McLachlan, Russell Launch Joint Summer Tour
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- Sarah McLachlan is touring behind her 2025 album "Better Broken," a follow-up to her "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy" 30th Anniversary Tour, with Allison Russell confirmed as her opening act for dates running through August 9
- Russell has become more widely known over the past two years through opening for Hozier and appearing in a lead role in Broadway's "Hadestown," and she is also writing a memoir in New York while away from her Nashville home
- McLachlan and Russell first met in real life at Joni Jam at the Gorge in 2023, where they sat with Annie Lennox behind Joni Mitchell — the Gorge being the site of the very first Lilith Fair show on July 5, 1997
- The tour's first date together falls on Canada Day in Nashville, a pairing Russell called symbolically powerful for making "joyful noise on Canada Day in a state that is really attacking its own citizens," citing attacks on women's rights in Tennessee and beyond
- A dollar from every ticket goes to the Sarah McLachlan School of Music, and Russell revealed her own niece is already enrolled in a Vancouver program after her school lost its music curriculum
- McLachlan just won her 14th Juno Award, a figure Russell called "auspicious" given the twice-seven numerology
Why it matters: The tour explicitly extends the Lilith Fair matriarchy forward into 2025, with Russell — a Nashville resident — using the Canada Day Nashville date to frame the show as joyful resistance against Tennessee's attacks on women's rights. McLachlan's school-of-music tie-in makes every ticket a direct funding mechanism for youth music access, the same mission that powered Lilith Fair 28 years ago.
