On the heels of a successful tour that wrapped last December, JASON BONHAM’S LED ZEPPELIN EVENING (a.k.a. JBLZE) is back with another round of U.S. dates. The latest tour will be a first for JBLZE as it will focus on the 50th anniversary of the LED ZEPPELIN classic “Physical Graffiti”. The latest 21-city trek is billed as “An Evening With JBLZE Celebrating 50 Years Of Physical Graffiti”.
JBLZE has never done a tour that was centered around a specific LED ZEPPELIN album before as Bonham live celebrates all things about his father, drumming legend John Bonham. The show will feature all the selections from “Physical Graffiti” performed alongside numerous other LED ZEPPELIN classics. The tour kicks off on May 3 in Wallingford, Connecticut and runs across the country when it wraps May 31 in Los Angeles, California. Along the way, the tour will make stops in Wheeling, West Virginia (May 07),Nashville, Tennessee (May 15),Phoenix, Arizona (May 23) and San Diego, California (May 28),to name a few markets. Public on-sale for tickets with begin on Friday, February 28 and more information on all tickets and performances can be found at www.jasonbonham.net.
Jason said: “This is my favorite LED ZEPPELIN album of all time. Being able to celebrate it the way we are planning on this tour is something I am extremely excited about. I can’t wait for people to come out and see these shows and celebrate this extraordinary record with us. My goal is to play at least 50 shows to commemorate 50 years…And don’t worry there will be plenty of other songs that you also love played that night.”
Tour dates:
May 03 – Wallingford, CT – Toyota Oakdale Theatre
May 04 – Stamford, CT – Stamford Palace Theatre
May 06 – Syracuse, NY – Landmark Theatre
May 07- Wheeling, WV – Capitol Theatre
May 09 – North Kansas City, MO – VooDoo at Harrah’s Kansas City
May 10 – Tulsa, OK – The Cove Margaritaville at River Spirit Casino
May 11 – Waukee, IA – Vibrant Music Hall
May 13 – Milwaukee, WI – The Riverside Theater
May 15 – Nashville, TN – Ryman Auditorium
May 16 – Robinsonville, MS – Bluesville at Horseshoe Tunica
May 17 – St. Louis, MO – The Factory at the District
May 19 – Austin, TX – The Paramount Theatre
May 20 – Houston, TX – Bayou Music Center
May 21 – Dallas, TX – Majestic Theatre
May 23 – Phoenix, AZ – Celebrity Theatre
May 24 – Indio, CA – Fantasy Springs Resort Casino
May 25 – Saratoga, CA – The Mountain Winery
May 28 – San Diego, CA – Humphrey’s Concerts by the Bay
May 29 – Paso Robles, CA – Vina Robles Amphitheatre
May 30 – Henderson, NV – Green Valley Ranch Resort Spa & Casino – Backyard Amphitheater
May 31 – Los Angeles, CA – The Greek Theatre
In a December 2024 interview Terrie Carr of WDHA-FM 105.5 FM, the rock music station licensed to Dover and Morristown, New Jersey, Jason Bonham spoke about what it was like to perform in front of full houses with his LED ZEPPELIN EVENING show across North America last fall. He said: “I always find it’s a pinch-yourself moment because I look at it as I started this purely as a therapeutic way to get the LED out of me. After playing with the real McCoy, the real deal, in [December] 2007 [at London’s O2 arena], I remember when it stopped, it was a huge, ‘Now what?’ … Because I just spent six weeks with the [surviving LED ZEPPELIN] guys every day [in preparation for the London show]. Every day we were together, hanging out, telling stories. They would tell me things that I didn’t know — now I’m a grown-up — they would tell me all these different things. So, suddenly you feel part of it. And my mom said, ‘Are you gonna be okay when it stops?’ I’m, like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve got this.’ Because you’ve been given the keys to the kingdom, and you sat in the throne of the greatest rock and roll band in the world. So when it stopped, it was hard, I must say. And then when the idea came, ‘Why don’t you do a band, a tribute thing”, I’m, like, ‘Are you kidding me? I’ve just played with [the original guys]. I don’t wanna tarnish that.’ So it became more therapeutic. And I realized it’s about the fans. The reason why we’re still doing it, after I got over the my stories and me — ‘it’s about me and my dad’ — it’s not. It’s about our love for dad, me and everyone, because we all have stories of what he meant to us. I lost my dad; you lost your drummer. So that’s the only reason — the love and the passion that we do it and still do it. Because there’s a lot of other things that I like to do.”
Jason Bonham spent nearly a decade touring as JASON BONHAM’S LED ZEPPELIN EXPERIENCE before changing the band’s name to JASON BONHAM’S LED ZEPPELIN EVENING. Bonham later explained that the switch was prompted by a request from the LED ZEPPELIN camp, who wanted to use the “Experience” name for a project involving the archive of ZEP live recordings.
JASON BONHAM’S LED ZEPPELIN EXPERIENCE was formed in 2009 to pay tribute to Bonham‘s father, who died in 1980 at the age of 32. “It was meant to be part of my way of expressing my love for music and expressing myself with a tip of the hat to my father,” Jason told Mixdown in a 2017 interview. “Soon after doing the 28 shows that we did with an orchestra, everyone said, ‘You’re not going to stop now, are you? You haven’t been here, you haven’t played there…’ And so I said, ‘As long as you guys want me to do it, I’ll do it.’ It’s really fan-based. It’s not us and them; it’s about love for LED ZEPPELIN, and that’s how it’s grown, as a very honest, natural, fan-based show. You guys all knew him as Bonzo; I knew him as dad, and there’s a great interaction.”
Jason launched JASON BONHAM’S LED ZEPPELIN EXPERIENCE two years after taking part in LED ZEPPELIN‘s aforementioned one-off performance at London’s O2 Arena tribute concert for friend and Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun. The rare live set, which saw Jason behind the drums in place of his late father, was released in 2012 as “Celebration Day”.
He told the Chicago Tribune about JASON BONHAM’S LED ZEPPELIN EVENING: “We’re not LED ZEPPELIN. We are fans. We love the music. We give it 150 percent energy and time to make it as good as we can make it to give people that feeling and make people go back to their youth.
“I never wanted it to be we are just playing music. It had to be personal with stories to tell people what Dad was like at home. It’s nice to know that so many people love hearing that music played in a live environment.”
The performance includes LED ZEPPELIN favorites as well as deep cuts. For this year’s tour, JASON BONHAM’S LED ZEPPELIN EVENING has worked up a number of fresh inclusions on the setlist, such as “Friends”, “Achilles Last Stand” and the arrangement of “Dazed And Confused” from “The Song Remains The Same” concert movie.
“The hardest thing is picking the songs,” Bonham told the Chicago Tribune. ” “There’s more deeper songs — ‘In The Light’, ‘Friends’, ‘Four Sticks’ — songs that never got played live and never made it to a ZEPPELIN show. The list could go on for the more obscure ones that fans like to hear. Of course we still do ‘Kashmir’, ‘Stairway To Heaven’ and ‘What Is And What Should Never Be’. We started doing ‘Dancing Days’, ‘Houses Of The Holy’ and ‘That’s The Way’. This show is one of the most fun things to do because I get to play all this great music in front of people that really appreciate it.”
Photo credit: Frank Melfi (courtesy of PFA Media)
Source: blabbermouth.net
