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Friday, March 13, 2020

CANCELED AND POSTPONED:
FRIDAY EDITION (UPDATE)

Billie Eilish and Rage Against the Machine's tours, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Kenny Chesney’s Chillaxification Tour, and Record Store Day are all on hold as one act after another takes a cautious approach to the coronavirus pandemic.

Broadway will be dark for a month, and no gatherings of more than 500 people are being allowed in New York.

Rage Against the Machine is postponing the first part of its tour—3/26 to 5/20.“We will be in touch soon about rescheduled dates,” the band said on social media. Their first concert since 2011 is now scheduled for Boston Calling on 5/23.

Record Store Day has been delayed two months to 6/20. “At the risk of stating the obvious, no one knows what things will look like in any given place over the next five weeks, but it is imperative that hard decisions for that time period need to be made right now, using current facts,” organizers said in a statement. “There is no perfect solution. There is no easy answer.”

Eilish announced that her Where Do We Go? tour dates for the rest of March have been postponed. "I’m so sad to do this but we need to postpone these dates to keep everyone safe," she said in a statement. "We’ll let you know when they can be rescheduled.” The 11 affected dates include shows in Philadelphia, NYC, Boston, Chicago, Nashville and more (see her tweet below).

Pharrell Williams’ Something in the Water will not take place this year. The next edition of the Virginia Beach fest will be 4/23-25, 2021. This year’s lineup included Missy Elliot, Janelle Monáe, Migos and Travis Scott.

Celine Dion, whose arena tour was heading straight for quarantined areas in April, has postponed her 3/24-4/18 West Coast run. New dates will be announced soon.

Alice Cooper is moving his 3/31 to 4/22 North American tour to the fall. Wilco is also moving its tour of the Western U.S. to the fall.

One show is off Taylor Swift’s schedule: 4/5 at Capital One’s JamFest in Atlanta.

Third Eye Blind has rescheduled its seven U.S. shows in March and will resume touring 5/31 at The Wiltern in Los Angeles.

Stephan Jenkins said: “In 22 years, we have never cancelled a show for any reason, much less an entire tour. We have rescheduled to what is hopefully the other side of this disaster. We all need to be part of the solution and not the spread.”

The Grand Ole Opry will continue to broadcast from Nashville, but from tonight (3/13) through 4/4 it will be without a studio audience.

Insomniac Events’ electronic dance music festival Beyond Wonderland SoCal has been moved to 6/19-20.

J. Cole’s Dreamville Festival in North Carolina has been moved to 8/29 from early April.

Slipknot’s heavy metal festival Knotfest Japan in Chiba, Japan, is looking for new dates later in the year. Korn, Marilyn Manson, Anthrax and more were scheduled to perform.

The March legs of tours by Blake Shelton, Bikini Kill, Bob Weir and Wolf Bros and The Allman Betts Band have been called off as has Cher's spring tour.

Shelton’s five dates are up in the air; Weir has moved his dates to the fall; Bikini Kill will resume their reunion tour 5/10; and Allman Betts is looking to reschedule. Cher will resume her tour 9/8 in Florida.

In Los Angeles, the Troubadour, Roxy and Teragram Ballroom are rescheduling shows booked for March.

In New York, the following venues are closed through mid-April: Terminal 5, Brooklyn Steel, Webster Hall, Music Hall of Williamsburg and Rough Trade NYC. The Bowery Ballroom remains open though some of its shows in. March have been canceled or postponed.

New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center has canceled all concerts and classes in its three venues, Rose Theater, The Appel Room and Dizzy’s Club. Their Annual Spring Gala, scheduled for 4/15, will be held as a virtual gala, with a live performance by Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and Late Night With Seth Meyers, which had planned to tape without audiences, will now be on a two-week break.

Hall of Fame inductees Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode and others will have to wait to be honored, as the 5/2 ceremony is being moved to later in the year.

Hall of Fame President Joel Peresman said, “We look forward to rescheduling the ceremony and will make that announcement at the earliest convenience.”

Chesney, who has the first stadium tour being delayed, says “In times of uncertainty, I won’t take chances with those I love. I can’t imagine, as much as we love being out there playing for the fans, being able to do that through the worry our nation is experiencing.”

Dates from 4/18 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, through 5/28 at Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, are being rescheduled by Messina Touring. They hope to have new dates to announce within six weeks.

The tour’s new opening date is expected to be 5/30 at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. Florida Georgia Line, Old Dominion and Michael Franti & Spearhead are also on the bill.

The Country to Country Festival 2020 in London, Dublin and Glasgow 3/13-15 is being postponed due to the global pandemic and “the changing nature of travel policies in other countries alongside possible extended future restrictions.” Eric Church, Darius Rucker and Luke Combs were the headliners; Old Dominion had pulled out earlier in the week.

Michael Bublé will be rescheduling 15 concerts scheduled between 3/17 and 4/5. Tickets will be honored for the rescheduled dates.

