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Pop Powerhouse Alex Sampson Bares It All On New ‘Growing Pains’ EP

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Atikokan, Ontario raised a pop star. Alex Sampson, the Canadian-born singer-songwriter who turned bedroom covers into a global following, just dropped his new EP ‘Growing Pains’ via Warner Records. You can listen here.

David Pramik (Selena Gomez, Bebe Rexha, Logic) produced the project, and his fingerprints give Sampson’s emotional honesty a polished, radio-ready frame. The songs pull from real life. Love, heartbreak, loss, and the messy business of growing up all sit at the center of these tracks.

The EP carries recent singles “How Lucky Am I?,” “Misery,” and “Not Even Gone.” Sampson built the sequence to move like a story, tracing the arc from heartbreak through memory and into self-discovery.

“The Growing Pains EP is my favorite project I’ve done to date. I say that every time but it’s because I always mean it,” said Sampson. “I hope the fans listen to this project and understand that I’m just like them. I go through the same things as everyone else. I’ve fallen in love, gotten my heart broken, lost people, etc. I ask everyone to listen from top to bottom as it tells a little bit of a story. Thanks for listening.”

Sampson’s story reads like a modern pop fairytale. He grew up in a town of roughly 2,600 people, found a worldwide audience through covers of Ruth B, Ed Sheeran and Billie Eilish, then won fans over with originals like “Stay Here” and “Play Pretend.” His debut EP ‘Blurry Vision,’ a run on season 19 of America’s Got Talent, and his sophomore EP ‘Hopeless Romantic’ followed.

The numbers tell their own story. More than 5.8 million combined social followers, over 101 million total views, and a 2023 spot on People Magazine’s Emerging Artists list. He connects with Gen Z while pulling in listeners across generations.

These songs land with warmth and emotional pull, a heartfelt step forward from a voice that keeps getting stronger. ‘Growing Pains’ shows Sampson stepping deeper into his next era, intimate and reflective, tied tightly to the fans who have grown right alongside him.

The release follows a busy stretch. Sampson wrapped his first headline tour across the U.S. and Canada earlier this year, and he’ll join Freya Skye as support on her upcoming tour.

Tracklisting:

“How Lucky Am I?”

“Misery”

“Not Even Gone”

My SiriusXM Show This Week

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My SiriusXM show this week: Interviews with Graeme Thomson, author of In Another World – The Four Seasons Of Talk Talk; Don Pyle of his Rough Description: Love Letters and Ghost Stories From a Life in Music book; Mothership Connected: The Women of Parliament-Funkadelic author Seth Neblett; Robert M. Pallitto + John A. Melendez, authors of Whistle Stop: Kenny Dorham, Jazz, and the Journey of a Texas Family. Sat 8am + 4pm + 7pm, Sun 12pm + 8pm, Wed 2pm (all ET), Channel 167 + on the app anytime!





Why SZA’s Raw Honesty Connects So Deeply With A Generation Of Listeners

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SZA has built one of this generation’s most devoted fan bases on a single, unglamorous quality: she tells the truth. Plenty of artists sing about heartbreak, jealousy, and self-doubt, yet few sit in the mess of those feelings without smoothing the edges. That willingness to stay in the discomfort is exactly why listeners feel like she’s reading their diaries back to them.

Her breakthrough album ‘Ctrl’ arrived in 2017 and set the template. The record framed itself with voicemails from SZA’s actual grandmother and mother, grounding the songs in real family voices rather than studio polish. Across tracks like “Drew Barrymore” and “Normal Girl,” she sang about feeling like the backup option, the insecure one, the woman waiting by the phone. The specificity is the point, and fans heard their own anxieties spoken aloud.

That candor carried straight into ‘SOS’, the 2022 album that turned her into one of the biggest names in music and spent multiple weeks atop the Billboard 200. Where many stars guard their image, SZA let “Kill Bill” voice a darkly comic revenge fantasy and “Nobody Gets Me” lay bare a raw, unfiltered ache. She wrote about wanting petty things, ugly things, human things, and audiences rewarded the honesty with streaming numbers that placed her among the era’s most-played artists.

