April 25, 2025
CAPA welcomes Elvis Costello & The Imposters with Charlie Sexton for October 10 show at Palace Theatre
Elvis Costello has extended his “Radio Soul!: The Early Songs of Elvis Costello” tour with 22 new East Coast and Midwest dates, including an 8 pm Friday, October 10, show in Columbus at the Palace Theatre.
As the playful billing suggests, the show will feature numbers drawn from record releases from My Aim Is True in 1977 to Blood & Chocolate in 1986, along with other surprises.
Those nine years saw the first appearance of some of Elvis Costello’s most renowned compositions, from “Watching The Detectives” to “I Want You,” along with songs that have remained in The Imposters’ live repertoire over the last 20 or more years, including “Alison,” “Man Out Of Time,” and “Brilliant Mistake.”
Tickets, which start at $63, go on sale at 10 am Friday, April 25, and may be purchased at the CAPA Ticket Center at the Ohio Theatre (39 E. State St.), online at www.capa.com, and by phone at (614) 469-0939.
Asked about the surprising theme of this tour, Costello responded: “For any songwriter, it has to be a compliment if people want to hear songs written up to 50 years ago. Among them, ‘Radio Soul,’ the first draft of what eventually became ‘Radio Radio.’”
Regarding the decision to sharpen the focus on a specific period of time, Costello reminded us: “You can expect the unexpected and the faithful in equal measure. Don’t forget this show is ‘Performed by Elvis Costello & The Imposters,’ an ensemble which includes three people who first recorded this music and two more who bring something entirely new. They are nobody’s tribute band. The Imposters are a living, breathing, swooning, kicking and screaming rock and roll band who can turn their hands to a pretty ballad when the opportunity arises.”
The Imposters are Steve Nieve, Pete Thomas and Davey Faragher and they are joined once again by guitarist, Charlie Sexton.
“If there is an encore and we play, ‘Farewell, OK,’ it probably means some of those “Early Songs” will have been performed in your city for the very last time. I don’t want to go back, I want to bring these songs into the present day, once more, in the event they are ever pushed out of the way by the next number that I write,” Costello concluded.
This tour follows the fall 2024 release of King of America & Other Realms, a six-CD anthology that tells the story of that 1986 album and the music to which it led. The King of America songs are expected to be heard in the mid-show interlude, along with songs written as long ago as 1975 and even some of those “pretty ballads” that Costello has promised.
