Bret Michaels announces Parti Gras 23 Tour

Trek will be introduced in summer 2023

Bret Michaels has officially announced that his Parti Gras 23 Tour will be hitting 12 US Live Nation amphitheaters next summer. The Poison frontman shared the news on Trunk Nation with Eddie Trunk on Monday (Nov 28th) on SiriusXM’s Faction Talk. He says he curated the event to give fans a unique concert experience that’s never been done before.

“Everything is meant to be a party from the time you get there until you end,” he says. “I created this idea that it is a celebration of the fans, the bands, the music. [There are] no attitudes, no egos, just a whole lot of fun. And we’re going to do a night of all killer no filler.

Michaels has confirmed that the original Jefferson Starship and Night Ranger will open the shows followed by Michaels and his solo band — BMB — performing hits with Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath, former Journey vocalist Steve Augeri, Night Ranger’s Jack Blades and a variety of other special unannounced guests.

“Whoever wants to come up and join us, but we have special mystery guests,” he states. “Every single night there will be someone on that stage. I can’t tell you exactly who it is, but if you’ve ever looked at everyone who’s been on stage, I’ve had everyone from Jimmy Page to Jimmy Buffett to Paul Stanley, you don’t know who it’s going to be, but we’ll bring someone out and at the end of the night we’re gonna do their song. This is a true give back. I don’t want to say throw back — cause we’re living in the here and now — but it’s a throwback to a great time and a give back to the fans and everyone’s just going to leave there going — hopefully — they’ll remember it and if you remember it, it was awesome. So if you do remember it the next day after a good time, it was an amazing concert.”

The trek is set to kick off July 13th in Detroit with full details and routing to follow. Michaels confirms a stop at PNC Bank Arts Center in New Jersey will feature the stars of Impractical Jokers co-hosting the night. The rocker also hopes to extend the dates beyond the initial 12 already confirmed.

“There’s a lot of independent promoters in there that I want to respect,” he adds. “It just won’t be exactly this version. In different cities, I custom created it for those cities and those shows and it’s going to be unbelievable. I have some country artists on one. You know, I’ve had some big country artists out with us that all of a sudden come out and we’re doing one of their songs. They’re doing ‘Nothin But A Good Time’ or ‘Unbroken’ or a solo song, but no matter what — I want to be the quintessential host. I want people to feel welcomed.”

He continues, “There’s a lot that goes on to make sure that those bands — when you’re live, you gotta make sure they have the right mic, they soundcheck, they feel good, but the one thing I said on this entire tour, I said, no egos, no attitudes — we work with every single person here. I want to try to work together so it’s an incredible show. I designed a stage so everyone has a huge amount of stage room. Every band can use all the sound, all the lights, everything we got, they can have it. The only thing you can’t oversupply is the cryo and the pyro because the tanks run out.”

Michaels says the party will start in the parking lot with people in “tiki hut golf carts” handing out Mardi Gras beads to concertgoers. Inside the venue, there will be various parties and contests, including a Dress Like Bret Contest where the winner will join BMB and special guests on stage to sing “Nothin’ But A Good Time” at the end of the night.

Michaels first teased the “incredible amphitheater tour” on Trunk’s show in August. The trek was initially expected to launch this year, but was pushed back due to this year’s launch of The Stadium Tour with Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard and Joan Jett after a two year delay due to the pandemic.

During the November 28th appearance, Michaels also shared that he has a new solo single, “Back in the Day,” coming in mid-January with a video that he’s also directing and co-editing.

“We now are about every two years go back out on the road,” he says of Poison. “I hope to at least if not make a complete album, you know, just go in there and right a song or two together, and just a fun great — I write with the solo band, we write all the time, every day. I’m always dumping music into my phone. I’ll come up with a beat. I’ll be like (beatboxes) always writing something in my head. And I’m hoping with Poison we’ll get to do that. We with the band, Pete [Evick], and myself, wrote a brand new song called ‘Back in the Day.’ It’s just a through back road trip anthem and when people here this, it’s just a great good feeling party song. It’s a great rock song.”

Michaels also reproduced his “Get Your Rock On” solo song as the theme for NFL Network’s Good Morning Football titled “Get Your Game On.”

The two hour conversation also featured acoustic performances by Michaels. Full video of the interview with Michaels will be available on the SiriusXM app in the future.

Buddy Iahn
Buddy Iahn

Buddy Iahn founded The Music Universe when he decided to juxtapose his love of web design and music. As a lifelong drummer, he decided to take a hiatus from playing music to report it. The website began as a fun project in 2013 to one of the top independent news sites. Email: info@themusicuniverse.com