Thirty years is a long time to wait for a first date, but Jakob Dylan and the Wallflowers are making up for lost time.
The band has confirmed its first-ever Australian tour, a five-city run built around a full live performance of Bringing Down the Horse, the 1996 album that turned Dylan from “the guy whose dad wrote ‘Like a Rolling Stone'” into a bona fide rock star in his own right. The trek, presented by Love Police, lands in December to mark the record’s 30th anniversary — a milestone that arrives a little later Down Under than everywhere else, but not without reason. The band spent much of 2026 already crisscrossing the U.S. and Europe on the same celebratory run, and Australia is where the victory lap finally lands.
Fans in Melbourne get first crack at it, with the tour kicking off at the Palais Theatre on Friday, December 4. From there, the band heads to Thirroul’s Anita’s Theatre on December 5, Sydney’s Liberty Hall on December 6, Brisbane’s Fortitude Music Hall on December 8, and wraps in Adelaide at the Hindley Street Music Hall on December 9. A promoter presale opens Wednesday, August 26, with general tickets following two days later on August 28.
Bringing Down the Horse doesn’t need much of an introduction for anyone who lived through late-’90s rock radio. Released in May 1996, the album climbed to No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and went quadruple platinum in the U.S. — a commercial peak the Wallflowers never quite matched again. Australia caught on too, pushing the record to gold certification and a No. 9 finish on the ARIA chart. The real engine behind all of it was “One Headlight,” a song so ubiquitous it simultaneously topped Billboard’s Mainstream Rock, Modern Rock and Triple-A airplay charts and later earned the band two Grammy Awards. Rolling Stone eventually ranked it among the 100 greatest pop songs ever recorded. The album’s other singles — “6th Avenue Heartache,” “The Difference” and “Three Marlenas” — rounded out what became one of the decade’s defining rock records.
There’s a second act to each show, too. Alongside the Horse set, the band will perform Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 1982 album Long After Dark start to finish, a tribute rooted in a friendship that shaped Dylan’s own songwriting. Dylan inducted Petty into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, and the two remained close until Petty’s death — this tour doubles as a quiet continuation of that bond, filtered through one of Petty’s own deep cuts rather than his greatest hits.
Dylan has kept the Wallflowers running for more than three decades now, weathering lineup changes, a seven-year hiatus, and the strange particular pressure of being rock royalty’s son who wanted nothing to do with the family business narrative. Outside the band, he fronted the 2018 documentary Echo in the Canyon, sharing the screen with Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Beck, Cat Power, Norah Jones and Regina Spektor, and left his fingerprints on film and TV soundtracks, including the Wallflowers’ cover of “Heroes” for 1998’s Godzilla. Most recently, the band spent 2025 opening for Eric Clapton across the U.S., adding another name to a support-slot résumé that already includes the Who and the Rolling Stones.
For Love Police’s BT, booking the tour was personal. “I loved this record when it hit the streets,” he said in a statement, recalling the roots and Americana revival the album was part of in 1996. Getting a full Tom Petty album thrown in, he added, felt like a bonus nobody saw coming.
For a band that built its legacy on a single, inescapable album, playing it front to back — 8,000 miles from where it all started — feels less like nostalgia and more like unfinished business, finally settled.
The Wallflowers’ 2026 Australian Tour Dates
- Friday, December 4 — Palais Theatre, Melbourne
- Saturday, December 5 — Anita’s Theatre, Thirroul
- Sunday, December 6 — Liberty Hall, Sydney
- Tuesday, December 8 — Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane
- Wednesday, December 9 — Hindley Street Music Hall, Adelaide
