JASON BONHAM’S LED ZEPPELIN EVENING have announced the “MMXXI” tour, set to take place this fall in North America. The 29-date run will kick off on October 15 in Stateline, Nevada and will wrap up on November 26 in Hollywood, Florida.
Bonham spent nearly a decade touring as JASON BONHAM’S LED ZEPPELIN EXPERIENCE before changing the band’s name to JASON BONHAM’S LED ZEPPELIN EVENING. Bonham later explained that the switch was prompted by a request from the LED ZEPPELIN camp, who wanted to use the “Experience” name for a project involving the archive of ZEP live recordings.
JASON BONHAM’S LED ZEPPELIN EXPERIENCE was formed in 2009 to pay tribute to Bonham’s father, legendary LED ZEPPELIN drummer John Bonham, who died in 1980 at the age of 32. “It was meant to be part of my way of expressing my love for music and expressing myself with a tip of the hat to my father,” Jason told Mixdown in a 2017 interview. “Soon after doing the 28 shows that we did with an orchestra, everyone said, ‘You’re not going to stop now, are you? You haven’t been here, you haven’t played there…’ And so I said, ‘As long as you guys want me to do it, I’ll do it.’ It’s really fan-based. It’s not us and them; it’s about love for LED ZEPPELIN, and that’s how it’s grown, as a very honest, natural, fan-based show. You guys all knew him as Bonzo; I knew him as dad, and there’s a great interaction.”
Jason launched JASON BONHAM’S LED ZEPPELIN EXPERIENCE two years after taking part in LED ZEPPELIN’s one-off performance at London’s O2 Arena tribute concert for friend and Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun. The rare live set, which saw Jason behind the drums in place of his late father, was released in 2012 as “Celebration Day”.
He told the Chicago Tribune about JASON BONHAM’S LED ZEPPELIN EVENING: “We’re not LED ZEPPELIN. We are fans. We love the music. We give it 150 percent energy and time to make it as good as we can make it to give people that feeling and make people go back to their youth.
“I never wanted it to be we are just playing music. It had to be personal with stories to tell people what Dad was like at home. It’s nice to know that so many people love hearing that music played in a live environment.”
The performance will include LED ZEPPELIN favorites as well as deep cuts.
“The hardest thing is picking the songs,” Bonham told the Chicago Tribune. ” “There’s more deeper songs — ‘In The Light’, ‘Friends’, ‘Four Sticks’ — songs that never got played live and never made it to a ZEPPELIN show. The list could go on for the more obscure ones that fans like to hear. Of course we still do ‘Kashmir’, ‘Stairway To Heaven’ and ‘What Is And What Should Never Be’. We just started doing ‘Dancing Days’, ‘Houses Of The Holy’ and ‘That’s The Way’. This show is one of the most fun things to do because I get to play all this great music in front of people that really appreciate it.”
