Last week, the constantly-shifting artist Sturgill Simpson announced his plan to release a new album, Passage Du Desir, under the name Johnny Blue Skies. He also announced a tour that’ll take him to some big amphitheater-sized venues later this year. Simpson isn’t a big fan of music-industry practices, and the live-show business hasn’t exactly been great lately, either for fans or artists. Simpson is doing his part to keep ticket prices from spiraling out of control and limit scalping on this upcoming tour.
On a video posted on his YouTube channel last night, Simpson outlined his plan to deal with scalping. It’s nothing revolutionary — no dynamic pricing, face-value ticket exchanges, limited platinum ticketing — but it’s always good to see a big-name artist doing something, and presumably leaving money on the table, to keep things from becoming too difficult for his fans. Here’s what he says:
The “Why Not?” tour has opted out of using dynamic ticket pricing. We will be doing everything in our power to keep tickets in the hands of fans and out of the hands of scalpers. We are vetting our pre-sale sign ups for bad actors, doing face value ticket exchange, and limited platinum ticketing to combat scalpers and out of control prices.
Simpson hasn’t released any singles from Passage Du Desir, and the YouTube video comes with a few second of music. If this comes from the new album, then we should apparently expect some busy, hard-rockin’ bar-band fare with a whole lot of horns and piano. Check it out below.
Passage Du Desir is out 7/12 on High Top Mountain.