Go See Joshua Ray Walker on His “Ain’t Dead Yet” Tour
He’s one of the greatest singers of our era. It’s darn near operatic what he can do with his incredible range and yodel. His songcraft is superlative, matching or surpassing peers at the very peak of the discipline. His guitar playing is also great, and he’s played lead for others in the past. And whether performing solo or with a full band, he can fill any sized venue with sound and sincerity at a superior level that leaves audiences not just entertained, but fulfilled.
He’s Joshua Ray Walker, and only someone uninitiated with the kind of power he can conjure on stage would pass up an opportunity to see him live, especially after we almost lost him in 2023 due to Cancer.
Walker is readying the release of his new album Ain’t Dead Yet on May 29th, and will meet the release with a world tour. If you haven’t been paying attention to world events lately, gas prices are ridiculous, making it even harder for musicians to square with rigorous touring schedules. All the more reason to not pass up an opportunity to see Walker if he’s rolling though your town.
But don’t just do it out of guilt, or to “support live music,” or because we almost lost him a couple of years ago. Go see Joshua Ray Walker on tour for yourself. You will walk away confidently assured it was the best use of your time and money, exchanging them for a forever memory of seeing one of the most enthralling performers of our era.
To purchase tickets, go to joshuaraywalker.com/tour.
Ain’t Dead Yet Tour Dates:
May 26, 2026 – Knuckleheads Saloon – Kansas City, MO
May 27, 2026 – Off Broadway – St. Louis, MO
May 28, 2026 – Schubas – Chicago, IL
May 29, 2026 – Turf Club – St Paul, MN
May 30, 2026 – Appleton Beer Factory – Appleton, WI
Jun 3, 2026 – Mercury Lounge – New York, NY
Jun 4, 2026 – Iron Horse Music Hall – Northampton, MA
Jun 5, 2026 – Middle East (Upstairs) – Cambridge, MA
Jun 6, 2026 – MilkBoy – Philadelphia, PA
Jun 7, 2026 – Pearl Street Warehouse – Washington, DC
Jun 30, 2026 – Kulttuuritehdas Korjaamo – Helsinki, Finland
Jul 1, 2026 – GLive Lab – Tampere, Finland
Jul 3, 2026 – Byscenen – Trondheim, Norway
Jul 5, 2026 – Blårock – Tromsø, Norway
Jul 8, 2026 – Wiese – Lillehammer, Norway
Jul 10, 2026 – Norsk Country-Treff – Breim, Norway
Jul 12, 2026 – Ole Bulle Scene – Bergen, Norway
Jul 14, 2026 – Tou Scene – Stavanger, Rogaland
Jul 17, 2026 – John Dee – Oslo, Norway
Jul 18, 2026 – Pustervik – Gothenburg, Sweden
Jul 21, 2026 – Debaser – Stockholm, Stockholm County
Jul 22, 2026 – Garage Bar – Höganäs, Skåne County
Jul 23, 2026 – Biljardkompaniet – Kristianstad, Sweden
Jul 24, 2026 – Mojo – Copenhagen, Denmark
Jul 26, 2026 – Freideck Kantine – Cologne, Germany
Jul 28, 2026 – The Lower Third – London, England
Jul 29, 2026 – The Deaf Institute – Manchester, United Kingdom
Jul 30, 2026 – The Hug and Pint – Glasgow, Scotland
Aug 1, 2026 – Whelan’s (Upstairs) – Dublin, Ireland
Sep 9, 2026 – Bluebird Theater – Denver, CO
Sep 10, 2026 – The Rialto – Casper, WY
Sep 11, 2026 – Live From the Divide – Livingston, MT
Sep 12, 2026 – Live From the Divide – Livingston, MT
Sep 13, 2026 – The Pub Station – Billings, MT
Sep 15, 2026 – The State Room – Salt Lake City, UT
Sep 16, 2026 – Neurolux – Boise, ID
Sep 17, 2026 – The District Bar – Spokane, WA
Sep 18, 2026 – Tractor Tavern – Seattle, WA
Sep 19, 2026 – Mississippi Studios – Portland, OR
Sep 22, 2026 – Folsom Saloon – Folsom, CA
Sep 24, 2026 – Troubadour – West Hollywood, CA
Sep 25, 2026 – The Rebel Lounge – Phoenix, AZ
Sep 26, 2026 – Meow Wolf – Santa Fe, NM
Oct 8, 2026 – Chickie Wah Wah – New Orleans, LA
Oct 9, 2026 – Standard Deluxe – Waverly, AL
Oct 10, 2026 – Vinyl – Atlanta, GA
Oct 11, 2026 – The Charleston Pour House – Charleston, SC
Oct 13, 2026 – Radio Room – Greenville, SC
Oct 14, 2026 – The Pour House Music Hall – Raleigh, NC
Oct 15, 2026 – The Ramkat – Winston-Salem, NC
Oct 16, 2026 – The Grey Eagle – Asheville, NC
Oct 17, 2026 – Open Chord Music – Knoxville, TN
Oct 18, 2026 – Songbirds – Chattanooga, TN
Oct 22, 2026 – Skinny Dennis – Nashville, TN
Oct 24, 2026 – Hernando’s Hideaway – Memphis, TN
Oct 25, 2026 – White Water Tavern – Little Rock, AR
May 26, 2026 @ 6:19 pm
Cole Chaney just cut his booking agent and said he’d only do local shows for the time being.
