Overview:
Get those lawn chairs ready: performances at the Overton Park Shell will resume on May 9th.
There’s something magical about the year a loved one turns 90, as we stop to consider all they’ve seen and heard over nearly a century. And in this day and age, with older buildings and landmarks being blithely destroyed in the name of progress, that’s no less true for treasured performance venues. So this milestone year for the Overton Park Shell, built by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1936 as part of an effort that would ultimately construct 27 bandshells around the country, will hold a bit more significance than years past. It’s proof positive that the Shell has stayed true to its original motto: “A pledge to the future of music in Memphis.”
Meanwhile, it’s the 14th anniversary of the Orion Financial Free Concert Series, an institution that’s folded into the Shell itself and dovetails neatly with its motto. Every spring, music fans await the announcement of the first wave of bands they can look forward to on the grassy slope facing the Shell. Now that moment has arrived for 2026.
It will begin, appropriately enough, with a look backward, as Memphis’ best Allman Brothers tribute band, Trouble No More, will take the stage on Saturday, May 9th, to recreate the Southern rock pioneers’ show at the Shell on that very date in 1971. This was the set they played 55 years ago:
Statesboro Blues
Trouble No More
Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’
Done Somebody Wrong
One Way Out
In Memory of Elizabeth Reed
Dreams
Stormy Monday
You Don’t Love Me
Some of those tunes, leaning heavily on covers of material by blues masters like Blind Willie McTell, Muddy Waters, Eddie Kirkland, and T-Bone Walker, would appear a few months later on the Allman Brothers Band’s breakout album, At Fillmore East.
After Trouble No More’s kickoff show, two to three performances will take place every week at the Shell through the end of June. And speaking of time-honored traditions, it wouldn’t be Memorial Day Weekend at the Shell with out the MSO’s Sunset Symphony concert, slated for Sunday, May 24th.
Check out the full schedule below, and get your lawnchairs, coolers, and mosquito spray ready.
● Saturday, May 9: Trouble No More presents Allman Brothers Band Historic ’71
Recreation Show
● Saturday, May 16: Bodywerk presents Rmzi & Friends
● Sunday, May 17: Dreamfest
● Sunday, May 24: Sunset Symphony
● Thursday, May 28: Eddie 9V
● Friday, May 29: Billy Allen + The Pollies
● Thursday, June 4: East Nash Grass
● Friday, June 5: Jake Shimabukuro
● Saturday, June 6: High Fade
● Thursday, June 11: The Iguanas
● Friday, June 12: Steph Strings
● Saturday, June 13: Mustang McGee
● Thursday, June 18: The Lone Bellow
● Friday, June 19: Deanté Hitchcock
● Saturday, June 20: Brezay
● Thursday, June 25: Brother Wallace
● Friday, June 26: FreeWorld
● Saturday, June 27: Stax Music Academy