Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Fest coming to Camden, with Chris Stapleton and Brittney Spencer
The annual tour will bring Nelson and his Family band to the Jersey side of the Delaware River in September.
Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Festival will return to the Philadelphia area in 2022, crossing the river to the Jersey side for a show at the Waterfront Music Pavilion in Camden. The lineup brings considerable vocal power with country-soul singer Chris Stapleton and rising star Brittney Spencer.
The Sept. 23 Outlaw show will be headlined as always by Willie Nelson & Family, an aggregation headed by the Red Headed Stranger and with supporting players such as harmonica player Mickey Raphael and Nelson’s son Micah. Nelson will release a new album, A Beautiful Time, which mixes original songs with covers of Leonard Cohen and the Beatles, on his 89th birthday on April 29.
Missing this year will be Nelson’s sister Bobbie Nelson, a pianist and the country legend’s longtime accompanist who died this month at age 91. Joining the Nelson Family band, Stapleton, and Spencer on the Camden date will be folk-rock duo Larkin Poe and up-and-coming Oklahoma country songwriter Zach Bryan.
The Outlaw tour originated in 2016 with a show at Montage Mountain in Scranton and has grown to be an annual trek that pairs Nelson and family with a rotating cast of the most formidable acts in Americana and roots music.
This year it kicks off in St. Louis on June 23 with Nathaniel Rateliff, Jason Isbell, Charley Crockett, and Spencer. The acts r on tour include Allison Russell, ZZ Top, Steve Earle, Avett Brothers, and Billy Strings.
In 2019 and 2021, the Outlaw Fest was staged at the Mann Center for Performing Arts in Fairmount Park. The tour last played Camden in 2018..
This year’s Camden show, which is the final date of the tour, boasts a big-time draw in Stapleton, the burly voiced Kentuckian named Academy of Country Music male artist of the year this month and who kicks off his own concert tour with two shows at the Mark G. Etess Arena at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City on April 8 and 9.
The lineup has added depth with Spencer, the powerful vocalist who had a hit with last year’s “Sober and Skinny” and is a a leader in the vanguard of Black artists reshaping the country mainstream.
She’ll be joined on the tour date by Larkin Poe, the sister act of Rebecca and Megan Lovell, whose four-times great-grandfather was a cousin of Edgar Allan Poe. Also notable is Bryan, the promising Oklahoma singer-songwriter whose album American Heartbreak is due in May.
Tickets go on sale to the general public 10 a.m. March 25 via OutlawMusicFestival.com. A presale for Citi credit card members begins 10 a.m. March 22 at citientertainment.com.
In addition to the Outlaw Festival, Live Nation announced another WMP show: Rapper, singer, and Megan Fox’s fiancee Machine Gun Kelly performs June 26, with Pvris and Trippie Redd opening. Tickets go on sale 10 a.m. March 25 on ticketmaster.com.