Soul Asylum and Ugly Kid Joe are joining forces for an Australian co-headline tour in March 2027, bringing together two bands whose paths through ’90s alternative rock took very different routes to the top.
The five-date run opens at Perth’s Astor Theatre on March 15 before heading to Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, where the bands play the Roundhouse on March 20. The tour finishes at Brisbane’s The Tivoli on March 21. Most significantly, it marks Soul Asylum’s first Australian shows since the mid-1990s, making this a return more than three decades in the waiting.
Soul Asylum’s story begins well before alternative rock became a commercial force. Formed in Minneapolis in the early ’80s, the band emerged from the city’s punk and indie scene before breaking internationally with 1992’s double-platinum ‘Grave Dancers Union’. Its biggest song, ‘Runaway Train’, reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Grammy for Best Rock Song in 1994, but the album also delivered enduring favourites including ‘Somebody to Shove’ and ‘Black Gold’.
Frontman Dave Pirner has kept Soul Asylum moving through changing line-ups and another three decades of records, with the band now 13 studio albums deep. Their most recent, 2024’s ‘Slowly But Shirley’, returned to the rougher rock ’n’ roll foundations that sat beneath their commercial breakthrough. For Australian audiences, however, the 2027 dates offer a rare opportunity to reconnect with a band absent from local stages since around the release of 1995’s ‘Let Your Dim Light Shine’.
Ugly Kid Joe arrive with a rather different strain of ’90s rock history. Formed in California in the late ’80s, the band combined hard rock and metal with a refusal to take themselves too seriously, breaking through with the 1991 EP ‘As Ugly As They Wanna Be’. The release became the first EP to be certified multi-platinum by the RIAA.
Their 1992 debut album ‘America’s Least Wanted’ pushed them further into the mainstream through ‘Everything About You’, which also appeared in ‘Wayne’s World’, and their cover of Harry Chapin’s ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’. After splitting in 1997, Ugly Kid Joe reunited in 2010 and have been touring and recording ever since, most recently releasing ‘Rad Wings of Destiny’ in 2022.
Unlike Soul Asylum, Ugly Kid Joe have made it back to Australia in relatively recent memory, touring here in 2017 for the 25th anniversary of ‘America’s Least Wanted’. They are also working towards the follow-up to ‘Rad Wings of Destiny’, with guitarist and producer Dave Fortman indicating that the new material moves firmly back towards the band’s metal side.
Putting the two together makes for a co-headline bill that reaches into contrasting corners of the same era. Soul Asylum bring the Minneapolis alternative lineage and songs that helped define their early-’90s breakthrough, while Ugly Kid Joe arrive from the louder, irreverent end of the decade’s hard-rock explosion. In March, Australian audiences finally get both on the same stage.
Early bird presale tickets go on sale Monday September 14 at 11am local time, with general tickets available from Wednesday September 16 at 11am local time.
Australian tour dates
Monday 15 March 2027 – Astor Theatre, Perth
Wednesday 17 March 2027 – Hindley St Music Hall, Adelaide
Thursday 18 March 2027 – Forum, Melbourne
Saturday 20 March 2027 – Roundhouse, Sydney
Sunday 21 March 2027 – The Tivoli, Brisbane
Go HERE for ticketing information.
