Boxoffice Insider: Black Crowes’ Rich History In Hometown Venues

The Black Crowes’ world tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their debut album Shake Your Money Maker will finally launch in July after being postponed twice due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The album, originally released in 1990, was re-issued in January of this year with remastered tracks and previously unreleased music among the other extras.

One of those extras is a live performance that occurred in the band’s hometown of Atlanta in December of 1990 at the Center Stage Theater. With concerts on three consecutive nights, it was a homecoming for the group whose popularity had skyrocketed that year on the strength of the critically acclaimed album that was released the previous February and ultimately went multi-platinum.

It is one of the rock group’s first headlining dates reported by an Atlanta concert venue, according to the records housed in Pollstar’s archives, and the beginning of the band’s rich boxoffice history at hometown performance sites.

Although the Center Stage Theater only had a capacity of 1,000 seats, fans at the 1990 homecoming shows on Dec. 20, 21 and 22 filled all of them for each performance, a new experience for the group who had played for smaller crowds in much smaller rooms in the city just a year earlier.

Along with Center Stage, other Atlanta venues part of the Black Crowes’ performance history include the Fox Theatre that reported boxoffice figures from concerts in 1992, 1995, 1999 and 2006. From a total of six shows during those years, the number of seats sold at the theater was 27,455. All were sellouts except one performance in April 1999, which moved about 94% of the available tickets.

Also, the 6,300-seat Chastain Park (now Cadence Bank) Amphitheater hosted the band for October concerts in two separate years (2006 and 2009) with tickets numbering 8,428 at both. The group also played Atlanta’s larger, 19,000-seat Lakewood shed in 2006 just after the July 4th holiday that summer. That venue, now called Cellairis Amphitheatre at Lakewood, will be the band’s hometown stop on this year’s North American tour with a show scheduled on Sept. 4.

Atlanta’s iconic 2,600-capacity music venue, The Tabernacle, has reported three concert stints since 2005 including a four-show engagement on May 5-8 of that year. The Black Crowes entertained 10,408 fans at those shows and grossed $375,774 ($514,000 now) with sellout crowds on all nights. Opening acts were Rose Hill Drive and 22-20s. And, finally, the now-closed Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center had one headlining performance on record, an October 2001 concert that recorded 3,068 fans in attendance. 

For the upcoming “Shake Your Money Maker” anniversary tour, most of the shows are booked in outdoor amphitheaters on the North American run that kicks off in July and wraps in September. Most of the venues will stage just a single performance, but two-night runs are planned at two of the sheds. The first one is Ascend Amphitheater in Nashville that will host the tour kick-off on July 20 and 21. Then, at the end of August, the band will stop for two nights at Denver’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre on the 29th and 30th.

Although the Black Crowes did not play Ascend Amphitheater which only opened in 2015, the same year they went on hiatus, they do have prior shows reported at Red Rocks. Their boxoffice history includes a headlining event there on Aug. 12, 2006 that produced a $250,605 gross ($332,000 today) from 5,457 sold tickets. They also played the same venue in August of the previous year as the opener for three concerts by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.

The European leg of the upcoming tour, set to run this fall from Oct. 21 through Nov. 19, will also include a venue with a two-show engagement. London’s O2 Academy Brixton is booked on Oct. 23 and 24. The band previously performed there in April 2008 and May 2009, selling a total of 9,051 tickets at both shows.