Drive-By Truckers book the Paramount for a Wednesday in February

Starr Hill Presents brings the Athens band to the Paramount Theater on Feb. 24, with Brown Horse opening. Tickets went on sale Oct. 16.

Drive-By Truckers have come through Charlottesville plenty of times, but usually in a smaller room. The band's own past tour dates list a Plan 9 stop in 2011, and the 2010 tour played the Jefferson Theatre. The next visit moves up to the Paramount Theater, the 1,100-seat house that usually hosts touring theater, film nights and the odd rock show.

The date is Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2027. The Paramount's event page lists the show as a Starr Hill Presents booking with an 8 p.m. start. Brown Horse opens. Paramount Star Circle members got first crack on Thursday, Oct. 15. General on-sale started Friday, Oct. 16, so tickets are already moving through the theater's box office and website.

The show was announced Oct. 14, a busy week for a band that has spent this year looking back. Drive-By Truckers formed in Athens, Georgia, and have marked their 30th anniversary in 2026. Their last studio album, Welcome 2 Club XIII, came out on ATO Records in 2022. In November 2025 they released Definitive Decoration Day, an expanded edition of their 2003 record. The band's site is already promoting HeAthens Homecoming 2027, the hometown run in Athens, plus a West Coast version at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon, which the band says is almost sold out.

That puts the Charlottesville show at an interesting moment. This is a band with three decades of songs about the South: its politics, its small towns, its families and its bad decisions. A seated, acoustically friendly room like the Paramount suits that catalog. You'll hear the lyrics, which in this band's case are the point. The guitars will still be loud.

Brown Horse are more than a warm-up. The Paramount's listing spends much of its copy on the opener's third album, Total Dive, which it describes as the band stepping "forward into the darkness with a cautious optimism." On a Truckers bill that makes sense. Go early.

A seated, acoustically friendly room suits a band whose lyrics are the point. The guitars will still be loud.

A Wednesday in late February isn't the easiest night out in Charlottesville. That's partly why this booking makes sense: midweek shows at a theater this size tend to pull a crowd that has made plans for it, not walk-ups. If you've been meaning to see the Truckers in a room where you can sit down and actually hear the words, this is the chance.

Buy through the Paramount directly. Then find someone who'll argue with you about whether *Decoration Day* or *Southern Rock Opera* is the one to start with, and drag them along.

Sources: Starr Hill Presents: Drive-By Truckers - The Paramount Theater of Charlottesville (theparamount.net); Drive-By Truckers (official site) (drivebytruckers.com); Drive-By Truckers - Past Tourdates (drivebytruckers.com); Drive-By Truckers - News (drivebytruckers.com); Drive-By Truckers - ATO Records (atorecords.com); Drive-By Truckers - The Definitive Decoration Day - New West Records (newwestrecords.com); Drive-By Truckers - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Paramount Theater (Charlottesville, Virginia) - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)