The Rolling Stones will be hitting the road in the U.S. and Canada this spring in a 16-stop tour with an ironically fitting sponsor: AARP.
The geriatric road warriors — lead singer Mick Jagger hit 80 years old in July and Keith Richards will reach that milestone on Dec. 18 — will perform coast to coast, but at a more leisurely pace than most major concert tours. Most of the dates have four or five days separating them, and they are, at least for now, scheduled for only one show in each city.
The “Hackney Diamonds” tour will support the band’s first album in 18 years, which was released to positive reviews last month and nabbed a Grammy Nomination for Best Rock Song.
The tour kicks off April 24 in Houston, then makes at stop of New Orleans JazzFest on May 2.
Other stops include Glendale, Arizona, Las Vegas, Seattle, East Rutherford, New Jersey, and Foxboro, Massachusetts. They will also appear in Orlando, Florida, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Denver, Chicago, Vancouver, British Columbia, Los Angeles and Santa Clara, California.
The band has set up a presale registration on its website, with tickets going on sale Nov. 29.
The band promises set lists featuring classic hits like “Start Me Up,” “Gimme Shelter,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” and “Satisfaction,” along with “fan favorite deep cuts” and music from the new album.
The Stones have toured consistently in the past decade, most recently a turn through Europe last summer. They made a surprise appearance at a New York Club last month with Lady Gaga that included several songs from the new album.
Their last U.S. tour was in 2021, and marked the first time the band took to the road without drummer Charlie Watts since 1963. Watts died a few weeks after he withdrew from that tour, but Richards said last month that two songs on the new album featured his work.
Original Stones bassist Bill Wyman, 86, who left the band in 1993, also appears on some tracks that were recorded in 2019.
Richards also said the band has another album in the works because there was a lot of leftover material from the Hackney Diamonds sessions. “Some of them, because they’re not totally ready yet, they’re good, but they need a little work,” Richards said. “But there’s another one in there, I think maybe with a few more additions.”