Turnpike Troubadours Announce New Shows, Unique Houston Presale
If you’ve been following the saga of the Turnpike Troubadours comeback and the crashed websites and ticketing merchants left in the wake of recent show announcements, you know just how hard it’s been to secure tickets, let alone for venues to keep up. I’m not sure any of us at the moment truly appreciate just how big this band got during their indefinite hiatus over the last couple of years.
On Tuesday (2-8), the Turnpike Troubadours announced two more new shows. The first is a third date at Billy Bob’s Texas in Fort Worth on April 21st to go along with previously-announced shows at the “World’s Largest Honky Tonk” on April 22nd and 23rd. Tickets to Billy Bob’s will go on sale Friday, February 11th at 10 am Central. And remember, the first time Turnpike shows went on sale Billy Bob’s said they had higher ticket demand than any time in the last five years and crashed their website. So be patient if you’re trying to secure tickets.
The second date will be at the White Oak Music Hall on May 7th on the lawn, and to ensure tickets get into the hands of actual fans as opposed to ticketing bots, the venue will be hosting an in-person only presale at the venue Wednesday, February 9th starting at 5pm.
According to the White Oak Music Hall, fans should:
Come by White Oak Music Hall anytime between 5 PM and 8 PM, where staff will give you a colored wristband that identifies your presale group. Have some beers, hang out and enjoy music from Charlie and the Regrets. No need to line up or wait for tickets, just enjoy the night!
At 8 PM, we’ll start calling out wristband colors by group to begin distributing promo codes. Once your group is called, you’ll be handed a UNIQUE PROMO CODE and QR Code that allows you to purchase tickets online anytime until Thursday at 8 AM (Promo code is limited to 2 tickets per code).
Pro Tip: Don’t be late! This in-person presale is limited to the first 1,500 people to show up, who will be GUARANTEED the opportunity to buy tickets!
Sound a bit complicated? Well, it kind of is. But you probably won’t see scalpers jumping through all of these hoops just for the chance at two tickets, while desperate Turnpike Troubadours fans very well may. “Turnpike tickets have been selling out fast and we want to help local fans get their hands on them,” says White Oak.
General sale for the White Oak Music Hall show commences Friday, February 11th at 10 am Central.
Good luck!
February 8, 2022 @ 7:21 pm
Hardly can call it a presale. If 1500 fans show up and buy two tickets each, they’ll sell out the 3000 capacity venue, leaving no regular onsale
February 8, 2022 @ 8:27 pm
That’s how all pre-sales have been working, especially for smaller venues – they are only “pre-sale” in name. And why not? If a venue gets a chance to sell out all its inventory, why should they wait? I was part of a pre-sale in 2018 for Tyler Childers at 123 Pleasant Street in Morgantown WV which operated the same – they sold out all their tickets during the “pre-sale promotion.” The reports from the this Turnpike tour is no tickets are getting out of the pre-sale.
With that said, this promotion by White Oak Music Hall is genius. Make it an event. People have been crying for the days you had to line up on a sidewalk over night for tickets, here you can do that under better conditions and grab a beer. With that said, I can’t see many other venues doing this in the near future due to staffing issues.
February 8, 2022 @ 8:48 pm
I’ve never been part of a presale that sells all their tickets during the presale, let alone one that’s pretty much exclusive to locals… and I go to a lot of concerts, big and small, or at least I used to. Are we heading towards a ‘locals only’ concert environment? Is that really what we want?
February 8, 2022 @ 9:08 pm
How do you know the shows that you have attended wouldn’t have sold all their inventory during the pre-sale if they could? Are all the shows you attend sellouts?
February 8, 2022 @ 9:27 pm
How do you know “that’s how all presales have been working”. Are you a concert promoter? You provided one example. I can’t name one example of a show that was sold out before the regular on-sale happens. All I know is that it’s not good practice to have a pre-sale and a regular on-sale, but sell all the tickets during the pre-sale. But that’s just me.
February 8, 2022 @ 9:33 pm
Go to comment section of any of the last 5 articles Trig has written about this Turnpike Troubadour Tour and you’ll find many testimonies that tickets did not get out of the pre-sale.
I usually don’t purchase tickets to concerts until day of on the secondary market, so that Childers show in 2018 is my only example from personal experience.
March 3, 2022 @ 7:58 am
The following was a message posted by the Beaver Dam Amphitheater a few minutes ago concerning tickets almost all being sold out during the presale for Hank Williams Jr. and Kentucky Headhunters (they are about to sell are their ticket inventory during the pre-sale and none may not be available for the general sale – a practice that’s becoming the norm despite you not wanting to believe):
LAWN GA1 Tickets / Section 7 are all that remain and they are selling fast. These tickets are $74.50 each (plus fees) and this section allows fans to bring small folding chairs and/or blankets. These are great tickets on the lower portion of the lawn section with excellent views of the stage. There is really not a bad spot at the DAM.
We’ll be at maximum capacity for this one. Additional tickets will not become available. Once they’re gone… they’re gone.
