Willie Nelson is taking his Outlaw Music Festival on the road again, expanding the tour to celebrate the festival’s 10th anniversary.
The country music legend has invited Bob Dylan once again to join him for the traveling road show — a consortium of progressive-country and Americana acts — that this year includes Billy Strings, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Sheryl Crow, Turnpike Troubadours, the Avett Brothers and Wilco, among others.
The Outlaw Music Festival Tour begins May 13 at the Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre in Phoenix. Three California venues will host the tour, including the Hollywood Bowl on May 13. There, Willie Nelson and the Family will be joined by Dylan, Strings and Sierra Hull.
The tour will also stop in Chula Vista on May 15 and then May 18 in Wheatland, Calif., where Lily Meola will join the performers.
Other acts joining at various stops include the Red Clay Strays, Lake Street Dive, Waxahatchee, Charles Wesley Godwin, Lucinda Williams, Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers, Trampled By Turtles, the Mavericks, Willow Avalon, Waylon Payne, Madeline Edwards, Myron Elkins and Tami Neilson.
“What an amazing lineup to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Outlaw Music Festival Tour,” Nelson said in a statement. “I can’t wait to join friends and family in bringing this celebration to the fans we love.” The tour is billed as uniting “music legends with today’s superstars in celebration of the outlaw spirit and genre-defying music.”
Tickets go on sale to the general public Friday. Citi card members will have access to presale tickets Tuesday through Thursday .
The Outlaw Music Festival launched in 2016 in Scranton, Pa., and its success prompted Nelson, his longtime manager Mark Rothbaum and promoter Blackbird Presents to turn it into a touring franchise, expanding to 10 cities in 2017 and 18 in 2018. The festival made its first stop in Los Angeles in 2018 when Nelson and his Family Band were joined at the Bowl by Grateful Dead alumnus Phil Lesh & Friends along with Sturgill Simpson and Margo Price, Nelson’s son Lukas Nelson and his band, the Promise of the Real, and the Particle Kid, son J. Micah Nelson.
Nelson, 91, and Dylan, 83, co-headlined the tour at the Bowl last July where they performed separately. American roots-music veteran John Mellencamp, 73, also hit the stage.
