Eric Clapton and Robbie Robertson, following their performance of “I Shall Be Released” at the 2013 Crossroads Guitar Festival
The late Robbie Robertson will be honored with an all-star tribute concert 14 months after his death in 2023 at age 80. Life Is a Carnival: A Musical Celebration of Robbie Robertson, to be held on October 17, 2024, at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles, will feature performances by such stars as Eric Clapton, Bruce Hornsby, Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench of the Heartbreakers, Van Morrison, Mavis Staples, Elvis Costello, and Lucinda Williams.
The lineup also includes (alphabetically) Trey Anastasio, Ryan Bingham, Eric Church, Warren Haynes, Jim James, Jamey Johnson, Noah Kahan, Daniel Lanois, Taj Mahal, Margo Price, Robert Randolph, Nathaniel Rateliff, Allison Russell, Don Was, and Bobby Weir. The event is a presentation of Blackbird Presents. Presale tickets will be available beginning July 31, at 10 a.m. PT using code ROBBIE. Tickets to the general public go on sale on Aug. 2 at 10 a.m. PT here.
From the July 30 announcement: Life Is a Carnival: A Musical Celebration of Robbie Robertson promises to be a night of electrifying performances featuring superstar artists performing a diverse range of Robertson’s most beloved songs, from his iconic solo work to classic tracks from The Band. This not-to-be-missed concert event takes place at the Forum 50 years after this iconic venue served as the final stop on the famed tour of Bob Dylan and The Band, which marked Dylan’s return to touring after an eight-year hiatus and became known as one of the largest and highest-profile tours of the era (with the live performances featuring a number of Robertson’s hit songs documented in the critically acclaimed record release Before the Flood).
[Those 1974 concerts are the subject of a massive upcoming set, Bob Dylan and the Band: The 1974 Live Recordings. The collection, via Legacy Recordings, arrives September 20, 2024. It’s available to order in the U.S. here and in the U.K. here.]
Robertson’s longtime collaboration, filmmaker Martin Scorsese, is among the event’s Executive Producers. The concert takes its name from a 1971 song co-written by Robertson and fellow Band members Rick Danko and Levon Helm. A portion of the proceeds from the concert event shall be donated to The Woodland Cultural Centre that funds and operates a range of arts, history, and education programs on the Sixth Nations Reserve in Canada.
1 Comment so far
Jump into a conversationHopefully there will an album of the best songs from this show.
Regarding the Dylan set, for what you get (22 discs) $129 isn’t expensive.
But I’d be a whole lot more interested if the producer picked the best single version of each song and made those selections into a manageable box set. To cite just one example, I see no need for 21 versions of “Lay Lady, Lay.” This box set is too unwieldy: It seems like their BS detector was on the fritz. But then again self-editing has never been Mr Zimmerman’s strong suit.