José González and Rufus Wainwright announced they’ll be going on an American co-headlining tour this September (plus one night in October). The two popular singer/songwriters are calling the tour Unfollow the Rules in the Local Valley Tour after Wainwright’s 2020 album Unfollow the Rules and González’s forthcoming album Local Valley, which is set to come out just three days before the tour starts on September 17 via Mute Records.

Presales for each concert begin tomorrow at 10 a.m. in each local time zone. Tickets will then be made publicly available on Friday, May 7 at 10 a.m. local time.

Wainwright will also be playing a series of solo shows in Europe before and after the joint tour, for which more information is available on his website. In addition, he’ll be playing a show in Atlanta, GA on August 31 and a show in Nashville, TN on September 1, both at the City Winery in each city. They’re available for presale with the presale code OHSOLO. Due to limited availability, the ticket prices do start at the high price of $90 per seat.

On Thursday, June 10 at 8:00 p.m. ET, Wainwright will be performing a ticketed virtual event in which he pays tribute to Judy Garland called Rufus Does Judy at Capitol Studios. Tickets and Michael Kors-designed t-shirts are available through Veeps. During the COVID-19 lockdown, Wainwright performed a Rufus-Retro-Wainwright-Spective! Live Stream Tour in which he performed each of his albums chronologically, one half at a time. It was announced in March that Unfollow the Rules had been nominated for the Juno Award “Adult Alternative Album of the Year.”

González recently shared two singlse from Local Valley, called “El invento” and “Visions.” They’re a welcome return for the folk star in his typical style after five years without new music. “El invento” is sung in Spanish and dedicated to his daughter Laura, who he would speak in Spanish to around the time she was born and gave him the motivation to write a full Spanish-language song. He stated, “The song is about the questions – who we are, where we’re going and why? Whom can we thank for our existence? Historically, most traditions have invented answers to these questions. Thereof the name of the song: The Invention (God).”

“Visions” is a soft folk song about the forces of nature that shape humanity’s collective destiny. González wrote via a press release, “We are the apes that are starting to understand the universe and our place in it. We are changing our surroundings in an exceedingly rapid pace, so much that we’re becoming stewards of our planet whether we like it or not. As Stewart Brand said, ‘We are as gods and we have to get good at it.’ The lyrics came to me in early February 2020 as there were more and more tweets about the possible pandemic. The topic of the song felt very timely. You can hear the birds and ambient sounds from the veranda, along with a layer of synth loops in the background.”

Unfollow the Rules in the Local Valley Tour

9/20 – Kansas City, MO – Uptown Theater
9/21 – Des Moines, IA – Hoyt Sherman Place
9/23 – Minneapolis, MN – Northrop Auditorium At UMN
9/24 – Chicago, IL – The Chicago Theatre
9/25 – Carmel, IN – The Palladium at The Center For The Performing Arts (Public on sale 8/6)
9/26 – Detroit, MI – Cathedral Theatre at The Masonic Temple
9/28 – Washington, DC – The Anthem
9/29 – Boston, MA – The Orpheum Theatre
9/30 – New York, NY – The Rooftop at Pier 17
10/2 – Glenside, PA – Keswick Theatre

Photo credit: Adam Blyweiss