Dan + Shay, who started their spring tour last week, have hit the brakes and delayed the run until summer, picking up on 7/30 in Tulsa and running through Halloween in Tacoma, Wash. “It is a strange, strange time for all of us, but we felt this was the right thing to do,” the duo said.

The Who have postponed their U.K. and Ireland tour that was to start Monday at the Manchester Arena and finish at Wembley SSE Arena on 4/8. The dates will be rescheduled for later in the year. All tickets will be honored.

Roger Daltrey said the shows will “definitely happen and it may be the last time we do a tour of this type, so keep those tickets, as the shows will be fantastic.”

Pete Townshend added, “if one fan caught coronavirus at a WHO concert it would be one too many.” The annual Teenage Cancer Trust shows at the Royal Albert Hall on 3/28 will also be rescheduled.

Yes has canceled a tour of the Southeast U.S. from 3/19-25 and its Cruise To The Edge that was scheduled to leave Miami on 3/27 and return 4/1. Their tour of Europe is still scheduled to begin 4/24.

“Running a relatively large show aided by our 12-piece crew and full production requires insurance coverage, which is currently unavailable to us for a variety of reasons beyond our control,” Yes’ Steve Howe said.

Lollapalooza Argentina, headlined by Guns N’ Roses, Travis Tritt, The Strokes and Lana Del Rey, and scheduled for 3/27-29, has been postponed until the second half of the year.

All concerts and presentations at L.A.’s Walt Disney Concert Hall are canceled through 3/31. All public activity at CSUN’s performing arts center The Soraya has been suspended through 4/17.

Brooklyn Bowl Nashville is postponing the opening of the venue until further notice. It was slated to open Saturday with Soulive and George Porter Jr.

Broadway theaters will be dark until the week of 4/13.

Béla Fleck & The Flecktones will be rescheduling the 10 March and April dates of their 30th anniversary tour, which now opens 5/23 in Cumberland, Md.

Pentatonix has postponed the European leg of their world tour and Zac Brown Band is postponing the spring leg of its Owl Tour.

Big Ears, Ashley Capps’ four-day fest in Knoxville, Tenn., has been canceled. Scheduled for 3/26-29 with its usual distinctive multi-genre lineup, Capps said “we simply cannot move forward with the festival as scheduled.

“Not only is the principle that ‘the show must go on’ woven into our DNA, but the impact of this cancellation on the community that makes Big Ears possible—the artists, the festival attendees, our staff and production teams, and the Knoxville community with all of its businesses and workers—cannot be overstated.”

They will be offering refunds to all ticket purchasers.

The ninth annual Treefort Music Fest in downtown Boise, Idaho, has been moved to 9/23-27 from 3/25-29. Among the performers are Calexico, Built to Spill, Shabaka and the Ancestors and Tennis.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced Wednesday night a statewide ban on all public gatherings of more than 250 people for four weeks, beginning today (3/12).

In Portland alone, shows by Brantley Gilbert, Leslie Odom Jr. and Wilco among dozens others will need to be moved.

Overseas, Berlin’s state-run theaters, operas and concert halls are closed until 4/19.

The federal government’s 30-day travel ban from some European countries into the U.S. will begin Saturday. The U.K. is excluded, though it may affect touring plans for some acts.

On the heels of the cancellation of SXSW, the City of Austin is prohibiting events such as concerts and festivals that bring together more than 2,500 people and are held between 3/7 and 5/1. All events at the Frank Erwin Center have been canceled including the iHeart Country Festival on 5/2, which will be rescheduled.

Santana’s tour of Europe, scheduled to start 3/14 in Bologna, Italy, is off. Universal Tone Management President Michael Vrionis said, “While we deeply regret this unfortunate circumstance, the safety of our fans is the main priority for the Santana Organization. We will keep you all informed of new performance dates as they are made, and will make every effort to return to Europe soon.”

Cyrus has pulled out of the Australian bushfire benefit concert she was to headline in Melbourne on Friday. Organizers followed suit by canceling the Friday concert that would have been held at Melbourne’s Lakeside Stadium.

Australian authorities had advised her to not travel to reduce potential health risks. Cyrus said “I have to do what is right to protect the health and safety of my band and crew.”

Neil Young reports that he has a tour of older arenas in North America with Crazy Horse booked but is delaying the trek.

“We are all super-ready to go, and the last thing we want to do is put people at risk, especially our older audience,” Young writes on his website. “No one wants to become sick in this pandemic.”

The restrictions in France on public gatherings—no more than 1,000 people in a public space—resulted in Madonna canceling her two final Madame X shows in Paris and Queen+Adam Lambert postponing a 5/26 concert.

Richard Marx is rescheduling a tour of Europe, Kiss has canceled all meet-and-greets, and Stormzy is the latest artist to cancel a tour of Asia.

Pearl Jam was the first act to postpone an entire tour of the U.S.

We’ll be updating this story as we hear about more postponements and cancellations.

SHUTDOWNS IN SEATTLE & SF (UPDATE)
COACHELLA AND STAGECOACH RESCHEDULED
ACM, iHEART KEEP THEIR DATES
LIVE NATION AND AEG TO SUSPEND TOURS
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