The Hometown Show Is the Best Ticket a Band Sells

Rod Stewart spent this year saying goodbye on a tour he called One Last Time, and this week his heart made him mean it a little too soon. The 81-year-old cancelled the remaining shows of his North American farewell run after a coronary stent procedure, scrapping dates across Ohio and Illinois, shows in Mexico, and a six-night Caesars Palace stand so he can take four weeks to recover. He says he is deeply disappointed to miss them and already feeling better. The goodbye is on hold, which is the good news and the hard part in the same sentence.

This Week in Shows

Outside Lands turned into a cameo swap meet. Over three days in Golden Gate Park, Charli XCX came back after her own Friday headline set to join The Strokes on "Take It Or Leave It," Lucy Dacus pulled boygenius bandmate Julien Baker out for a duet, and PinkPantheress brought Troye Sivan up for "Rush." Turnstile, meanwhile, turned the Sutro stage into a field of simultaneous mosh pits across the weekend at Outside Lands. Julian Casablancas noted he and Charli put out albums on the same day last month, which is the kind of detail that makes a guest spot feel earned instead of booked.

The Chicks are touring Taking the Long Way at 20. They announced an expanded reissue and a run of anniversary dates opening Sept 30 in Detroit. This is the record they made after country radio blacklisted them, the one that answered the exile by sweeping the Grammys. The tour is a room to relive that in, and the fans who lived it the first time already have the date circled.

Guns N' Roses and Chris Stapleton traded stages in Toronto. Over two nights, Guns N' Roses pulled Stapleton out for a shared-vocal "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," then walked out during Stapleton's own set the next night in Toronto. Their only prior link was Stapleton opening for them in Nashville a decade ago. Cross-genre, unrepeatable, and gone by the time the lights came up.

The Venue Report

Charlotte got a rare piece of good venue news this month. The Neighborhood Theatre in NoDa reopened Aug 11 after an eight-week renovation, with new lighting and sound on both stages, a renovated balcony, and a new draft-beer bar. Night one back was a sold-out Franz Ferdinand show, which is a better way to cut a ribbon than a press release. In a summer that keeps taking mid-size rooms off the map, one came back sharper than it left. The regulars will feel that one personally.

Then

Forty years ago this month, on Aug 9, 1986, Freddie Mercury played his last show. It was the final night of Queen's Magic Tour, in front of at least 120,000 people, and nobody in that field knew they were watching a goodbye. He had five years left and never performed live with the band again. The footage still plays like a man who suspected the cameras were for later.

Fan Debate

The phones-at-shows fight got two fresh test cases in one week. A rookie band named Cortis, whose tour is literally called Put Your Phone Down, asked a packed U.S.-debut crowd to stop filming, and thousands kept recording anyway. The same week, Edinburgh International Festival went the other way and simply banned phones outright across every ticketed show, curtain-call photos aside. One asked nicely. One took the choice away. Where do you land: put it down yourself, or you paid so you'll film?

B-Sides

• Joan Jett called off the rest of 2026 after surgery on a fractured vertebra, scrapping fall dates so the 67-year-old can do physical therapy, with a promise of tremendous concerts to come. The road is hard on the people who paved it.
• Original Pittsburgh Winery is closing Aug 15, citing shifting audience habits, the loss half of the summer's open-one-door-close-another churn that reopened Charlotte the same week.
• MAMAMOO's U.S. reunion tour opens Aug 12 at UBS Arena, MAMAMOO's first full-group American run in years after a long stretch of solo work.
• Benson Boone postponed Sacramento citing health reasons with no new date yet, a reminder the cancellation wave isn't only an aging-artist story.

The Bit

The best surprise guest of the decade was a prank nine years in the making. At London's O2 in 2017, the Foo Fighters teased a cover, slid into the chords of "Never Gonna Give You Up," and wheeled out the actual Rick Astley to sing it, mashed against the riff of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," per NME's account of the night. Every act this week brought out a friend. Dave Grohl brought out the whole internet.

The best shows leave you somewhere specific: a room, a city, a night you can point to on a map. Go stand in the one a band came from before it belonged to everybody, and if you want more of those, we keep a place to write them down.

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See you at the show. Jake