As the ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the live music industry, enterprising artists and venues around the country are being forced to think outside the box when it comes to playing for an audience. The most recent innovative solution? Drive-in concerts, which have started springing up as an alternative to standing in a packed crowd to see your favorite musician.
From an underground show in Los Angeles to Keith Urban becoming the first major star to hop on the trend, Billboard has rounded up a list of drive-in concerts across the country since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak. We’ll update this list as more drive-in shows are announced.
June 27: Garth Brooks is hosting a concert at 300 drive-in theaters around the country. Tickets cost $100 per car/SUV, and go on sale June 19 at Ticketmaster. “This drive-in concert allows us all to get back to playing live music without the uncertainty of what would be the result to us as a community,” the country star said in a statement. “This is old school, new school, and perfect for the time we are in.”
June 13: The Davisson Brothers Band is playing outdoors at the Sunset Drive-In Theater in Meadowbrook, W.V. Tickets are $80 per car.
June 9: Electronic musician Marc Rebillet will embark on an eight-city Drive-In Tour, starting with back-to-back nights at a yet-to-be-announced venue in Baltimore, Md. From there, he’ll run through tour stops in Charlotte, N.C. (June 11); Indianapolis, Ind. (June 16); Kansas City, Miss. (June 18); Tulsa, Okla. (June 20) and Fort Collins, Colo. (June 22 & 23), before finishing off with shows in Fort Worth (June 26 & 27) and Houston, Tex. (June 28).
June 5: Alan Jackson kicks off his pair of Small Town Drive-In concerts at York Farms in Cullman, Ala. The following night, he plays the Oak Hollow Farm in Fairhope, Ala. Tickets are on sale now at AlanJacksonDriveIn.com.
June 4: Black Jacket Symphony will perform the first show of their Concerts From the Car series, and will focus on The Beatles’ Abbey Road. The event will take place at the Hoover Met Complex in Hoover, Ala., beginning at 8 p.m. local time. The band’s upcoming concerts will feature the music of Queen on June 11, Journey on June 18, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on June 25.
Eli Young Band will kick off the Concert in Your Car series at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Tex. The country act will be followed on subsequent nights by Whiskey Myers (June 5), Pat Green (June 6) and Josh Abbott Band & Kevin Fowler (June 7). Each artist will play two sets — at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. The entire concert series sold out within a matter of hours.
May 23: Kasim Sulton will perform two Saturday shows at the Tupelo Drive-In Music Hall in Derry, NH, one at noon and another at 3 pm. More info here.
May 16: New Hampshire music venue Tupelo Music Hall got creative on by reinventing itself as a drive-in concert experience. Rather than offer seating in the venue’s 700-seat theater, owner Scott Hayward built an outdoor stage for local artist Tim Theriault to play two sets of cover songs by everyone from Stevie Wonder and Aerosmith to the Allman Brothers Band and Chicago. Practicing the state’s socially distancing guidelines, attendees tuned in to a local FM radio station to listen to the 90-minute concert.
Duo Ross Snow and Justin Betz put together an acoustic drive-in show on for patrons at The Wooden Match, a local restaurant in West Bethlehem, Penn. Around 40 people reportedly showed up to the socially distanced concert and ordered takeout from their cars, though some left their vehicles to stand in the parking lot, causing debate over whether such events were safe without more stringent guidelines in place.
DJ D-Nice performed for first responders, who enjoyed the show from their cars, at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Fla.
May 15: Keith Urban surprised fans in Tennessee on Friday (May 15) with an unannounced drive-in show at Watertown’s Stardust Drive-In. The country star played the special concert as a thank you to roughly 200 front-line medical workers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, all of whom pulled up to the show in their cars.
May 7: Singer-songwriter Ben Ballinger played a drive-in show for a crowd of just 25 cars in an open field in Austin, Tex. The folk artist performed his entire set, which sold out in a matter of hours, via radio broadcast atop his SUV.
March 26: Local musicians in Los Angeles teamed up with nonprofit radio station Dublab for an underground, drive-in concert at Echo Park on March 26. Around 50 cars and 900 people total socially distanced at the show to hear indie artists Jeremiah Chiu, Celia Hollander, Ben Babbit and others perform from the safety of their vehicles.
