MUSIC
Travis Barker injury postpones Blink-182 tour
The upcoming Blink-182 tour is postponed following the drummer’s finger surgery
Fans who were excited to see Blink-182 in concert may have to wait a little bit longer. The band’s upcoming 2023 to 2024 World Tour was recently postponed due to drummer Travis Barker’s recent finger surgery.
The tour follows their 2019 tour with Lil Wayne in support of their eighth album ‘Nine’. It also marks the band’s first tour with Tom DeLonge, the band’s first singer, since 2014.
A month of injuries
During tour rehearsals on February 7, Barker injured his finger while drumming, dislocating the finger, and tearing the ligaments. On February 20, he shared in an Instagram story that he had injured the finger again. A week later, he shared a video of a medical worker attempting to put his finger back into place on Instagram.
The drummer had surgery on Friday, sharing the news on Instagram that the surgery was a success.
“Thank you for all the love and prayers and understanding this week as I went into surgery. It was a hard decision to make but ultimately I couldn’t continue to play the drums without it. It was inevitable that my finger would have dislocated again without fixing the torn ligament surgically,” he said in an Instagram post today.
Latin American fans disappointed
The World Tour was announced back in August to the delight of fans who were also excited to see Tom DeLonge reuniting with the band for the first time since 2014. DeLonge also announced that a new album was expected to come “in a few months”.
The tour was set to being on March 11, at the Imperial GNP festival in Tijuana, Mexico, and continue through Latin America, marking many first-time shows for the band in the continent. It would have also been the first time the band played in Mexico since 2004. But following Barker’s injury, the Latin American leg of the tour has been postponed to 2024, leaving many fans disappointed.
The new tour start dates
Following the postponement of the Latin American dates, the tour will now commence on May 4 in Saint Paul, Minnesota at the Xcel Energy Center, followed by two dates in Chicago on May 6th and 7th, then onwards throughout the East Coast in both the U.S. and Canada.