Sam Smith announces U.S. summer tour

Feb. 23, 2015 9:13 AM PT

Sam Smith isn’t wasting any time to build even more momentum for his young career, after he won four Grammy Awards earlier this month.

The blue-eyed English soul singer will mount a U.S. concert tour this summer. The tour begins July 17 in Kentucky and concludes Aug. 17 in Texas. It will include an Aug. 11 concert at San Diego’s Valley View Casino Center. (All tour dates appear below.)

Smith, 22, had one of the top-selling albums of 2014, “In the Lonely Hour,” which won the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album. He also won Best New Artist honors, along with Song and Record of the Year, both for his plaintive ballad, “Stay With Me (Darkchild Version).”

Tickets for Smith’s San Diego concert, and most other stops on his tour, go on sale Friday at noon at axs.com and by phone at: (888) 929-7849 Tickets for the San Diego show are priced between $35 and $85 each.

A pre-sale for American Express card holders begins today, Monday, at 10 a.m., and runs through 10 p.m. Thursday. An online pre-sale at axs.com begins at 10 a.m. Thursday and runs for 12 hours. The password (which has exemplary initials) is: GV2015.

Sam Smith 2015 U.S. sumner tour dates

7/17 - Louisville, KY @ Forecastle Festival

7/18 - Charlotte, NC @ Time Warner Cable Arena

7/20 - Miami, FL @ American Airlines Arena

7/21 - Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena

7/23 - Raleigh, NC @ PNC Arena

7/24 - Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavilion

7/26 - Oro-Medonte, ON @ WayHome Music & Arts Festival

7/27 - Cleveland, OH @ Wolstein Center/Cleveland State University

7/29 - Columbus, OH @ Schottenstein Center

7/30 - St. Louis, MO Chaifetz Arena

8/4 - Denver, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre

8/5 - West Valley City, UT @ Maverik Center

8/7 - Squamish, BC @ Squamish Valley Music Festival

8/8 - Quincy, WA @ Gorge Amphitheatre

8/11- San Diego, CA @ Valley View Casino Center

8/12 - Glendale, AZ @ Gila River Arena

8/14 - Houston, TX @ Toyota Center

8/15 - Austin, TX @ Frank Erwin Center

8/17 - Grand Prairie, TX @ Verizon Theatre at Grand Prairie

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.”