Drayton Farley just cancelled a run a shows due to low sales.
Obviously, we all saw JRW’s instagram post from the weekend.
Independent country music is as popular as ever. I don’t get why these incredible acts are barely hanging on. Bums me out.
May 26, 2026 @ 6:29 pm
I have a theory beyond a bad underlying economy and high gas prices that I hope to share more in-depth here very soon. But I’ll just say this as a member of the media: the implosion of local media and music publicity is at least partly to blame here. Media outlets need to step up and start offering more tour support as opposed to chasing celebrity gossip clicks.
May 26, 2026 @ 6:46 pm
Ella Langley sucked all the air out of the room.
May 26, 2026 @ 7:01 pm
You clearly have a better view of the industry than most, and especially me in a small market lucky to catch as many acts as we do. Something feels different right now. I saw Tommy Prine a week and a 1/2 ago and I’d be surprised if there were 25 people in the entire theatre in Baton Rouge.
May 26, 2026 @ 7:21 pm
This is similarly anecdotal, but my wife sells clothes on Poshmark as a side hustle to her day job and in the last month orders have…just stopped.
The President can lie all he wants to the American people about the state of the economy, but the evidence is pretty clear that folks ain’t experiencing what he is trying to sell.
May 26, 2026 @ 7:07 pm
Trigger, I anxiously await your article on this.
May 26, 2026 @ 7:25 pm
I think this is where local radio is sorley missed. Active listeners and DJ’s helped create markets that aided in touring.
May 26, 2026 @ 7:38 pm
You used to have tour publicists that reached out to national outlets like Saving Country Music to push the tour. Then they would reach out to local outlets to do features on artists touring through and to make sure the dates were on calendars. Then you had local radio that played the songs, did ticket giveways, partnered with local venues to promote their calendar. Now everything relies on social media, and if the algorithm isn’t feeding it to you, you never see it.
Nobody reached out to me about the Joshua Ray Walker tour, or the Cole Chaney or Drayton Farley tour. Granted, there’s so few outlets left that promote tours, it might be worth a publicist. But then you’re cooking your own goose before the tour even starts.
Specifically, Joshua Ray Walker is also starting his tour before the release of the album. This is what hurt Post Malone too. Once the album is released, that will help stir interest.
May 27, 2026 @ 10:15 am
Beyond just the algorithm, I think more and more you are seeing a not insubstantial number of folks turning off or deleting their social media accounts. Is it some massive number? No, but it is still a large enough group that I would think artists would want to tap into them.
I can’t view an Instagram post since Meta makes it so you MUST have an account with them to be able to view it. X/Twitter/Elon-ville takes a similar approach now.
I would strongly advocate for artists to diversify where they are posting these announcements. I get their is an investment there, but even just doing something where you post to a more “open” platform like YouTube seems like a better gamble than only posting stuff on walled off platforms like X and IG.
I suspect what also has hit JRW is not only did he announce this tour BEFORE his next album comes out, the last album he did release never gained much traction (the one about literal stuff). So sort of a double knock coming out of the gate, piled on a failing economy and rising social angst.
May 26, 2026 @ 8:40 pm
Working class money is tight right now for obvious reasons. There are artists and venues succeeding right now, it just takes a little more work than it used to. I just put tickets on sale for Mo Pitney at Ragamuffin Hall, and was shocked to see 75% of them go in the first two days. I didn’t expect that at all, because I’ve been watching the market like you are. I don’t know what the answer is, except that if you are an artist or a venue, you have to give the folks a great show 100% of the time. People will spend money on what they want, but you can’t stop people from not buying tickets. All the best to JRW.
