The presale for Lennon Stella’s first headline run in six years went live Tuesday at 10 a.m. local time, and the venues tell most of the story: a hotel listening room in Nashville, a basement club in New York, a 1931 movie house in Toronto, a former church in Los Angeles. No arenas. No opening act announced. Just fifteen songs, a piano, and whatever else fits in the van.
Stella announced the run herself, posting the cities without ceremony — “Nashville / New York / Toronto / Los Angeles,” she wrote, adding “Stripped down.” The dates, per the album’s rollout, are Oct. 24 at The Blue Room in Nashville, Oct. 27 at LPR in New York, Oct. 29 at Paradise Theatre in Toronto and Nov. 3 at Pico Union Project in Los Angeles. General sale opens Friday, Oct. 2 at 10 a.m. local time.
The timing is the point. Sleeping Lion, her second album, arrives Oct. 23 via RECORDS — one day before the Nashville show — making these the first live airings of the new material anywhere. It is also her first full-length since 2020’s Three. Two. One, and her first headlining dates since the Three. Two. One Tour was canceled before it ever played a note.
She spent much of the gap offstage, writing and then scrapping a version of the record that wasn’t working. “I waited long enough that people within the industry stopped caring, and the pressure went away,” she said of the six years between releases. “With that came freedom, inspiration, and excitement.”
The album finally took shape with Canadian singer-songwriter Andy Shauf producing — an unlikely pairing on paper, which is partly why it worked. Stella’s longtime co-writer Simon Wilcox pushed her to write without worrying who might recognize themselves in the lyrics, and the results lean into discomfort rather than away from it.
The singles have followed a similar logic. “Unforgivable Things” landed Aug. 27 with a video she co-directed with Adam Alonzo, framed by Stella as a door into the record for listeners. “Comedy Show” followed in September, built from a song she wrote assuming nobody would ever hear it. “There is a lot of disappointment, and hurt in this song,” she said. “I’ve written from that place many times before, but never so unfiltered.”
For a performer who spent six seasons playing Maddie Conrad on Nashville — 105 episodes of fictional stardom, from 2012 to 2018 — the four-city itinerary reads like a deliberate reset. The Blue Room’s capacity is roughly the size of a good wedding. Tickets will not last, but they will not need a stadium to sell out.
General sale opens Friday at 10 a.m. local time. The album drops the night before the first show.