She’s been just as open away from the microphone. SZA has spoken candidly in interviews about anxiety, body image, and the pressure of fame, including a widely read Rolling Stone profile where she discussed her insecurities with the same plainness she brings to her lyrics. That continuity between the person and the songwriting builds trust. Listeners sense there’s no separate performer self being sold to them.

The deeper connection comes from how she frames vulnerability as something shared rather than something to pity. SZA doesn’t ask for sympathy so much as company, turning private shame into a collective exhale. In an industry that often rewards invulnerability, she’s proven that the most magnetic thing an artist can do is admit they’re still figuring it out, and a generation raised online, fluent in oversharing and craving authenticity, recognizes one of their own.

James Handy, Prolific Character Actor of ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ ‘Jumanji,’ and ‘Alias,’ Dies at 81

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James Handy, a familiar face across four decades of American film and television whose steady presence anchored dozens of features and series, has died at 81.

Born in New York City in 1945, Handy began his screen career in 1977 and built one of the busiest résumés in Hollywood, the kind of actor whose name audiences might not know but whose face they always recognized. On the big screen he played Lieutenant Byers in ‘K-9’ and its sequel ‘K-911,’ and turned up in ‘The Verdict,’ ‘Brighton Beach Memoirs,’ ‘Bird,’ ‘Arachnophobia,’ ‘The Rocketeer,’ ‘Guarding Tess,’ ‘Jumanji,’ ‘Unbreakable,’ ’15 Minutes,’ and ‘Logan.’ His final film role came as Jimmy in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ in 2022.

On television, Handy was a guest-star institution, appearing in ‘Quantum Leap,’ ‘Murder, She Wrote,’ ‘The X-Files,’ ‘Law & Order,’ ‘The West Wing,’ ‘ER,’ ‘Cold Case,’ ‘Criminal Minds,’ and ‘Castle,’ among many others. He had recurring roles as Captain Jim Haverill on ‘NYPD Blue,’ Lou Handleman on ‘Profiler,’ Matt Fielding, Sr. on ‘Melrose Place,’ and Arthur Devlin across eight episodes of ‘Alias.’

Handy died on June 3, 2026, in Los Angeles, at the age of 81.

Indio Solari, Enigmatic Voice of Argentine Rock and Leader of Los Redondos, Dies at 77

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Indio Solari, one of the most singular and fiercely independent figures in the history of Argentine rock, has died at 77, a decade after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

Born Carlos Alberto Solari in Paraná, Entre Ríos, in 1949, he became a near-mythic presence in rock en español as the frontman of Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota. He formed the band in 1976 in La Plata alongside guitarist Skay Beilinson, the two of them building it from bar and club gigs in their hometown into one of the most beloved acts the country has ever produced. The group took its name from Patricio Rey, a fictional character and shared consciousness rather than any real person, and from the colloquial Argentine term for round ricotta-filled buñuelos.

The band’s strength lay in the semantic power of Solari’s lyrics, which explored politics, drugs, love, and the dark corners of Argentine life with a philosophical, existentialist bent. His obscure and complex writing drew comparisons to Baroque masters like Francisco de Quevedo, filtered through a corrosive view of neoliberalism, the Gulf War, political corruption, and drug culture. After the band’s 1985 debut ‘Gulp!,’ Los Redondos released a run of landmark albums including ‘Oktubre,’ ‘La Mosca y la Sopa,’ ‘Lobo Suelto, Cordero Atado,’ which gave them the perennial favorite “Un Ángel Para tu Soledad,” ‘Luzbelito,’ and ‘Último Bondi a Finisterre.’ Alongside “Semilla” Bucciarelli, Walter Sidotti, and Sergio Dawi, Solari and Beilinson anchored the group through its peak years.

