Eight top country-music acts San Diego-bound

Jan. 25, 2016 10:56 AM PT

Eight top country and country-pop music acts, including Brad Paisley and Kenny Chesney, will perform at Sleep Train Amphitheatre as part of the sprawling Chula Vista venue’s 2016 concert season.

The lineup also includes Jason Aldean, Rascal Flatts, Brantley Gilbert and one headliner that has yet to be announced. The opening acts include Kelsea Ballerini, Thomas Rhett and Maddie & Tae. The schedule for all eight concerts appears below. It does not include the previously announced July 15 show at Sleep Train by the Dixie Chicks.

Individual tickets for each concert won’t go on sale until May. However, ticket packages for all eight shows will go on sale Friday.

Billed as the 2016 Miller Lite Country Megaticket, presented by KSON, the package offers one option apiece for reserved and unreserved seating.

The reserved seat premium ticket package includes the same reserved seat for each concert, plus parking for each show. It is priced at $900 per person, plus service charges.

The unreserved lawn ticket package, which also includes parking for all eights shows, is priced at $225 per person, plus service charges.

Megaticket packages go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. at all Ticketmaster outlets, online at livenation.com, and by phone at (800) 745-3000.

The concert schedule is as follows:

May 21: Brad Paisley, with Tyler Farr and Maddie & Tae

July 8: Rascal Flatts, with Kelsea Ballerini

July 24: Brantley Gilbert, with Justin Moore and Colt Ford

Aug. 4: Kenny Chesney, with Old Dominion

Aug. 13: Jason Aldean, with Thomas Rhett and A Thousand Horses

Sept. 11: Dierks Bentley with Randy Houser and Cam

Sept. 17: To be announced

Oct. 9: Florida Georgia Line, with Cole Swindell, The Cadillac Three and Kane Brown

Source: DiscoverSD

Music

George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards and a first prize-winner at the 2022 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”