May 26, 2026 @ 6:24 pm
I saw the instagram posts with his mother. He’s laying it all out, not just about what’s going on with him, but what seems to be going on in the live entertainment industry right now. He won’t be back around my neck of the woods until Oct, but I’ll be there. Tickets are only $26 a person for the NOLA show. Even if it takes a tank of gas, it’s by far the best priced show I’ve seen in a long time.
I hope he starts selling some tickets for these shows he has scheduled in the near future.
May 26, 2026 @ 7:17 pm
For those of us without an account on Zuckerbergs spy platform, care to loop us in?
May 26, 2026 @ 8:36 pm
His mom was with him “for levity” reading off the ticket count, to him, sold at each venue vs capacity for the next week of shows. The majority were around 70-80 (or worse) sold in 300-500 person capacity rooms from the numbers I remember. Hopefully they have picked up since he put that out there this weekend.
He was trying to drum up support and get people in the audience, but think he also pulled the idea from some other artists that seem to have noticed their ticket sales have fallen off a cliff lately
May 27, 2026 @ 10:17 am
Thanks for the rundown, appreciate it.
I have found ways around viewing stuff posted to X (Nitter) and Facebook still seems to allow you to view posts signed out, but Instagram is awful at that. If you aren’t signed in or have an account on the platform you can’t view squat.
May 27, 2026 @ 10:49 am
on Instagram if you have the direct link to the post you can usually see it without an account. It might be different on phone vs computer.
May 26, 2026 @ 6:25 pm
We just saw him in Glasgow, KY on May 15. It was a great show, but a shame how poorly attended it was. The next night, he was playing at the Grand Ole Opry.
May 26, 2026 @ 6:43 pm
Maybe he could go on Hook.
May 26, 2026 @ 8:24 pm
Pure poetry.
May 26, 2026 @ 9:57 pm
I happily bought my ticket a couple of months ago at another show at Knuckleheads here in Kansas City. And I was happily in the audience tonight along with a friend, enjoying the heck (pardon my language) out of the entire show. Start to finish. He is so tremendously talented. He never fails to knock my socks off.
It sucked that the venue was half empty. Or half full, as the case may be. He’s sold out previous performances here. I had the pleasure of speaking with JRW after the show. He’s so friendly and generous with his time for his fans. He was at the merch counter signing swag and albums while posing for photographs with his fans. Anyway…he drove all the way from Dallas to Kansas City today in a minivan, so he was obviously a little worn out. But you would never know that from the energy and enthusiasm he poured into his performance.
May 27, 2026 @ 5:35 am
We are going to see more and more of this as the economy continues to work against the working class. I was going to get tickets to the Turnpike Troubadours show in NH but I had a scheduling conflict so I couldn’t make it. Turns out they cancelled the show due to low ticket sales. I have tickets to Sierra Ferrell at the end of the summer and it’s the only show I am going to this year. I normally have 4 or more shows in a summer that I go to but the cost for tickets, ticketmaster fees, venue fees, drinks, food, parking etc. has gotten out of control so I cut back.
May 27, 2026 @ 9:13 pm
Yeah, as a veteran I get emails from Vet Tix, which is a nonprofit that gives out free tickets to various events. Here in Colorado if a local concert at even Red Rocks doesn’t sell out they’ll often donate those tickets, they probably get a tax write off or something, and I was thrown off when I saw tics for the Turnpike’s show down in Colorado Springs pop up.
May 28, 2026 @ 8:31 am
They used to call that “papering the house.”
May 27, 2026 @ 5:41 am
I don’t think “Blue Dot Fever” is due to any one thing bit accumulation of many factors. Consumer prices, especially gasoline, play a role. I also think ticket prices for all forms of entertainment has reached a point the consumer are fighting back by saying no. I also think who the demographic of the fans matters. Artists like Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan have many younger fans who still have disposable income and can still sell. Artists who appeal to older fans or fans with more financial responsibilities are struggling. I know the odd lineup of Whiskey Myers and the Black Crowes who appeal to an older crowd are struggling to sell tickets. They also picked venues to big for their popularity which is also important. I also think to some degree there is an oversaturation of shows. Making an assumption here, but since touring is the major revenue stream these days, artists are touring more. I know in my area, which is not a country music haven, especially independent country, Whiskey Myers, Jinks and Turnpike have come through multiple times in the past 3 years even though they rarely sell out.
