Sarah McLachlan defiant in face of Lilith Fair's ticket slump: 'You can't go back'
Sarah McLachlan performs during a campaign rally for U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Las Vegas on July 8. (Ethan Miller, Getty Images)
It’s been a tough summer for a lot of major tours, and no one is more aware of that than Sarah McLachlan, the cofounder of Lilith Fair, which was scheduled to arrive Saturday at the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre in Tinley Park.
Tour promoter Live Nation and Lilith have so far canceled 12 of 35 summer dates, and headliners Norah Jones and Kelly Clarkson dropped off the rotating lineup, which due to scheduling issues has been different for every tour stop (headliners at Tinley are to include McLachlan, Mary J. Blige, Heart, La Roux and Dixie Chicks offshoot the Courtyard Hounds).“It’s been a combination of bad ticket sales and Live Nation making a decision to pull shows because they didn’t have the marketing money to promote them properly,” McLachlan said in an interview from the road. “But the alternative of canceling the whole tour is not going to happen.”