Say it ain’t so.
Dolly Parton is obviously a living legend, one of the most beloved people in all of America, and a country music legend.
But if you’ve never been able to catch Dolly on tour before, you may have missed your chance.
In an interview with Pollstar, Dolly dropped the news that she’s done with touring, preferring instead to stay close to home with her husband as opposed to gone on the road for weeks at a time as they get older. But that doesn’t mean that Dolly’s completely done with the stage, as she says that she’ll still do “special shows here and there.”
“I do not think I will ever tour again, but I do know I’ll do special shows here and there, now and then. Maybe do a long weekend of shows, or just a few shows at a festival. But I have no intention of going on a full-blown tour anymore.
I’ve done that my whole life, and it takes so much time and energy. I like to stay a little closer to home with my husband. We’re getting older now, and I don’t want to be gone for four or five weeks at a time.
Something could happen. I would not feel right about that, if I were gone and somebody needed me. Or I would feel bad if I had to leave a tour if somebody got sick at home and needed me and then I had to walk out on the fans.”
Dolly’s last tour was her Pure and Simple Tour, which featured over sixty stops across the U.S. and Canada back in 2016. But since then, Dolly’s been focusing more on her other ventures like songwriting and acting.
And given that Dolly’s 76 years old now and her husband, Carl Dean, is 80, it’s not surprising that she doesn’t want to embark on a full blown tour that will take her away from home for weeks and months at a time.
“You’ve got to work for weeks to work up a great new show, a new tour they haven’t seen. It takes months to actually plan a tour, as far as booking dates and all that. Then you’ve got to be gone for all that time, too.
It’s more involved than people have any idea. You really need a year, and certainly six months, to plan a great tour, just preparing to get ready to go hit the road. So you can’t just go out and do a few shows, you really have to commit to doing enough shows to make all that time and effort pay off.”
But just because she’s not going to be on tour doesn’t mean Dolly’s ready to hang it up: She also confirmed that she’s working on her rock ‘n roll album now that she’s going to be a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame:
“When I got nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I thought “Well, no better time to do it.”
I had always wanted to do it. My husband is a big hard rock ’n’ roll fan, and for years I thought, “One of these days I’d like to do an album mainly just for him, just to kind of do it.”
When I got nominated, I thought, “Why not just go ahead and do it while the iron’s hot? Maybe have some of the greats, the legends of rock ‘n’ roll sing along with me.”
Dolly also dropped some hints at who we may see join her on that rock album. She revealed that she has a song she’s going to invite Ed Sheeran to join in on, and of course her goddaughter Miley Cyrus. And she also said that she would love to collaborate with Chris Stapleton – and then threw out one more surprising name:
“Jimmy Fallon. The first time I ever worked on his show, we just had a connection – and it’s just been magical.”
Sounds like this is going to be quite the interesting album.
And since she’s stepping away from touring, I’d say we’ll be seeing this rock album from Dolly sooner rather than later.
