Grammy-award winning Blues Traveler takes the stage this summer to kick off the Lake Tahoe Music Festival with a bang on July 21 at the Village at Northstar.

Ticket prices are $55 for preferred seating and $35 for general admission. Tickets go on sale Friday, May 27 and are available for purchase in the e-Store on www.NorthstarAtTahoe.com or in person at the Tickets & Season Pass Office in the Village at Northstar.

The Blues Traveler performance is the first in the Lake Tahoe Music Festival’s three headlining performances that are scheduled for July 21, August 4 and August 25.

“We are excited to welcome such acclaimed talent to Northstar this summer,” said Bill Rock, chief operating officer of Northstar-at-Tahoe Resort. “Blues Traveler has appealed to a diverse audience for more than two decades and we look forward to their performance in the Village at Northstar.”

For more than 24 years, Blues Traveler has been entertaining fans with John Popper on vocals and the harmonica, Chandler Kinchla on the guitar, Ben Wilson on keyboards, bassist Tad Kinchla and Brandan Hill on the drums and percussion. The group had produced eight studio albums and four live discs, six of them certified Gold or Platinum, with combined worldwide sales of more than 10 million units.  The band’s best-known single, “Run-Around,” was the longest-charting radio single in Billboard history.  Along the way, the band has played more than 2,000 live shows in front of more than three million people.

After signing a deal with A&M Records, Blues Traveler released its self-titled debut, including the hit track “But Anyway,” in the spring of 1990. The album won the group a national audience that continued to grow with the following year’s Travelers and Thieves and the live EP On Tour Forever, and 1993’s Save His Soul.  In 1992, Blues Traveler founded the touring H.O.R.D.E. festival, which became an influential outlet for bands associated with the jam scene.  1994’s Four became a quintuple-platinum breakthrough for Blues Traveler, spawning the Grammy-winning smash single “Run-Around” and the follow up hit “Hook.”  The in-concert collection Live from the Fall arrived in 1996, followed by the 1997 studio effort Straight On Till Morning.  The 1999 release of Popper’s debut solo project Zygote was followed that August by the shocking news of bassist Bobby Sheehan’s sudden death at the age of 31.

Blues Traveler eventually bounced back from the loss of their comrade, regrouping as a reenergized five-piece with the addition of Chan’s brother Tad Kinchla on bass and Ben Wilson on keyboards.  The new lineup made its recording debut with 2001’s Bridge, followed by the live What You and I Have Been Through.  The acclaimed studio album Truth Be Told arrived in 2003, followed in 2004 by Live on the Rocks and its companion DVD Thinnest of Air.  2005’s Bastardos!, produced by ex-Wilco member Jay Bennett, reasserted Blues Traveler’s experimental edge.  2007 saw the release of Cover Yourself, a set of acoustic reworkings of Blues Traveler favorites.  Also in 2007, Popper stepped out again to tour and record with the John Popper Project featuring DJ Logic, which also included Tad Kinchla on bass.

The band is on tour this summer promoting their newest album North Hollywood Shootout  produced by Grammy-winner David Bianco, whose diverse resume includes work with the likes of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Ozzy Osbourne, Mick Jagger and Teenage Fanclub.  Fans can expect to hear memorable tunes as the uplifting road-trip anthem “You, Me and Everything,” the playfully romantic “Love Does” and the elegant, evocative “Orange in the Sun” boast infectious melodic hooks while showcasing the interactive instrumental chemistry that originally endeared the band to its rabidly devoted fan base. 

For more information on the Lake Tahoe Music Festival, please visit www.tahoemusic.org.