Los Redondos built their legend on their own terms, cultivating one of the most devoted fan bases in Latin American music while operating largely outside the mainstream industry. They drew 80,000 to Estadio Huracán in 1994 and more than 140,000 to River Plate Stadium in 2000, though their concerts were also shadowed by tragedy, including the 1991 death of Walter Bulacio in police custody outside a show at Estadio Obras. Internal tensions between Solari and his bandmates brought the group to an end in 2001. He launched a prolific solo career with Los Fundamentalistas del Aire Acondicionado, beginning with ‘El Tesoro de los Inocentes (Bingo Fuel)’ in 2004 and continuing through ‘Porco Rex,’ ‘El Perfume de la Tempestad,’ ‘Pajaritos, bravos muchachitos,’ and ‘El Ruiseñor, El Amor y La Muerte.’ His 2017 concert in Olavarría drew more than 250,000 fans, the largest open-air rock show in Argentine history. He died on June 5, 2026, in Parque Leloir, Ituzaingó.

The Beginner’s Guide to Music Publishing and How to Collect Every Royalty You’re Owed

Here’s a number worth sitting with for a moment: music publishing royalties topped $4.7 billion in the United States in 2021 alone. A significant portion of that money belongs to songwriters who never collected it, because they didn’t know the system existed, didn’t register properly, or simply assumed their distributor was handling it. They were wrong. Nobody is coming to find you. The money is sitting there waiting, and you have to go get it.

Here’s where to start.

What Music Publishing Actually Is

Music publishing is the business of ensuring songwriters and rights holders get paid when their compositions are used, performed, streamed, or licensed. Yet many artists don’t fully understand how it works or how much royalty revenue they may be missing by not having a publishing solution. The key distinction to understand from the beginning is that there are two separate copyrights in every recorded song: the composition, which is the melody and lyrics you wrote, and the sound recording, which is the specific recording of that composition. Publishing deals with the composition. Your distributor deals with the sound recording. They are not the same thing, they are not handled by the same people, and confusing them is one of the most expensive mistakes an independent artist can make.

Performance Royalties and Your PRO

Every time your song is played on the radio, performed live, streamed, or broadcast in any public setting, it generates a performance royalty. Performance Rights Organisations collect these on your behalf. In the United States, the PROs are ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. In Canada, it’s SOCAN. Every country has its own PRO. You can only be affiliated with one PRO at a time, so choose carefully, register yourself as a songwriter, and register every song you write as a composition. Without that registration, the money goes unclaimed. Your PRO will not track you down. You track them down first.

Mechanical Royalties and the MLC

This is the one most independent artists miss entirely, and it is costing them real money. The Mechanical Licensing Collective, created by the Music Modernization Act of 2018, has paid out more than $3 billion since it began operating in 2021. The MLC is the only organization in the US that collects mechanical royalties from interactive streaming services. The only way to get these royalties is if either you or your publisher is signed up with the MLC. Songwriters cannot collect mechanical royalties simply by being a member of a PRO. On the flip side, songwriters cannot collect performance royalties simply by joining The MLC. They are two separate systems doing two separate jobs and you need both. Your distributor will not send you any mechanical royalties, so if you are an independent artist, register with a publishing service to collect them.

SoundExchange: The One Everyone Forgets

SoundExchange collects digital performance royalties for the master recording. This is one of the most commonly missed revenue streams for independent artists. If your music is played on Pandora, SiriusXM, internet radio, or any non-interactive digital radio service, SoundExchange is the organisation collecting those royalties on the recording side. It is separate from your PRO, separate from the MLC, and requires its own registration. All you have to do is send in a Letter of Direction to SoundExchange and you’ll be set up to receive your royalties. It takes minutes. There is no good reason not to do it.

Sync Royalties: The Big Payday

Synchronization royalties are paid when your musical composition is licensed for use in conjunction with visual media — a film, television show, commercial, video game, or YouTube video that requires a commercial license. Sync licensing is now the second-highest royalty stream for independent artists. Unlike performance and mechanical royalties, sync fees are negotiated directly rather than collected automatically, which means you either need a publisher pitching your music, a music library representing your catalogue, or the networking skills to get your songs in front of music supervisors yourself. When a placement lands, the upfront sync fee can be substantial, and the performance royalties that follow every time that film or show airs keep generating income long after the deal is signed.

