James Gang, the band that kick-started the career of future Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh, are to reunite for a final show later this year. Joining them on the bill will be Dave Grohl, Nine Inch Nails, The Black Keys and The Breeders.
The show will take place at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, OH, on November 13, and is a charity event, with money raised by ticket sales being donated to veterans’ services charities in Ohio.
"It all started in Ohio,” says Walsh. “Picking up my first guitar as a kid in Columbus set me on a musical journey to Kent State, Cleveland and then the world. It is a great privilege for me to share the stage once again with my original James Gang buddies and this incredible group of Ohio rock legends like Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, The Black Keys, The Breeders and Dave Grohl. I believe in Ohio and look forward to celebrating our musical legacy while honouring our veterans with VetsAid 2022."
Walsh's connections to the veterans community run deep – his father, a flight instructor in the United States Army Air Forces, died while on active duty on Okinawa, Japan, when Walsh was just 20 months old.
"War is hell for everyone involved," Walsh old VetsAid on 2017. "I lost my father when I was a baby, before I could even make a memory of him. I stopped counting the number of friends I lost in the Vietnam War or that came home forever scarred mentally or physically or both. We’ve only just begun to appreciate the long-term impacts on our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I had to do something and seeing as though rock-and-roll seems to be what I do best, it’s also the least I could do for those who have served and continue to serve our country.
“We’re all in this together as Americans and seems to me lately that people are forgetting that. So I decided to put on a show, raise some money, bring people back together and celebrate our vets… and let’s do it every year!”
Joining Walsh onstage at the show will be bassist Dale Peters and drummer Jim Fox, the James Gang line-up who recorded 1970's James Gang Rides Again and the following year's Thirds and Live in Concert.
Tickets go on sale to the general public on August 4 at 10am EDT.