May 27, 2026 @ 6:46 am
YEZZIR! Can and will see him in Chicago tomorrow, May 28, 2026!!! Great dude, story teller, singer & musician. Also what a range of styles and creative exploration of music. Certainly country, certainly not easily defined. JRE WILL NOT BE CONTAINED!!!!
May 28, 2026 @ 11:39 am
sorry. EDIT:
“JRW WILL NOT BE CONTAINED!!!!”
😉
June 6, 2026 @ 4:26 pm
JRE’S BRAINDEAD HOT TAKES WILL NOT BE CONTAINED! Looking forward to seeing JRW in Seattle this fall!
May 27, 2026 @ 10:41 am
mostly classic free market economics: more artists and less post-covid disposable income equals empty seats. other factors come into play, no doubt, but that explains 90%.
May 27, 2026 @ 4:47 pm
“Classic free market economics” would also provide consumers with multiple ticket seller options regardless of venue which would either drive down prices for said consumers OR provide them with a better experience.
And we all know that isn’t the case when purchasing tickets for live music/entertainment in 2026.
May 27, 2026 @ 1:46 pm
Was on the fence about attending his concert in St. Paul on 5-29. Just bought tickets. wife’s birthday, album release and concert at a local venue. It was meant to be.
May 28, 2026 @ 5:06 am
“You have chosen wisely.” The wife and you are gonna have a good time. My wife and I have seen him twice, got to chat a bit, and come away entertained and probably better folks as a result. There is wisdom in this man whose heart is even bigger than his talents, which there are many.
Happy birthday to your wife!!!!
May 27, 2026 @ 2:16 pm
I think the ridiculous prices from many mainstream acts have had a chilling effect on the concert business in general.
May 27, 2026 @ 4:56 pm
To an extent I could see that. But I also don’t know how many JRW fans are also folks paying through the nose for Morgan Wallen tickets.
I do think you might have a mindset setting in amongst consumers that live music is just out of their grasp financially OR the methods Axs and Ticketmaster have put in place to “fight scalpers” makes the experience worse for all and people just give up.
But I think mostly it is a shitty, shitty, shitty economy with a darker forecast every week for the short and mid-term outlook of the economy. Lot of stupid people in the world, but even a big chunk of those folks see the prices at the grocery store and at the pump and are like “yeah, guess no movie or concert this month”.
Live entertainment (be it eating out, going to a ball game or a concert) is usually one of the first items people slash in their budgets. The next canary will be if you start seeing Netflix and Disney report declining subscriptions to their streaming services. If people can’t go out for entertainment they will prioritize options that allow them to stay in. Once they start cutting into those “stay in” entertainment options….yikes.
But don’t worry folks, the AI industrial revolution will save us all!
May 27, 2026 @ 3:12 pm
JRW is the fucking man. Every single time I hear him perform “Voices” live, in concert, I cry. Money, emotions, and time well spent!! Loving watching his lifestyle transformation on Instagram. Love you, buddy! Diet, exercise, and achieving goals and results are totally fun and exciting. Keep being beautiful, Joshua!
May 27, 2026 @ 7:48 pm
Saw him a few years back at our local 4th of July Festival. He was the opener of one of the nights. Sadly not many people were there, great show though! Talked to him afterwards and bought a CD.
May 28, 2026 @ 5:17 am
“This ol’ white van, is filled with sand
From a beach half a country away
I’m grinding it out down in Birmingham
For 20 people on a Tuesday
Got a checkered past, a half full glass
A helluva long way to go
I learned enough lessons to keep on betting
On the only damn thing I know
If you wanna be strong
You gotta lift heavy stones”
– Joshua Ray Walker | Heavy Stones
https://youtu.be/uhOp04JxdlQ?si=LXlzYPTFAxXK1JR3
May 28, 2026 @ 7:27 am
Last time he rolled through here he filled the place. Go see him if you can. The one guy plus a guitar formula generally isn’t my favorite, but he’s mindblowing. I’d love to catch him with his full band sometime.
For me, I find myself going to less shows these days. As I age, it’s a big dang deal to be up until midnight on a weekday. If it’s early in the week, it wrecks not only the day after but carries on all week.
More of my local venues have started to use LiveNation for tickets. For me, that’s another barrier — it doesn’t stop me from seeing someone I really want to see, it does stop me from doing more casual “check em out” concerts.
May 29, 2026 @ 2:53 am
Damn! it’s all northern Europe, but i’ll try to go nonethless. He’s to good not go. This kind of tours absolutely deserve better publicity.