Will The Rolling Stones Play New Orleans Jazz Fest?

AP Photo / Michael Euler – The Rolling Stones
Mick Jagger struts his stuff when The Rolling Stones play U Arena in Nanterre, France, Oct. 22.

Even before yesterday’s announcement that The Rolling Stones will return to the U.S. in 2019 with 13 stadium dates, speculation began ramping up that the Stones would be playing the 2019 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which this year is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

A post earlier in the week on the It’s Only Rock & Roll fan site had already pegged most of the Stones’ tours dates and had a decidedly British “rumoured” note next to a May 2 date claiming the Stones would play the Thursday of the second weekend of New Orleans Jazz Fest.

Gimme Stadiums: The Rolling Stones Bring ‘No Filter’ Tour Stateside

“We’ll announce the lineup in December and release it all at once as not to anger any relationships,” a spokesperson for Jazz Fest told Pollstar when asked earlier this week.

Yesterday, however, in a Facebook video post (below) by Stones’ frontman Mick Jagger, the 75-year-old singer put up what seemed a spontaneous blues-rock song — the Stones’ bread and butter but backed with a drum machine — in which he sung the following:

“I just found out today/that we’re going to the U.S.A
Where they hell we gonna live/Where the hell we gonna be
“Miami, Florida, Jacksonville and Houston, New Orleans and Glendale, Pasadena and San Antone…”

While its hardly proof positive, it certainly lends credence to the NOJF speculation. Jagger’s own lyrics place New Orleans between the Stones’ April 28 show in Houston and its May 7 concert in Glendale Arizona—and he included all the tour date stops in order in the song.

Adding more fuel to the informed speculation is the fact that the U.S. leg of the No Filter tour is being produced by AEG Presents’ Concerts West and that AEG Presents has been a partner of the New Orleans Jazz Fest since 2003.

When asked again to confirm the date, the fine people at Jazz Fest again would only say, “The lineup will be released in December.”

It should be noted that The Stones took their No Filter tour through two European legs over the past two years with this year’s spring leg grossing $116 million, according to Pollstar Boxoffice reports. Over the past 36 months, the band’s averaged a staggering $9,356,761 per show with an average of 64,277 tickets sold.