Pure Prairie League at Parkway Theater (July 10, 2025)

Tour Dates

Coming to a town near you…we’re excited to announce our Back On Track Summer Tour dates! Catch us on the road and check out our website pureprairieleague.com for tickets, updates, additional info…

07/10 Parkway Theater – Minneapolis, MN
07/12 Turner Hall Ballroom – Milwaukee, WI
07/13 Peg Egan Performing Arts Center – Egg Harbor, WI
07/17 Ruth Eckerd Hall – Clearwater, FL
07/18 Peabody Auditorium – Daytona Beach, FL
08/08 Bloomington Center – Bloomington, IL
08/10 The Ark – Ann Arbor, MI
08/22 Winspear Opera House – Dallas, TX
08/23 Paramount Theatre – Austin, TX
08/24 Tobin Center – San Antonio, TX
08/25 Main Street Crossing – Tomball, TX
08/30 SamJam Bluegrass Festival 2025 – Piketon, OH
09/05 Uptown Theater – Kansas City, MO
09/06 Ozarks Amphitheater – Camdenton, MO
09/11 Beaver Creek Village – Avon, CO
12/04 Musikfest Café – Bethlehem, PA
12/05 Rams Head On Stage – Annapolis, MD
01/09/26 Rialto Theatre – Tucson, AZ

It was a perfect summer evening, and there was a casual feel in the air when I stepped up to the Parkway Theater and showed my ID. It wasn’t surprising. The band I was about to see had their last hit song decades before and the fan base on average was getting along in years. There was no reason for the night not to be a sleepy affair.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Like the Four Freshmen which we covered last month at the Twin Cities Jazz Festival, Pure Prairie League (PPL) has held a similar trajectory starting with its original members and ending up with a completely new set of musicians on their latest tour. In between over thirty musicians have played in the band, some of them going on to have their own careers like Vince Gill, Gary Burr and Curtis Wright.

PPL started in the late Sixties with Craig Fuller on guitar, Tom McGrail on drums and John David Call on steel guitar. Their name was lifted from a fictional temperance union featured in the cowboy movie Dodge City, starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. Their 1972 debut album cover features a Norman Rockwell cowboy named Sad Luke, who would go on to appear on every PPL album thereafter as well as providing the backdrop to the new set of musicians who took the stage at the Parkway, they being: Jeff Zona on guitar, Jared Camic on bass, Randy Harper on the keyboard and guitar, Scott Thompson on drums and John Heinrich on pedal steel guitar and tenor sax.

PPL had over ten albums to play from, but they were also supporting their latest album Back on Track which was released in 2024. And by the third song it became apparent that the newest iteration of PPL could play as Harper and Heinrich had a nice call and response with their keys and pedal steel guitar on the song “Early Morning Riser.”

Then a “purty” song, “Angel #9” followed by “Heart of Her Own”.

“Man, you guys are kicking it,” said Harper after the applause died down.

He was right. The audience wasn’t sleepy. They were in the moment and showing their approval, especially when Heinrich laid down a sweet and soulful solo on his pedal steel guitar and Zona leaned into his guitar solos.

Harper said that there was only one song that was played at every PPL concert for the past fifty plus years. Most in the audience thought it was their hit song, but Harper said it was actually the Nick Gravenites “I’ll Change Your Flat Tire, Merle”, as in Merle Haggard, which held the same DNA of Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” and got a big roar from the crowd with lyrics like:

If you’re gonna call the world your home
Ya know you’re gonna have to get out and get stoned

Somehow a breezy 45 minutes went by. And when they returned for the second half, it was with songs from their latest album like “Picture Perfect Life”, “Skipping Stones” and “I’m the Lucky One.” Then earlier songs like “Jazz Man” and “Two Lane Highway” as well as forays from the 80’s with “Goodbye So Long” and “Let Me Love You Tonight.”

It was a pleasant evening of music from a band who deftly blended songs from past members as well as songs of their own. But Harper finally mentioned what was on everyone’s mind. “If we don’t do this. We will get shot.”

And so they finished a perfect evening with a perfect song, “Aime”, a song that helped start the country rock movement. A song that I would describe as drinking a smooth whiskey on a summer’s eve.