Nick Cave announces 2027 'Conversations' North American tour

Nick Cave is bringing back the show in which audience members can ask him anything. The "Conversations With Nick Cave: An Evening of Talk and Music" tour will play 25 dates across the U.S. and Canada next spring, its first North American run since 2019.

The tour opens April 9, 2027, at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Vancouver, British Columbia, and closes May 21 at the Saenger Theatre in New Orleans. Each evening mixes questions from the crowd, which are not screened in advance, with Cave performing songs from across his catalog alone at the piano.

A presale starts at 10 a.m. local time Wednesday, Nov. 11, for fans who register through the tour's website. General ticket sales begin at 10 a.m. local time Friday, Nov. 13. The announcements did not include ticket prices.

The Red Hand Files is presenting the tour. That is the online letters project Cave started in 2018, where fans write to him and he answers in public. The billing makes sense. These stage shows are essentially the newsletter performed live, and Cave pointed to its growth as one reason for coming back now.

Why Cave is bringing the format back

Cave first tried the format in 2018 and widened it into a North American tour in 2019. Those shows came a few years after the 2015 death of his son Arthur, and his statement announcing the new dates goes back to that period. He described his frame of mind on the first run as peculiar.

"It was a strange, almost desperate idea, but those nights became deeply healing for me," Cave said. He added that he hoped the audiences had felt the same way.

He said the same thing to crowds at the time. Rolling Stone's account of the earlier shows has him telling an audience, "Talking to the audience has actually been extraordinary healing for me." The magazine also reported that crowd questions drew out more casual admissions: he didn't object to fans taking phone photos, he was open to working again with former Bad Seed Blixa Bargeld, and meeting Johnny Cash had been a revelation. Rolling Stone noted that the Bargeld reunion still hasn't happened.

This time Cave framed the return around how much the correspondence has grown. The Red Hand Files has expanded in reach, he said, and the range of subjects people bring to him has widened. He called it the right moment to come back to "a different America from eight years ago." He didn't explain what he meant by that, and with the questions unscreened, audiences may ask him. He closed the statement with a shrug: "What could possibly go wrong?"

That joke points to the real appeal and the real risk. An open microphone in a 2,000-seat-scale theater can produce a revealing exchange or a rambling one, and nobody can plan which. The 2019 shows earned their reputation because Cave was willing to answer hard questions about grief and faith in front of strangers. If he brings the same openness to a broader set of topics in 2027, these nights could be more unpredictable than the first run, which is presumably the reason to go.

The route and the rooms

The schedule favors the coasts. Cave plays two nights each in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Toronto, Boston and Brooklyn, New York. He plays single nights in Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis; Chicago; Detroit; Montreal; Philadelphia; Washington; Asheville, North Carolina; Atlanta; Nashville, Tennessee; and Memphis, Tennessee, along with the opening and closing shows.

The venues are mostly historic theaters and concert halls, including Toronto's Massey Hall, Brooklyn's Kings Theatre and Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. Rooms like these suit a show built on talk. People need to hear a quiet answer from the back row, and an arena would work against that.

The route also leaves out a large part of the country. There are no stops in Texas, the Mountain West or the Southwest, so fans in Dallas, Denver or Phoenix face a trip. The final stretch through Asheville, Atlanta, Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans is a Southern swing through cities with deep musical histories. That seems like a fitting setting for a songwriter whose work has long drawn on gospel, blues and American murder ballads.

Here is the full schedule:

April 9: Vancouver, BC, Queen Elizabeth Theatre
April 12: Portland, Oregon, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
April 13-14: Seattle, The 5th Avenue Theatre
April 16-17: San Francisco, Orpheum Theatre
April 20-21: Los Angeles, The Orpheum Theatre
April 24: Minneapolis, State Theatre
April 26: Chicago, The Chicago Theatre
April 27: Detroit, Masonic Jack White Theatre
April 29-30: Toronto, Massey Hall
May 2: Montreal, Théâtre St-Denis
May 4-5: Boston, Boch Center Shubert Theatre
May 7-8: Brooklyn, New York, Kings Theatre
May 10: Philadelphia, The Met Philadelphia
May 11: Washington, Lincoln Theatre
May 13: Asheville, North Carolina, Thomas Wolfe Auditorium
May 14: Atlanta, Atlanta Symphony Hall
May 16: Nashville, Tennessee, Ryman Auditorium
May 18: Memphis, Tennessee, Orpheum Theatre
May 21: New Orleans, Saenger Theatre

The tour follows a busy year for Cave. He has been on the road with the Bad Seeds behind "Wild God," the band's well-received 2024 album. That run included a homecoming show in Brighton, England, where Kylie Minogue joined him for "Where the Wild Roses Grow," their 1995 duet. NME reported that nearly 50,000 people attended and that the concert was reportedly the largest ticketed event in the city's history. Cave also picked up an Oscar nomination for best original song for "Train Dreams," which he wrote with Bryce Dessner for the film of the same name.

In May, Cave said the Bad Seeds had been working in the studio and might record a follow-up to "Wild God." A solo tour of theaters and talk next spring doesn't rule that out. It does mean the next version of Cave that North American fans see will be the one alone at the piano, answering whatever they ask.