Tour Dates

Apr. 23, 2026 The Ark, Ann Arbor, MI
Apr. 24, 2026 Ludlow Garage, Cincinnati, OH
Apr. 25, 2026 Music Box Supper Club, Cleveland, OH
Apr. 26, 2026 Natalies Grandview, Columbus, OH
May 23, 2026 Buffalo Rose Blues Fest, Golden, CO
Jun. 18, 2026 City Winery, Nashville, TN
Jun. 19, 2026 WC Handy Blues Fest, Henderson, KY
Jun. 20, 2026 The Lyric Theatre, Blue Island, IL
Jun. 21, 2026 The Jazz Kitchen, Indianapolis, IN
Jun. 22, 2026 Jergel’s, Pittsburgh, PA
Jun. 23, 2026 The Iridium, New York, NY
Jun. 24, 2026 Elkton Music Hall, Elkton, MD
Jun. 25, 2026 Infinity Hall, Hartford, CT
Jun. 26, 2026 Rochester Jazz Fest, Rochester, NY
Jun. 27, 2026 Saratoga Jazz Fest, Saratoga Springs, NY
Jun. 28, 2026 Jimmy’s, Portsmouth, NH
Jul. 1, 2026 Mardigras On The Boardwalk, Atlantic City, NJ

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■ Ana Popović
Ana Popović is a Serbian-born blues and blues rock guitarist and vocalist known for pushing boundaries and reinventing herself with each album. Her latest album, POWER, reached number one on the Billboard blues chart and was nominated for a Blues Music Award. Popović has shared the stage with Jeff Beck, Joe Bonamassa, and B.B. King, and was the only female guitarist in the 2014–2018 Experience Hendrix tour.

A lot of visiting musicians give us their take on Prince. For Ana Popović, as a Yugoslavian teenager learning the guitar, she fell in love with Prince when she heard Diamonds and Pearls.

Playing Minneapolis on the tenth anniversary of his death felt like a full-circle moment. Now, if anyone missed the first decade of Prince’s defining works, from 1978’s “Soft and Wet” through “U Got the Look”, it’d be Yugoslavia. But, out of everything, Diamonds and Pearls? That’s a contrarian take right there, but as Popović’s encore cover of Prince’s “Willing and Able” took flight, it clarified some things she’d been saying (musically) all night. It rocked. The jazzy flourishes were there. Her band embodied the heartbeat of the New Power Generation’s take on New Jack Swing. The showmanship, and her electricity on stage.

And the blues: present. Blues, like any other genre, has its constraints and parameters. Its vocabulary is well-known and its structures somewhat rigid, but that creates space for chops, improvisation, and a pure expression of showmanship. Popović hit the stage with a glittery skirt that matched her silver six-string, and within two or three songs, had dealt out more solos and hot licks than I’d seen in a year’s worth of shows on my post-punk beat. Her favorite 1964 sunburst Stratocaster showed up in her hands for “Worked Up”, and by the end of the night, she was holding it over her head with one hand.

Ana Popović has her own deep back catalog, and we got a mix of her latest (Dance to the Rhythm) and 2023’s Power. During “Dwell on the Feeling” her finger-picking reached a furious pace — an energy matched by the band (keys, drums, bass, and another vocalist). I truly thought that was the end of the night, but with “Brand New Man”, we hit new improvisational heights.

The Dakota is a great place to see a great band — they sounded crisp and very tight, if that “New Jack Swing” tendency I highlighted earlier did sound a little too pretty for Popović’s slightly-accented bluesy snarl. (There’s a 90’s production influence on a lot of her recorded material, and while that can sound like clean-room perfection, it can slide into “jazzy soundtrack of a Japan-only Sega Genesis golf game” until you observe the subtleties of performance.) But the room felt full, and her fans leapt to their feet four times by my count.

But “Willing and Able” wasn’t the last or only encore: she closed with “Sisters and Brothers”, a message of acceptance and healing (“…used to be only Serbia was so crazy, now the whole world is crazy”) that had the audience nodding in understanding with her. In 1991, a Yugoslavian teenager heard Prince and heard possibility. 35 years later, Minneapolis heard it played back in her voice.