The Publishing Administrator: The Missing Piece

If you are only with BMI, ASCAP, or SESAC but have not appointed a publishing administrator, you are likely missing part of your publishing income. A publishing administrator works alongside your PRO but covers additional revenue streams that the PRO does not, linking your compositions to dozens of global collection systems that your PRO alone cannot access. Services like Songtrust act as your publishing administrator without taking ownership of your music, collecting from collection societies across more than 200 countries and territories. The royalties checklist every independent artist needs covers PRO registration, publishing administration setup, mechanical rights organisation enrolment, distributor confirmation for digital royalties, metadata and credits, and SoundExchange signup for digital performance royalties. Work through that list before your next release, not after.

Metadata: The Invisible Foundation

None of this works if your metadata is wrong. Making sure your metadata and ISRC codes are accurate from day one is what ensures royalty payments get attributed correctly. Without proper registration and clean metadata, these royalties go uncollected regardless of how many streams your music earns. Your song title, your writer credits, your publisher information, your ISRC codes — every piece of that data is what connects your music to your money across every platform and every collection society in the world. Get it right before the music goes live, because fixing it after the fact is significantly harder and slower.

The music industry is not designed to make this easy. But it is not designed to be impossible either. Register with a PRO. Register with the MLC. Register with SoundExchange. Get a publishing administrator. Keep your metadata clean. Do all of that, and you will collect money that would otherwise sit in a system waiting for someone who never shows up.

Don’t be that person.

The Most Instagram-Worthy Music Spots in Belfast

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Belfast is hosting Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann for the very first time this August, from August 2 to 9, 2026, and the whole city is going to be full of musicians, music fans, and people pointing cameras at things. Which is excellent news, because Ireland’s only UNESCO City of Music happens to be one of the most visually extraordinary places you will ever point a camera at. Here are the music spots that will fill your feed and make everyone wish they had come with you.

Commercial Court, Cathedral Quarter

Home to the famous umbrella walkway, courtyards covered in murals, and dainty cobblestoned streets, the Cathedral Quarter mixes culture, art, and history to create one of Belfast’s most snapped areas. Two of the most popular pubs in the Cathedral Quarter, the Duke of York and Dark Horse, face each other down a cobbled alleyway at Commercial Court, and the combination of hanging umbrellas, warm pub light spilling onto stone, and murals around every corner makes this the single most photographed stretch of street in Belfast. During Fleadh week, with musicians spilling out of every doorway, it will be even more alive than usual. Come at night. Bring a good camera. You will not regret it.

The Oh Yeah Music Centre

The Oh Yeah Music Centre is a former bonded whiskey warehouse in the heart of the Cathedral Quarter, and its brick walls, music memorabilia, and the energy of a building that has been dedicated to Northern Ireland’s musical life since 2007 make it a genuinely compelling visual stop. The NI Music Exhibition inside features memorabilia from Snow Patrol, Van Morrison, and Stiff Little Fingers. The building itself — all exposed brick and creative energy — photographs beautifully, and the street art around it adds another layer.

The Stiff Little Fingers and Van Morrison Murals

Belfast’s walls have always told the city’s story, and its music murals are among the most powerful. The iconic murals along Commercial Court and Hill Street, where the combination of urban charm and artistic flair makes every shot worthy of sharing, are a must. Look specifically for the music-dedicated murals celebrating Belfast’s punk heritage and its folk tradition — the kind of street art that reminds you this city has been making music that mattered for well over a century. During Fleadh week, the whole area will be buzzing with traditional musicians who understand exactly what those walls represent.

Ulster Hall, Bedford Street

One of the oldest and most storied concert halls in Ireland, Ulster Hall has hosted Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, and hundreds more across more than 160 years of Belfast musical life. The building’s restored Victorian exterior is a genuinely beautiful piece of architecture that photographs extraordinarily well, particularly in the long golden light of a Belfast summer evening. Stand outside, look up, and remember that the first time “Stairway to Heaven” was ever played live, it was played inside this building. That is worth a photograph, a moment, and a caption your followers will actually read.

The Crown Bar, Great Victoria Street

Established in 1826, the Crown Bar, or Crown Liquor Saloon as it is formally known, is Belfast’s oldest and most famous bar — warm, atmospheric lighting, Victorian style tiles, and windows that have a story to tell. It is a National Trust property, which tells you everything about what kind of place this is. The interior is one of the most photographed pub interiors in the world, and for good reason — the carved wood, the stained glass, the gas lighting, the snug booths — it looks like it was designed by someone who understood that a great bar is itself a form of theatre. Music has been played in and around this room for two centuries. Sit in a snug, order a Guinness, and photograph everything.

