Lexington fall music preview: Tyler Childers, Margo Price, Jack Harlow and the Eagles
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Ever notice how life becomes amplified when fall rolls around? The air is crisper, the colors are bolder and the sounds are a lot more electric.
In regard to the latter, they are also more plentiful. The autumn months traditionally accelerate the level of concert traffic through Lexington.
This season, which unofficially shifts from summer to fall with the arrival of Labor Day — in other words, this weekend — will be no different.
The seasonal bounty of live music begins with the wake-up-the-neighbors charge of Dinosaur Jr. at The Burl on Sept. 2 and will roar through the holidays with a sold-out two-night New Year’s homecoming run (Dec. 30-31) at Rupp Arena by Lawrence County hero Tyler Childers.
So why is autumn a true harvest time for concert activity? One might explain it by the population jolt experienced every August triggered by the return of the University of Kentucky’s 30,000-plus student population, thus awakening the city from comparative slumber during the summer. Turns out the reasons aren’t that simple.
“The main reason is that all these bands are coming off of summer festivals,” said Cannon Armstrong, co-owner of The Burl. “The festival season has ended. The only thing still out there that is kind of an anomaly is Bourbon and Beyond (the massive four-day, multi-megastar festival set for Sept. 14-17 in Louisville.) Bands are starting their fall tours in September, October and November. That’s why summer is always kind of a down time for us. Bands are playing so many festivals. That’s why you see so much music in the fall. Everybody is getting out on the road and mapping out their own course.”
Brian Sipe, general manager of Central Bank Center, which oversees Rupp and the Opera House, said he has no documented proof that the fall is traditionally busier than any other season for live entertainment. He agrees, though, that both venues will be carrying on what have already been especially active concert years for the rest of 2023.
“I don’t have any hard data to say I could agree or disagree as to whether falls are generally busier,” he said. “But this fall is definitely busy. There are a lot of people on the road right now. Things are especially busy for Rupp.”
In September alone, Rupp will host rock stalwarts Guns N’ Roses (on Sept. 6), celebrity comedian Dave Chappelle (Sept. 12), country star Parker McCollum (Sept. 15) and ongoing pop phenom the Jonas Brothers (Sept. 26.) Rounding out the year will be country sensation Jelly Roll (Oct. 10), ’70s rock juggernauts the Eagles and Steely Dan (Nov. 14) and a sold-out Rupp debut by Louisville hip-hop champion Jack Harlow (Dec. 3.)
Kentucky rapper Jack Harlow coming to Lexington’s Rupp Arena on six-stop state tour
But the real fall harvest will be hitting the Opera House with over a dozen performances in the coming month featuring the blues/soul veterans of The Robert Cray Band (Sept. 7), multi-genre pianist and song stylist Bruce Hornsby (Sept. 9), guitarist and Police alumnus Andy Summers (Sept. 13), Americana mainstay the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (Sept. 14, in a show postponed from last year), rock raconteur Henry Rollins (Sept 16), country renegade Brothers Osborne (Sept. 20), comedian Trae Crowder (Sept. 29, a show postponed from July) and ’60s pop faves Herman’s Hermits featuring Peter Noone (Sept. 30).
“We will have had more event days this year at the Opera House than we’ve ever had dating back to 1976,” Sipe said. “We’ve increased the local events by 22 days and increased the national touring shows by about the same amount.
“We’re trying to bring a diverse portfolio over there. The Opera House doesn’t even seat a thousand people, which is sometimes a challenge for certain acts to come in and we don’t have the capacity, but I think we have definitely been holding our own.”
The best fall news of all regarding the Opera House is that renovations to its balcony, which disrupted a few summer events, are now complete.
Lexington Opera House cancels second show; balcony repairs could take 3 weeks
“We had to do some renovation with the balcony level,” Sipe said. “There is kind of an overhang we keep a lot of the lights on. Just with the weight of the lights that we have to put up there, we had to upgrade to support that. That’s all done. You won’t really see a difference from what it was in the past. But underneath, there has been some more support that’s gone in there to hold that level up.”
While the Sept. 2 performance by Dinosaur Jr and a Sept. 15 outing by Godspeed You! Black Emperor are the hard rock highlights at The Burl in September, the club is also debuting a weekend-long festival between those shows designed to highlight the Americana music that had been long been a calling card for the Distillery District club. Titled the Burl County Fair, the event will make use of the venue’s full parking lot space to host bills headlined by Madison Cunningham and Rayland Baxter (Sept. 8), Hayes Carll and the Del McCoury Band (Sept. 9) and Margo Price, S.G. Goodman and Black Joe Lewis (Sept. 10.)
“We’ve always wanted a marquee, one weekend mini-festival on our property just because our property is so uniquely set up for this sort of experience,” Armstrong said. “Then we got to this idea of wanting something kind of small-towney that The Burl could tie into our roots — something that’s more in our bread-and-butter genre of Americana.
“Oftentimes, when you get into the city, an event like this gets city-fied. That’s not a bad thing, but we really wanted to try to stick to something that brought the smalltown feel to people where they don’t have to drive to, say. Mount Sterling. All these counties around us have this small festival thing locked down. But then, the music there is never the focus. It’s always some other thing, whether it’s Court Days or the Chicken Festival. Whatever it is, music is not the focus. That’s where we really wanted our focus to be.”
Late fall bookings for The Burl include the popular folk duo The Milk Carton Kids (Sept. 19), Louisville pop merchants Houndmouth (Sept. 22), warhorse songwriter James McMurtry (Sept. 27), bluegrass staple Town Mountain (Oct. 7), Americana rock renegade John R. Miller (Nov. 18) and progressive country troubadour Brent Cobb (Nov. 30.)
“Lexington is just so incredibly diverse to be the kind of city that it is. Louisville has a greater number of people and is such a massive city that you couldn’t pull something this off there. Lexington has the ability to do this. You feel like you’re in the farmland still. Take a right and go down Manchester and you’re in the most beautiful horse farms in the world. So it’s just like, ‘We’ve got to play up to that.’”
Lexington music venues, ticket info
▪ For information on live music events at Rupp Arena, 430 W. Vine, go to rupparena.com/events/all.
▪ For concerts at the Lexington Opera House, 401 W. Short, go to lexingtonoperahouse.com/events.
▪ For performances at The Burl, 375 Thompson Rd., go to theburlky.com/shows/.
