Five months after announcing their first tour in years, Heart began the “Love Alive” tour on July 9, 2019, with an 18-song set of band favorites and well-chosen covers. While they didn’t actually call it a reunion, the “Love Alive” tour was Heart’s first since 2016. Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson had some family issues to work out and the sisters had taken a sabbatical from the classic rock band that they lead.
The setlist at the opening night performance at the Hollywood Casino & Amphitheatre in Maryland Heights, Missouri (near St. Louis) naturally featured the Heart hits “Crazy on You,” “Barracuda” and “Crazy on You.”
Watch them perform “Barracuda” on opening night
The concert also paid homage to the sisters’ love of Led Zeppelin, with a performance of “The Battle of Evermore,” as well as covers of Marvin Gaye (“I Heard it Through the Grapevine”), Pink Floyd (“Comfortably Numb”), and even Simon and Garfunkel (“The Boxer”).
“This is one of the songs we grew up singing,” said Nancy Wilson, while in Grand Rapids, Mich., three nights’ later, on July 12.
Watch them perform “The Battle of Evermore” on July 11 in Tinley Park, Ill.
On February 11, the group announced their return to the road with a cross-country summer tour. Several weeks before it began, the band added many shows to the tour, with dates now well into October.
Watch them perform a favorite on July 14 in Toronto
They were joined by an all-female lineup of classic rock stars including Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Sheryl Crow and Brandi Carlile.
Since Feb. 6 of that year, the group’s Twitter account and Facebook page had posted a variety of pictures and classic songs, leading fans to believe that the sisters were planning to reunite after more than two years.
On February 10, a portion (29 seconds) of the video for the title cut from 2012’s Fanatic album appeared. Heart fanatics began to actively speculate about a reunion. (Watch the clip below.)
If that wasn’t enough, there was a countdown clock on the band’s website that implied that an announcement was coming on Monday, Feb. 11.
The ticking clock on Feb. 9, 2019 at Heart’s website
Ann Wilson added: “We come to this tour with fresh energy. It will be unlike any other Heart tour that has been. Some of the songs will be classic of course, but this tour will be a new animal.”
Ann Wilson had a busy 2018, touring with Jeff Beck and Paul Rodgers, and releasing a solo album, Immortal.
Related: We asked Ann Wilson who she regretted never recording with
Watch the official 2019 tour announcement
Related: Our 2017 interview with Nancy Wilson
For roughly a year – from June 2017 to June 2018 – Heart’s Twitter account was dormant. (Their Facebook page was inactive for nine months.) Then in the fall, a series of tweets promoted the Jan. 25, 2019 release of Live in Atlantic City in various formats of a concert the band did in 2006 that originally aired on VH1 Decades Rock Live.
On Feb. 6, the group’s social media pages began posting images of the sisters, alone and together, from over the years. Then on Feb. 10 came the 29-second video of “Fanatic.”
— Heart (@officialheart) February 10, 2019
In 2021, Nancy Wilson told Best Classic Bands that she expected Heart to tour once again in 2022. However, the year came and went. But in a phone interview published June 9, 2023, Nancy, shared that the pair are once again collaborating on new material for a Heart reunion album. “[The music is] closer to what you would have heard us originally do in the ’70s, late ’70s,” she said. “So it’s really fun, it’s just exciting and inspiring.
“”It’s been a really nice kind of rediscovery of our relationship, working on music together again. So, yeah, I’m really happy about that.”
Heart surprised their fans with three concerts in December 2023, paving the way for an on-stage reunion of the sisters. They completed the first leg of their 2024 “Royal Flush” tour on May 24. It was scheduled to pick up again with European and U.K. dates, beginning June 20, but those were cancelled when Ann Wilson divulged a “time-sensitive, but routine, medical procedure.” Roughly five weeks later, the singer revealed that she “recently underwent an operation to remove something that, as it turns out, was cancerous.” Her medical team has advised her to take time to recover for the remainder of the year. When the reunion tour is rescheduled, tickets will be available here.
Related: Listings for 100s of classic rock tours
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And of course 2022 won’t have a Heart tour because Ann was demanding they use the scrubs she has in her solo band to replace the Heart band members. She’s a good singer but because of her a Hall of Fame band has gone down the tubes with a whimper. She apparently can’t get along with anybody — she’s had a personality conflict with every band member they’ve ever had except Nancy (until now). Maybe she needs to just go do her silly solo show to half empty small theaters.