—>The presale continues through 11:59 pm today. Tickets go on sale to the general public (no password required) tomorrow morning.<—
****ETIX is the ONLY authorized seller of tickets for the DAM. If you are purchasing from another website you are either buying from a reseller or a scalper.****
https://www.etix.com/ticket/p/3333962/hank-williams-jr-beaver-dam-beaver-dam-amphitheater
February 9, 2022 @ 6:25 am
Love it
February 9, 2022 @ 10:38 am
Sounds good to me. I hope some of my local venues will adopt this idea.
February 8, 2022 @ 7:23 pm
Sounds like a good solution, especially for the venue that’s making money twice, once for presale, once for the show. I’m curious: would every band take that gig to sell tickets to another band’s show? I know some people who will actually pay a venue to play at that venue, but nothing surprises me in the current shiteshow.
February 9, 2022 @ 7:05 am
Speaking as a small-timer playing primarily to 200 cap rooms: If I’m getting paid appropriately, and my music is somewhat similar to the band folks are buying tickets for, then hell yeah!! Getting yourself in front of 1500 folks that are already predisposed to like your kind of music is a great gig in for someone in my situation, assuming compensation in line with what I’m normally getting.
February 9, 2022 @ 5:45 pm
Good way to look at it!
February 8, 2022 @ 10:21 pm
We need to go back to the day you went to the headshop/record store and waited in line to get ticks to your favorite band….
February 8, 2022 @ 11:11 pm
This is what the White Oak is doing. But instead of making people stand in line for 3 hours, entertain them, serve them beer, and make it a pleasurable experience, and expose them to a cool local band. This idea may be groundbreaking.
February 9, 2022 @ 3:57 am
I spent the night in line in a Sears parking lot many times to get tickets to DFW area shows.
February 13, 2022 @ 8:16 pm
May have been cool when I was younger, but I’m much older now and want no part of that torture again.
February 9, 2022 @ 2:49 am
Charlie and the Regrets are licking their chops right now. What an opportunity! Good for them and good for the venue to be thinking about ways to avoid the horrid machine that has been allowed to flourish lately.
February 9, 2022 @ 6:17 am
these guys are such twats about the tickets, just sell the tickets before the one guy relapses
February 9, 2022 @ 7:12 am
So your name “j” stands for jerk. Smart choice.
February 13, 2022 @ 1:16 pm
my first instinct is to tell you to F-off but then anyone that is shallow or hateful enough to make a comment about someone who has done all that he can to save his life, his family and marriage and return to a profession that he loves – must be a pretty miserable soul.
February 9, 2022 @ 8:14 am
I hope touring artists start doing something more to combat scalpers. As noted in the comments on Trig’s post for the Billy Strings Red Rocks show, we had 4 people on two devices each try for Thursday and Friday tickets (May 12th and 13) on the Wednesday and Thursday presales, in addition to the general sale last Friday. Myself and one other person managed to get through on Wednesday’s presale (I could only pick up 4 tickets for Thursday while another got 4 for Thursday and Friday); and then we all struck out during Thursday and Friday sales.
After that, a third show was posted for Mission Ballroom on 5/14 that had some unusual presale directions to avoid scalpers. We decided we’re good with what we got for Red Rocks; so didn’t go through that; but I would be interested to hear if people who struck out on Red Rocks tickets had an easier time getting the Mission Ballroom tickets. I’d also be curious to know how many tickets remained for the Red Rocks shows after the first two days of presales.
February 9, 2022 @ 9:03 am
I remember “camping out” at the main Ticketmaster in Dallas for tickets back in the day got second row Skynryd tickets once doing that so what white oak is doing is great especially for the local band playing the presale. Assuming Turnpike sells out a 3rd BBT show that is 18k in ticket sales. That makes Turnpike an arena worthy act. Pretty amazing for a independent band.
February 9, 2022 @ 11:29 am
Forget concerts, we need some album news from Turnpike.
February 9, 2022 @ 1:52 pm
The only shitty part of this is that out of towners can’t come. Cities get so much money from out of towners stimulating the economy. Hotels, restaurants, flights, etc…. I travel for concerts 1-2 times a year
I agree that something needs to happen to stop scalpers and bots but hope this isn’t the way.
February 9, 2022 @ 4:42 pm
I went to white oak when it first opened and loved the place. Wish I lived close enough to make it by
February 10, 2022 @ 7:55 am
I got the first code last night for tickets. Got there at 3:30 and there was a line of about 30 people. By the time the gates opened there were probably 300 in line. Looked to be anywhere from 800-1000 people there throughout the night. It was a decent event, met some cool folks in line and ended up hanging out with them all night. The outside lawn cap is 5k, they said only two tickets could be purchased but when you went to buy tickets it gave you the option to buy four of them so I’m interested to see what happens with that and then what happens on Friday.
February 10, 2022 @ 5:09 pm
How was the band?
February 14, 2022 @ 1:31 pm
The scalping issue is not a particularly hard problem to overcome. Independent venues have little problem accomplishing this. Comedy venues have had the answer for a very long time, all purchases final sale. Some have even done you have to have your name on the ticket to enter or you have to pick up your tickets in person day of show if you want to give them to somebody else. AXS has a negative incentive to crack down on this: they can undercharge for the tickets, from which the artists are paid from, and then realize more of the value of the ticket by letting scalpers buy and taking a second and third cut from the scalper an the new buyer in the form of service fees and percentage fees