Atlanta Rhythm Section brings Firefall to the Buckhead Theatre in February

The band that grew out of Doraville's Studio One books a Thursday night in a 1930 theater on Roswell Road, with Firefall opening.

Some bands put a city in their name as branding. Atlanta Rhythm Section put it there as a return address, and this winter the band brings it back up Roswell Road to a theater that was already old when the group was born.

Atlanta Rhythm Section plays the Buckhead Theatre on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2027, with Firefall opening. Music starts at 8 p.m. The date was announced Nov. 2, and tickets are on sale now through Ticketmaster. The room holds 1,800, which makes this a theater night, close enough to see hands on frets from the balcony.

The band's story starts a few miles northeast, in Doraville. Atlanta Rhythm Section came together out of the session players working at Studio One, the recording studio tied to producer and songwriter Buddy Buie, and the musicians used the place for rehearsals as much as for records, according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia. That habit of working a song over in a room until it sat right paid off in 1976, when "So Into You," written by Buie, Robert Nix and Dean Daughtry, became a top-ten hit from *A Rock and Roll Alternative*.

Mix magazine's Classic Tracks feature on the song notes that its success let Buie upgrade much of Studio One's equipment. Buie kept the studio running until 1986, when he sold it to Georgia State University, per the studio's Wikipedia entry). For anyone who grew up around here, that is a piece of Atlanta's recording history as much as a band biography, and a new authorized history of the group, covered by Explore Georgia, has put that story back in front of readers.

The Buckhead stop is not a first visit. JamBase has the band on this same stage in December 2024, so this is a return to a room it knows. The Firefall pairing has been travelling, too: the two acts have also been billed together at Jacksonville's Florida Theatre.

The venue is half the reason to go. The Buckhead Theatre opened on June 2, 1930, a Spanish baroque house designed by the Atlanta firm Daniell & Beutell, sitting at the Buckhead Triangle on Roswell Road, according to its Wikipedia entry. Over the decades it has answered to the Capri, the Buckhead Roxy and the Coca-Cola Roxy, among other names, before going back to the one on the marquee now, as Ticketmaster's venue guide lays out. Plenty of Atlantans have a story from one of those eras.

A band named for the city, playing a 1930 theater a few miles from the studio where it started.

What to know before you go: it is a Thursday with an 8 p.m. start, so plan for a weeknight in Buckhead, which means leaving time to park and getting in before Firefall takes the stage. The ticket link is live now, and with three months between announcement and show date, there is no reason to wait until the week of.

The details are simple. The meaning is local. A band that learned its craft in a Doraville studio is coming back to play a room that has been hosting Atlantans since 1930, and on Feb. 4 the two histories share a stage for a night.

Sources: Atlanta Rhythm Section — New Georgia Encyclopedia (georgiaencyclopedia.org); Classic Tracks: 'So Into You,' Atlanta Rhythm Section — Mix (mixonline.com); Studio One (recording studio) — Wikipedia (wikipedia.org); Atlanta Rhythm Section — Wikipedia (wikipedia.com); New Book Tells the History of the Atlanta Rhythm Section — Explore Georgia (exploregeorgia.org); Atlanta Rhythm Section at Buckhead Theatre, Dec 8, 2024 — JamBase (jambase.com); Atlanta Rhythm Section & Firefall — Florida Theatre (floridatheatre.com); Buckhead Theatre — Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Your Quick & Easy Guide To The Buckhead Theatre — Ticketmaster (blog.ticketmaster.com); JamBase show listing (jambase.com)