SAN FRANCISCO
Jodeci open the Forever My Lady 35th Anniversary Tour on Saturday, October 24, at The Masonic in San Francisco, starting a fall run that celebrates 35 years since the group's No. 1 debut album, Forever My Lady, was released in 1991. BroadwayWorld's published itinerary and Ticketmaster's artist listing agree on the opening date, the venue and the shape of the first week, which keeps the group in California and the Southwest before the tour turns east.
The anniversary is built around a specific record, not a general nostalgia package. Forever My Lady was a 3x platinum debut that reached No. 1 on Billboard's Top R&B Albums chart, and the tour announcement frames the whole run as a celebration of that album and the catalog that followed it. For listeners who came up on early-1990s R&B, the title alone carries the argument: this was the record that introduced Jodeci's blend of gospel-rooted singing and hip-hop-influenced production to a national audience, and 35 years later the group is taking that introduction back out on the road, city by city.
A California opening, then Las Vegas on Halloween night
The opening stretch is a California run. After San Francisco on October 24, the tour plays Inglewood on Sunday, October 25, at YouTube Theater, Ontario on Tuesday, October 27, at Toyota Arena, and El Cajon on Thursday, October 29, at The Magnolia. Phoenix follows on Friday, October 30, at Arizona Financial Theatre, a date PhxSoul is promoting locally with the group's best-known songs front and center, including “Cry For You,” “Stay,” “U & I,” “Come and Talk to Me” and “Forever My Lady.”
Then comes the stop that matters most to this site: Las Vegas on Saturday, October 31, at the Pearl Concert Theater at Palms Casino Resort. Ticketmaster's main artist listing shows the Halloween-night date at the Pearl, listed through a partner site, and BroadwayWorld's full itinerary lists October 31 in Las Vegas at Palms Casino. A Saturday night, on Halloween, in an intimate theater just off the Strip is a very different proposition from an arena date. The Pearl rewards exactly what Jodeci do best — close harmonies, call-and-response with the crowd, and ballads that need a room quiet enough to land. Vegas audiences also know this music in their bones. The slow-jam era never really left this city; it moved into lounges, grown-and-sexy nights and wedding playlists, and a Halloween Jodeci show at the Palms sits right at the center of that tradition. If the opening California dates are the tour's warm-up, Las Vegas is its first real occasion.
The route east, and a hometown finish in Charlotte
From Las Vegas, BroadwayWorld's itinerary moves to St. Louis on November 4 at Stifel Theatre, Detroit on November 6 at Fox Theatre, Chicago on November 7 at Arie Crown Theater and Indianapolis on November 8, then through Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and the Washington area in the following days. The published list continues through Cleveland, Bristol, Jersey City, Bensalem and Baltimore before Thanksgiving week, then Memphis, Norman and Houston at the end of November. December brings North Little Rock, New Orleans, Birmingham, Lake Charles, Mobile, Savannah, Nashville, Columbia, St. Petersburg, Jacksonville and Miami Beach, before an Atlanta date on December 18 and the closing show on Saturday, December 19, at Ovens Auditorium in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Charlotte is not an arbitrary final stop. BroadwayWorld describes the December 19 concert as a special hometown concert, and the group's story starts there — the Charlotte quartet whose sound, as uDiscover Music put it in its account of the reissue, paired traditional gospel-rooted vocals with synthetic production and mirrored that forward-thinking sound with hip-hop wardrobe and styling. Ending an anniversary tour at home, two months after it begins, gives the run a narrative arc that most routing sheets do not have.
One caution belongs in any honest preview. The tour's size has been described inconsistently since it was announced. BroadwayWorld calls it a 35-city tour and publishes an itinerary of 35 dates. Material from Day After Day Productions, the agency presenting the tour, has described it as a 36-city tour. Ticketmaster's help page, meanwhile, says the group will perform 30 shows, and the chart on that page lists fewer dates than Ticketmaster's own main artist listing, which adds the Las Vegas and Cleveland shows. Readers planning travel should trust individual venue and ticketing listings for a specific date rather than any headline total — every date named in this story appears in the published BroadwayWorld itinerary and, for the opening run and the Las Vegas stop, in Ticketmaster's listings as well.
The album came back first, on expanded vinyl
The tour follows the music. In honor of the milestone, Forever My Lady was re-released on July 17 with a special expanded vinyl version, distributed through UMG, featuring bonus tracks and a never-before-heard a cappella version of “Stay.” uDiscover Music, Universal's own editorial site, detailed the package in May: a 2LP set carrying the original tracklist plus five bonus tracks — “Forever My Lady” live from Uptown MTV Unplugged in 1993, the Swing Mob radio mix of “I'm Still Waiting,” the radio remix of “Come And Talk To Me,” the previously unreleased a cappella “Stay,” and the hip-hop version of “Cherish,” described as a favorite from the Fried Green Tomatoes soundtrack.
That a cappella “Stay” is the reissue's telling detail. Stripped of production, it makes the group's core claim for them: the harmonies were always the headline. uDiscover's account credits the album's pioneering mixture to production spearheaded by group member DeVante Swing alongside Al B. Sure!, and notes that the record debuted atop the Billboard R&B chart, went 3x platinum and sent four singles to the Billboard Hot 100, including “Forever My Lady,” “Stay,” “I'm Still Waiting” and its biggest hit, “Come And Talk To Me.” BroadwayWorld's history agrees on the chart story, adding that the title track reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles and Tracks chart and that “Come & Talk To Me” and “Stay” also topped the charts.
The numbers behind the anniversary
According to BroadwayWorld's tour announcement, Jodeci have sold over 20 million albums, with five No. 1 singles and three No. 1 albums, alongside Soul Train Awards and Billboard Music Awards. The group's own “About” history, published with the later BroadwayWorld tour update, fills in how those three No. 1 albums line up: Forever My Lady in 1991, Diary Of A Mad Band in 1993 — which produced the No. 1 single “Cry For You” — and The Show, The After Party, The Hotel in 1995, which produced “Freek'n You” and “Love U 4 Life.” The announcement material for the tour says audiences can expect the No. 1 hits from the debut alongside catalog staples including “Love U 4 Life,” “Lately,” “Cry For You,” “Feenin'” and “Freek'n You.”
The group has stated its own case for the tour plainly. “Thirty-five years ago, Forever My Lady changed our lives,” said K-Ci Hailey and Mr. Dalvin of Jodeci in a joint statement published with the announcement. “The love and connection we share with our fans is unmatched and this tour is for them — the people who stood by us from day one. Get ready, we're going to leave everything on the stage for you.”
Tickets for the tour went on general sale July 31 at 10 a.m. local time, following presales that began July 29, according to the YouTube Theater announcement and PhxSoul's Phoenix listing. That means the remaining question for most fans is not access but choice: a theater in San Francisco to say you were there on night one, a Halloween Saturday at the Pearl in Las Vegas, or the hometown finale in Charlotte on December 19. Thirty-five years after Forever My Lady first topped the R&B albums chart, Jodeci are betting the songs still fill rooms. The routing — theaters and landmark halls rather than sheds — suggests they intend to prove it up close.
