Lady Antebellum, Rise Against and Deftones announce San Diego concerts

Feb. 6, 2017 9:36 AM PT

The number of 2017 tours coming to San Diego grew larger Monday morning.

Never mind that the just-announced concert treks by John Legend and Super Bowl halftime show performer Lady Gaga are both skipping America’s Finest City in favor of dates in Los Angeles - May 28 at the Greek Theatre for Legend and Aug. 8 at The Forum for Gaga. (For good measure, Muse’s 2017 tour appears to be skipping both San Diego and Los Angeles in favor of a single California date in Mountain View.)

Country-pop favorites Lady Antebellum will perform here June 4 at Sleep Train Amphitheatre as part of the trio’s You Look Good world tour. Fast-rising singer Kelsea Ballerini and Brett Young will open the show here.

Meanwhile, the co-headlining tour by the hard-rocking bands Rise Against and Deftones also has a tour stop lined up here at Sleep Train. They will perform July 7 at the sprawling Chula Vista venue, with Thrice and Frank Ireo opening.

Tickets for Lady Antebellum and Rise Against/Deftones concerts here both go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. at all Ticketmaster outlets, online at livenation.com and by phone at (800) 745-3000.

Tickets for Lady Antebellum are prices at $32.25 to $65 each, plus service charges. At least six pre-sales will run Tuesday through Thursday.

Tickets for are priced at $25 to $69.50, plus service charges. Three pre-sales will be held between Wednesday and Thursday.

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.”