The Wallflowers are hitting the road for a special celebration. The rock band will celebrate the 30th anniversary of their Bringing Down the Horse album with a North American and European tour. Along with performing the LP, the band will honor Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers by playing one of their favorite records, 1982’s Long After Dark.
The expansive 83-date tour kicks off on April 17 in Portland, Ore. It will head to cities like Vancouver, Dallas, Atlanta, Nashville, Chicago, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Paris, before wrapping in Dublin on November 22.
“Coming back after such a long time, we wanted to do something special for the 30th anniversary of Bringing Down the Horse,” frontman and singer Jakob Dylan said in a statement. “We decided to play what seems to be our fans’ favorite Wallflowers album, and for us, we wanted to play one of our favorite Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers records, Long After Dark.”
Dylan, a good friend of Tom Petty, has often shared his admiration for the late musician. He introduced Petty at the 2002 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, interviewed him for the 2018 documentary Echo in the Canyon, and frequently cited Petty as inspiration for The Wallflowers’ music.
Bringing Down the Horse was released in 1996 as the follow-up to the band’s 1992 self-titled debut album. Produced by Grammy-winning musician and songwriter T Bone Burnett (who also served as Bob Dylan’s guitarist in the ‘70s), the album featured four singles: “6th Avenue Heartache,” “One Headlight,” “The Difference,” and “Three Marlenas.”
Bringing Down the Horse, the band’s biggest album in their discography, hit No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and is certified quadruple-Platinum. It spawned The Wallflowers’ signature hit “One Headlight,” which won a Grammy for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal.
“We were very influenced by people like Leon Russell and Dr. John. We felt epic, we felt like taking these songs and putting them on a huge landscape. We weren’t in a mind frame of any sort of format or anything,” Dylan previously shared of recording Bringing Down The Horse. “At the time, loving Al Green — that’s what we kind of based a lot of the groove and the organ on. He was one of our favorites, and still is, and wasn’t someone being talked about a lot. I thought there was certainly a place for that type of feeling and mood on the radio. But I felt strong. I wasn’t defeated in any sense. I felt challenged, and I thought it was a good challenge.”
The Wallflowers have released multiple albums since then, with their most recent one being 2021’s Exit Wounds.
Buy Bringing Down The Horse on vinyl here.
