NNick Cave is bringing a piano—and an open floor for audience questions—back to North America. The Bad Seeds frontman has announced 25 dates across the U.S. and Canada for *Conversations With Nick Cave: An Evening of Talk and Music*, launching April 9 at Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Theatre and wrapping May 21 at New Orleans’ Saenger Theatre. The tour promises “a mixture of unvetted audience questions and intimate performances of Cave’s extensive catalog at the piano.”
The format returns to North America after its 2019 run and draws on The Red Hand Files, the correspondence project Cave started in 2018. In one early installment, a reader’s question about his breakup with PJ Harvey prompted Cave to explain how it shaped The Boatman’s Call. This October, a question about what he did on holiday led to an account of a month spent sculpting devils in clay.
Cave recalled how the original shows came together:
“Years ago, in a peculiar state of mind, I traveled across the U.S., stepped onto stages in different cities, and fielded questions from the audience. It was a strange, almost desperate idea, but those nights became deeply healing for me. I hope the audience felt the same.
Eight years...