Plymouth date for UB40
Following their sold-out UK tour of 2014, reggae stars UB40 have announced 19-date UK tour for May and June 2015 due to demand.
The Brummie legends are currently in the middle of the second leg of their ‘Getting Over The Storm UK Tour’, which has seen UK’s most successful reggae band play over forty UK shows to over 100,000 fans.
UB40’s 2015 tour dates, which start at Motherwell Concert Hall on Monday 4th and ends at Doncaster Racecourse on Saturday, 6th June, continues the band’s preference to avoid arena venues in the UK, as founding member and principal songwriter Brian Travers explains, “The success of this year’s tour has confirmed what we already knew, that it’s better to play to 100,000 people across forty intimate venues across the whole of the country than playing to the same number of people at six enormous domes in the same cities.
"It’s a much better experience for both the band and our fans, and we get to play in towns and cities we haven’t visited for many years.”
Fellow UB40 founding member and principal songwriter Jimmy Brown agrees, “The atmosphere in the venues on our current tour has been amazing. You can feel it from the stage and it lifts the band to a different level. You rarely get that in an arena. We’re never happier than when we are on stage; we are a working band, it’s what we do.”
The success of the tour is bound to rankle with UB40’s former lead singer Ali Campbell, who has repeatedly attempted to discredit his former bandmates since he walked out on them in 2008.
UB40 founding member Robin Campbell said, “Ali has been shamelessly attempting to pass himself off as a ‘reformed’ UB40 since the start of 2014, which has confused many of our fans, the media and concert promoters all over the world. We’ve had to issue writs
against Ali and two other former members. If they want to be UB40 so badly they should never have chosen to leave UB40 in the first place.”
Naming themselves after the unemployment benefit form, UB40 formed in 1978, before releasing their debut album ‘Signing Off’ in August 1980 – considered by many to be one of the greatest reggae albums ever released by a British band. It was the start of a career that has since seen the band have over forty UK Top 40 hit singles and achieve sales of over 100 million records, making UB40 one of the most successful British groups of alltime.
The band’s latest Top 30 album ‘Getting Over The Storm’ was awarded BBC Radio 2’s ‘Album Of The Week’ accolade and received 5-star reviews from the UK’s music press on its release in September 2013.
UB40 wille be appearing at Plymouth Pavilions on Sunday 17 May.
Tickets are on sale now and available from www.ub40.co.uk