Cyprus Avenue, East Belfast

Cyprus Avenue is lined with mansions, just as Van Morrison describes, and in 2015 he came back to play an open-air show there on his 70th birthday, with thousands gathering in the tree-lined street to watch. It is quiet, leafy, and unmistakably beautiful — the kind of street that earns its place in song. Queue up “Cyprus Avenue” on your phone, walk the length of it, and take the photograph that proves you were there. It is dorky. It is also perfect.

Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann takes place in Belfast, August 2–9, 2026. For more information visit fleadhcheoil.ie, visitbelfast.com, and discovernorthernireland.com.




The Afghan Whigs Announce New Album ‘Soft Control’ And A Global Tour

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The Afghan Whigs have new music and a packed itinerary on the way. The alt-rock mainstays just announced their new album ‘Soft Control’, out Aug. 21 via Royal Cream/BMG, and dropped its latest single, “Jungle Roux,” across streaming platforms. It’s a strong return from a group that’s spent decades carving out one of rock’s most distinctive catalogs.

The quintet pairs the album with the “Soft Control Tour,” running through Europe and North America from September through November. Following a July performance at Brugge’s Cactus Festival, the group kick off Sept. 19 at Stylus in Leeds, with European stops including Glasgow’s SWG3 Galvanizers, O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London, Trabendo in Paris, Cologne’s Luxor, De Roma in Antwerp, and Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. The North American run begins Nov. 4 at Orlando’s Beacham Theater and rolls through Warsaw in Brooklyn, Toronto’s The Concert Hall, The Metro in Chicago, Dallas’ Granada Theater, and Austin’s Scoot Inn.

Support comes from strong company on both legs. Ed Harcourt opens the European and U.K. shows, while Minneapolis country-soul-psych-rock outfit Night Moves takes the North American dates. The group enter the run with real momentum, having played 20 shows earlier this year, including a sold-out night at the iconic 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. Tickets for all shows go on sale June 5.

“Soft Control Tour” Dates:

July 10 – Brugge, Belgium – Cactus Festival

Sept. 19 – Leeds, UK – Stylus

Sept. 20 – Nottingham, UK – The Palais

Sept. 22 – Glasgow, UK – SWG3 Galvanizers

Sept. 23 – Manchester, UK – O2 Ritz

Sept. 24 – London, UK – O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire

Sept. 26 – Brighton, UK – Chalk

Sept. 27 – Paris, FR – Trabendo

Sept. 28 – Amsterdam, NL – Paradiso

Sept. 30 – Cologne, DE – Luxor

Oct. 1 – Liege, BE – OM

Oct. 3 – Eindhoven, Netherlands

Oct. 4 – Antwerp, BE – De Roma

Oct. 5 – Brussels, BE – Ancienne Belgique

Nov. 4 – Orlando, FL – Beacham Theater

Nov. 5 – Atlanta, GA – Variety Playhouse

Nov. 7 – Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle

Nov. 8 – Baltimore, MD – Baltimore SoundStage

Nov. 10 – Brooklyn, NY – Warsaw

Nov. 11 – Toronto, ON – The Concert Hall

Nov. 13 – Indianapolis, IN – The Vogue

Nov. 14 – Chicago, IL – The Metro

Nov. 15 – St. Louis, MO – Delmar Hall

Nov. 19 – New Orleans, LA – House of Blues

Nov. 20 – Dallas, TX – Granada Theater

Nov. 21 – Austin, TX – Scoot Inn

Mastodon Announce North America Tour With Deafheaven And A Grieving New Single “Your Ghost Again”

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Mastodon are channeling profound loss into their next chapter. The stalwart progressive metal group just released a new single and announced a North American fall tour with Deafheaven in support, arriving ahead of an expected new album and in the wake of the unexpected passing of co-founder and guitarist Brent Hinds, along with drummer Brann Dailor’s mother. The new song, “Your Ghost Again,” is a deeply moving piece of writing, and the run promises a powerful live pairing.

