Background
In the early 1990s Parton had stopped the grueling tour schedule that she had worked for most of her career; she was tired of it and did not see fit to keep a band on payroll. She continued to do casino shows in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Las Vegas, Nevada, and she also performed (usually annually) themed concerts at her Dollywood theme park.
With the resurgence of sorts of her career with the release of the album The Grass Is Blue (1999), Parton toyed with the idea of mounting a tour to promote the album. Scheduling conflicts with the many talented, and booked, musicians who played on the album prohibited the tour and the subsequent one which would have promoted the album Little Sparrow (2001). Parton did do some promotional concerts for the albums. She also appeared at the MerleFest at Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, on April 28, 2001, and performed a set list that comprised songs from the two albums as well as her greatest hits.
During Dollywood's opening weekend in April 2002, it was announced that Parton would release a new album, Halos & Horns, and would launch her first tour in a decade. The tour was promoted and produced by House of Blues. The venues were mainly club settings and seated somewhere between 1,000 and 2,500. Subsequently, every date on the tour sold out. Most reviews praised Parton and her recent bluegrass/folk releases.
Parton stated in interviews to promote the album and tour that the shows she would be performing would be very simple. There was no glitz or lights or video monitors that she had employed with her earlier tours in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Most of the songs that made up the set list were in the country/bluegrass/folk vein, although Parton did include her biggest pop hits in an a cappella medley. "9 to 5" was treated to a very stripped down, bluegrass treatment, garnering mixed reviews from fans.
Read more about this topic: Halos & Horns Tour
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