In early April, Kane Brown’s “Blessed & Free” tour became one of the first new indoor roadshows announced for 2021.
Following more than a year of the music industry mired in canceled, postponed and rescheduled concerts — with many still being shifted to 2022 — the announcement was a beacon.
Normalcy isn’t yet absolute, but Brown’s confident assertion that a 29-city tour — he’ll be the first country artist to headline every NBA basketball arena on the same run — was rewarded with reasonably strong ticket sales out of the gate.
The breakthrough country star behind the hits “One Thing Right,” “Homesick” and his current release with Chris Young, “Famous Friends,” has spent much of his youth in rural Georgia, specifically Rossville and Fort Oglethorpe. So, his Oct. 24 performance at State Farm Arena serves as a homecoming. When Brown launched his inaugural headlining tour in 2019 at Infinite Energy Arena, he brought his Nana, a significant presence in his upbringing, onstage for a hug, and talked frequently about the effect of his Georgia years.
Joining him for the 35-city “Blessed & Free” run are Jordan Davis (“Need to Not”) and Restless Road (“Took One Look at Her Momma”). They are inaugural signees to his 1021 Entertainment label.
In separate interviews, Davis and the Restless Road trio — Zach Beeken, Colton Pack and Garrett Nichols — talked about their excitement to return to the road and their hopefulness that fans will feel comfortable in embracing a major indoor production.
State Farm Arena said in a statement that COVID-19 protocols for shows scheduled later this year haven’t been determined yet and “information from our state and local officials, as well as health experts” will determine the approach to each event.
Currently, tickets are being sold as per usual — i.e., no pods or social distancing — for the Brown concert.
“The few shows I’ve played, (the venues have) done such a good job of meeting the guidelines and all of the shows have gone off without a hitch,” Davis said. “I do feel like it’s going to be a night-by-night situation, but the biggest thing for me is that I know how important music is to a lot of people, and I’m ready to get it back.”
Credit: Courtesy UMG Nashville
Credit: Courtesy UMG Nashville
Davis, who releases the EP “Buy Dirt” on May 21 played the Buckhead Theatre on his last tour in 2019 and also shot the video for his duet with Julia Michaels, “Cool Anymore,” near the venue. The title track features Leesburg native Luke Bryan.
But opening for Brown in major arenas — including the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Madison Square Garden in New York, AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami and the TD Garden in Boston — prompts both anticipation and anxiety.
“I’ve been reaching out to some friends who have played those big rooms to ask what to expect, and they’ve told me ways to approach my stage movements,” Jordan said, and then added with a laugh, “You can’t just sing to the first five rows!”
Two of the guys in Restless Road — Beeken and Pack — met in 2013 while auditioning as solo singers for “The X-Factor.” (Brown also tried out for the show that year.) Producer Simon Cowell stitched the group together — a la One Direction and Fifth Harmony –— with a different third member, Andrew Scholz, who left in 2015 and was replaced by Nichols, a season 13 contestant on “American Idol.”
Credit: Matthew Berinato
Credit: Matthew Berinato
After a series of personnel changes and unfulfilled record deals, the trio split and returned to regular jobs — Beeken and Nichols as bartenders in Nashville and Pack in construction in West Virginia. But after Brown saw a video of Pack covering his hit, “Good As You,” he persuaded the threesome to resume their music careers and signed them to his own imprint.
In late February 2020, Restless Road released a four-song EP and performed their single “Take Me Home” with Brown on “The Today Show.”
Momentum was brewing. And then…
“We had a major roadblock on the restless road,” Beeken said with a wry laugh. “We were on Cloud Nine and looking forward to that moment for a while, and then we were so bummed, like everyone else on planet Earth. We’ve had so many setbacks in our career and know it’s just part of the game, and you have to keep going. We spent as much time as we could (during the pandemic) writing songs and having fun online with Instagram and TikTok.”
Their current single, “Took One Look at Her Momma,” built around their sturdy, Eagles-influenced harmonies, has gained traction on the Apple Music charts; Restless Road plans to release material online as it’s ready so fans can be familiar with new songs by the time they start their tour with Brown.
After recently visiting radio stations around the country with Brown — their first performances in more than a year — the trio is pumped.
“It was such a rush to just do those little performances,” Pack said. “I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like to be back on stage with 18,000 people.”
Davis, too, is eager to share a stage with his old buddy Brown.
“I’ve never been more excited to play music, I’ll tell you that,” he said. “Take something you love away for that long and you’re itching to get it back.”
CONCERT PREVIEW
Kane Brown
With Jordan Davis and Restless Road. 7 p.m. Oct. 24. $40.50-$379. State Farm Arena, One State Farm Drive, Atlanta. 1-800-745-3000, ticketmaster.com.
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