The tour, dubbed “The Poisonous Weapons Tour,” opens Sept. 16 at Hard Rock Live in Orlando and rolls through markets including Pittsburgh, Boston, Brooklyn, DC, Buffalo, Chicago, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Boise, San Diego, and Denver before wrapping Oct. 24 at Sick New World Dallas. The dates add to previously announced European shows with Loathe in support of Anthrax. Ticket presales are happening now, with general onsale starting Friday, June 5 at 10 a.m. local time.

“Your Ghost Again” sees the group turn grief into one of the most emotionally charged compositions of their storied career, weaving together memory, resilience, and raw vulnerability. Produced by Patrik Berger and Kurt Ballou and mixed by Andrew Scheps, it previews what’s coming next. The song reckons with the sudden death of Hinds, who died Aug. 20, 2025 in a motorcycle accident, months after leaving the group in what was described as a mutual decision.

Dailor spoke openly about the song’s source. “For me, ‘Your Ghost Again’ is about when you lose somebody that’s close to you that you existed with for most of your life—or your whole life,” he says. “It’s those moments when you’re in those familiar places that you’ve always been with that person, and then, after they’re gone, you see them out of the corner of your eye, and it makes you sad because they’re not there. When we were in the studio recording, I kept seeing Brent. I’d see him on my right holding the guitar because that’s where he’d usually be. It’s the same with my mom: I keep seeing her. And you get a little jolt of excitement because you think you’re actually seeing them, but then you remember they’re not here and it takes you down a notch. So, it’s these big relationships for me that became the subject matter of the song. I was just singing about what I was seeing, and I was seeing ghosts.”

Latin Star Ryan Castro Brings “SENDÉ THE LAST DANCE” Back To North America

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Ryan Castro is running it back across North America. The Latin star just announced “SENDÉ THE LAST DANCE,” a 16-city run from September through October that builds off a successful U.S. tour last fall, which included stops at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center and the Intuit Dome in Inglewood. The trek closes out a creative era shaped by his Caribbean-influenced 2025 albums ‘SENDÉ’ and ‘HOPI SENDÉ’. It kicks off Sept. 6 at HQ2 Beachclub in Atlantic City and wraps Oct. 10 in Las Vegas. It’s a strong return for one of Latin music’s fast-rising names.

The routing hits arenas and theaters across the continent, with stops at Boston’s Agganis Arena, Echostage in D.C., Tampa’s Yuengling Center, Skydeck in Nashville, San Jose Civic in the Bay Area, and Denver’s Paramount Theatre. Artist and venue presales began this week ahead of the general onsale on June 4 at 10 a.m. local time.

Castro is riding serious momentum. The 32-year-old Colombian rapper has amassed more than 31 million monthly listeners on Spotify and recently played Miamibash and the Sueños Music Festival in Chicago. He also drew a massive crowd at Estadio Atanasio Girardot in Medellín, grossing over $3.4 million off 45,168 tickets, and his upcoming stadium show at Bogotá’s Estadio El Campín on Oct. 31 sold out in under an hour. It all underscores just how fast his star is climbing.

“SENDÉ THE LAST DANCE” North American Tour Dates:

September 6 – Atlantic City, NJ – HQ2 Beachclub

September 9 – Laval, QC – Place Bell

September 11 – Boston, MA – Agganis Arena

September 13 – Reading, PA – Santander Arena

September 15 – Washington, DC – Echostage

September 17 – Duluth, GA – Gas South Arena

September 18 – Orlando, FL – Hard Rock Live Orlando

September 19 – Tampa, FL – Yuengling Center

September 24 – Charlotte, NC – Ovens Auditorium

September 25 – Nashville, TN – Skydeck

September 27 – San Antonio, TX – Boeing Center at Tech Port

September 30 – Tempe, AZ – Marquee Theatre

October 2 – San Jose, CA – San Jose Civic

October 3 – Fresno, CA – Saroyan Theatre

October 6 – Denver, CO – Paramount Theatre

October 10 – Las Vegas, NV – Location TBD