Touring ain’t easy — even if your name’s Johnny Blue Skies.
Sturgill Simpson (the man behind the pie-in-the-sky musical moniker) recently announced a US tour with his band, the dour-sounding The Dark Clouds. However, after tickets went on pre-sale this week, some fans apparently felt sticker shock and took to the singer’s subreddit to voice their frustrations.
In response to the blowback, Simpson took to Instagram on Wednesday to explain that while there are certain mitigating factors, everything is ultimately copacetic. “Inflation, fuel, and all other related touring costs have increased exponentially in the last year,” he wrote. “However, despite some saying otherwise, I’m afraid our ticket prices have not. High end ticket and low end ticket prices are the exact same, and the average ticket price is the exact same. I know because I insisted on it.”
Simpson assuaged fans that the average ticket price will increase just $10 compared to his 2025 outing, and that’s in part to his decision to book decidedly larger venues.
“There are even more lower price level tickets available this time because we are playing bigger venues,” Simpson wrote. “Playing smaller venues would have absolutely increased ticket prices…A LOT. Not sure if the vocal minority complainers are new discovery phase fans or scalper bots sewing discord but these are the facts folks and if I’m lying you can sell my bones to Davey Jones.”
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Last January, Avenged Sevenfold’s M. Shadows went deep on the problem of high ticket prices, explaining that it’s nearly impossible for bands and artists to break even without selling tickets in the range of several hundred dollars. (A survey by Ditto found that 58.3% of artists have even turned town tours for financial reasons.)
Erika Smith also recently addressed the complicated issue of ticketing in a must-read essay for Consequence. Among other insights, Smith noted that ticket prices have decreased some 2% from their peak, but are still decidedly higher than levels in 2022 and 2023. A lot of these issues, as Smith explained stem from the effects of a post-COVID world and an industry that has potentially changed forever.
As for ol’ Mr. Blue Skies, the 29-date “Mutiny for the Masses Tour” kicks off in Austin on September 4th and will stop in major cities including Los Angeles, Vancouver, Chicago, Nashville, New York, and many more. See the full schedule below. The general on-sale is set for Friday, April 10th at 10:00 a.m. via Ticketmaster and AXS.
