticket price: $20, including service fees, for everybody. But Rock also is an underrated showman, and in recent dates in his home state of Michigan, he has picked intriguing covers (John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy," Bob Seger's "Rock and Roll Never Forgets") to go with his own "You Never Met a Motherfucker Quite Like Me," "All Summer Long" and "Bawitdaba." He's brilliant at walking the line between contemporary, hip-hop-influenced rock and classic rock, along with a few country touches.
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Miranda Lambert
When Lambert participated on Rolling Stone's best-venues panel, she nominated what seemed to be every venue she ever played, from Tulsa's BOC Center to Dallas' American Airlines Arena. Which means in addition to being a high-heeled diva, Blake Shelton's wife, a member of the Pistol Annies and the author of some of the best outlaw songs of the past decade, she's a dedicated road dog. Her tour, through mid-September, includes co-stars such as Jason Aldean and Dierks Bentley.
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Taylor Swift
An old-fashioned country star in the sense that she never seems to stop touring, except to make another smash album such as 2012's Red, Swift is on an arena run that lasts through late September. Expect huge production numbers ("We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together") straightforward rock-and-country ("You Belong With Me") and a lot of speeches about how she never could have done it without her fans.
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Tom Petty
Road-warrior Petty's tour is more of a series of multi-night stands – he and the Heartbreakers recently started a five-night run at New York's Beacon Theatre, then do six nights at Los Angeles' Henry Fonda Theatre, then move onto Bonnaroo and Milwaukee's Summerfest with a few amphihtheatres in between. Wherever and however you see him, though, there is no such thing as a bad Petty show.
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Maroon 5
The Honda Civic Tour might have been called the Created or Recreated by Television tour – "The Voice" star Adam Levine fronts the band, of course, and co-headliner Kelly Clarkson first came to the world via "American Idol." The tour, which begins in early August and ends in late September, arrives after the band had to postpone a brief European run from next month to next January due to "scheduling conflicts."