Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard Team for ‘Django and Jimmie’ Tour
Two months after the release of Django and Jimmie, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard are hitting the highway for a joint tour.
The shows run from October 15th through November 28th, mostly centered around multipurpose arenas whose seating capacities range as high as 10,000. That’s significantly larger than most of the venues Nelson and Haggard play during their solo tours. As they move into their golden years, though, Nelson, 82, and Haggard, 78, have no reason not to go big.
The two have been working together for decades, officially kicking off their partnership with 1983’s career-boosting Pancho & Lefty. At the time, Nelson had already recorded more than a half-dozen duets albums with other country icons, including San Antonio Rose with Ray Price and Waylon & Willie with fellow outlaw Waylon Jennings. Even so, Pancho & Lefty was a different beast. Released during a time when country artists were beginning to borrow more and more heavily from pop music, the album doubled down on twang and dusty cowboy imagery, bringing a sense of old-school honky tonk back to a rapidly modernizing genre. Over the years, Nelson and Haggard have collaborated again and again, with this summer’s Django and Jimmie marking their sixth album of duets.
The Django and Jimmie tour kicks off in Florence, South Carolina, then makes an arc across the southwest and Midwest before coming to a close in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard’s Django and Jimmie Tour dates:
October 15 – Florence, SC @ Florence Civic Center
October 16 – Roanoke, VA @ Berglund Center Coliseum
October 17 – Reading, PA @ Santander Arena
October 21 – Bloomington, IN @ TBA
October 23 – Pikeville, KY @ Eastern Kentucky Expo Center
October 24 – Milwaukee, WI @ Milwaukee Theatre
October 25 – Green Bay, WI @ Theatre at the Resch Center
November 28 – Fort Worth, TX @ Billy Bob’s Texas