Country star Kane Brown has announced his “Blessed & Free” tour for the fall, which comes with the underlying assumption that the nation will be mostly blessedly COVID-free by the time the outing kicks off in indoor arenas on Oct. 1.
As a major basketball fan who played the sport in high school, Brown made a point of making sure the 35-city tour is hitting all 29 NBA basketball venues in the U.S. along the way, in what’s said to be the first time a country performer has landed in every one during a single tour. Brown played in the 2020 NBA celebrity all-star game in 2020 and hinted at prospects for that at the time. A handful of cities that don’t have an NBA team, like Nampa, Idaho, also got lucky enough to get squeezed into the B-ball-loaded schedule.
Brown has had six singles reach No. 1 on one of the country charts since he came out of the gate strong five years ago, the most recent being 2019’s “Homesick.” Last year he released a more pop-oriented single, “Be Like That,” as a collaboration with Swae Lee and Khalid, and the genre-stretching collab reached the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Joining Brown on the jaunt are a couple of artists who also have No. 1 country hits under the belt, Jordan Davis (who topped the chart with 2019’s “Slow Dance in a Parking Lot”) and Chase Rice (who made it to the top in 2018 with “Eyes on You”). Davis will play the initial dates on the tour as the middle act, giving up that spot to Rice at the beginning of 2022.
Rounding out the bill as opening act throughout the entire tour will be the trio Restless Road. Brown recently enthused to PvNew about the group as he announced the trio had been signed to a new label, 1021 Entertainment, he’s started up as a joint venture with Sony Nashville.
The tour starts Oct. 1 in Sacramento at the Golden 1 Center. Los Angeles gets the second stop as Brown and company hit the Staples Center, a venue he previously sold out, on Oct. 2. Other dates include a Brooklyn gig Nov. 5 at Barclays Center, and a return to the New York area on Jan. 15 at Madison Square Garden — neither of which he’s headlined before — before the 35-city outing wraps Feb. 4, 2022 at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena.
Registration for pre-sale tickets begins today, with a general on-sale happening April 16 at kanebrownlive.
Brown is up for two honors at the Academy of Country Music Awards April 18, including one for his country-pop crossover project “Mixtape Vol. 1” and another for his music video “Worldwide Beautiful.” He’s been announced to perform on the CBS telecast as well.
