Dhani Harrison To Open Jeff Lynne’s ELO Tour

– Dhani Harrison
Dhani Harrison will open Jeff Lynne’s ELO’s 2019 tour.

Dhani Harrison was announced Monday as the opener for the upcoming Jeff Lynne’s ELO summer tour.

Harrison will open all dates for North American arena tour, which kicks off June 20 in Anaheim, Calif., and concludes Aug. 1 in Pittsburgh.

Harrison, who released his debut album In Parallel in October 2017, played only a handful of festivals in 2018. Recent Pollstar box office data includes a Nov. 6, 2017 date at Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory, where Harrison sold 326 tickets and grossed $6,532, and a Nov. 20, 2017 performance at Doug Fir Lounge in Portland, Ore., where Harrison sold 299 tickets and grossed $6,422.

Lynne collaborated extensively with Harrison’s father, the late George Harrison, in the latter part of his life, producing the final studio album the elder Harrison’s released in his lifetime, 1987’s Cloud Nine, and founding the successful supergroup The Traveling Wilburys with Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison. Lynne and Dhani Harrison worked together to complete George’s final studio album, 2002’s Brainwashed, released about a year after George’s death in November 2001.

In opening for Jeff Lynne’s ELO, Harrison is attaching himself to a live juggernaut. Lynne and the rechristened Electric Light Orchestra hit the road last year for their first North American tour in 35 years – and made a killing, selling 192,897 tickets across 16 shows for a total gross of $21.4 million, enough to secure a spot on Pollstar‘s Year End Top 100 Worldwide Tours chart.

The band’s upcoming tour will primarily hit different markets than last year’s, including Portland, Ore. and Nashville, Tenn. But three dates will mark return appearances for Jeff Lynne’s ELO. On July 13, the band hits Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center, where an Aug. 24, 2018 gig sold 15,276 tickets and grossed $1.77 million. The tour will stop at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena (July 18) and Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena (July 20) where, in 2018, Jeff Lynne’s ELO grossed $1.68 million and $1.74 million, respectively.