Brantley Gilbert and Chad Kroeger of Nickelback stopped by The Bobby Bones Show to talk about their upcoming Get Rollin tour together, how they met and more!
Kroeger and his band Nickelback were coming up with the idea for the new tour and knew they didn’t want to do the same think they had been doing for the past 20 years. They were rotating through the same six openers and were ready to expand the horizon and do something different, so they weren’t giving people the same show. When Gilbert’s name got mentioned, he thought it was interesting and liked the idea of them joining their two tours together for one big tour. When Gilbert got the call from his manager that he was going to tour with Nickelback, he was stoked. He was already a huge fan and first saw them when they played a show at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena a few years ago and remembered it was a great show. Gilbert called Kroeger to talk about it, but they couldn’t have been in more opposite places at the time. He was on a mountain in Montana hunting, Kroeger was on a boat in The Bahamas.
Twenty years ago, Nickelback went on a lot of “try to kill us” tours, Kroeger explained. They would spend 18 months out on the road, going on stage and hosting parties every night. It would get exhausting. They try not to tour like that anymore. Taking a country tour and a rock tour and marrying them together can be difficult. Country shows are usually only on weekends, so they are home during the week. Rock shows are all throughout the week. The Get Rollin’ tour will hit 38 cities starting in June and ends in August.
Both acts are changing their set list this tour, but in the past, Gilbert liked to end with the band playing a mashup of songs, then build it back up with a version of them singing, “na, na, na, hey, goodbye,” and then go into his song “Read Me My Rights.” Kroeger will start shows with the first single from the current album they are pushing. He knows the crowd might not have complete familiarity with it, but they will be excited they are on the stage, and then they’ll go into one of their big hits.
Kroeger said at parties if there is a guitar hanging around sometimes people will expect him to play. He’ll do a tease by playing the first line of some of their biggest hits and then stop to let everyone else finish the lyrics. One of his favorite things is getting people excited to play a tune and then stopping. He described their song “Rockstar” as an almost country song. Sometimes he’ll try to sing it with a thick southern accent and realize it still sounds the same.
Kroeger and Gilbert want people leaving thinking the start to finish of the show was fantastic and something they've never seen before!
Get Rollin tour tickets went on sale today at 10am local time here.