Drive-By Truckers return to Harrisburg for the first time since 2020

The Athens band's Feb. 23 night at XL Live, with UK indie-country band Brown Horse opening, ends a six-and-a-half-year gap in Lancaster–Harrisburg.

The last time Drive-By Truckers played the Lancaster–Harrisburg area, the date was July 28, 2020, and the room was the Whitaker Center. Nobody around here has had a Truckers night since. That changes in February.

Drive-By Truckers play XL Live in Harrisburg on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2027, at 8 p.m., with Brown Horse opening. Tickets are $50.55 through Ticketmaster. The show was announced Oct. 14, which gives you a little over three months to talk a friend into a Tuesday night out in the dead of winter. XL Live holds about 1,100 people, a size that keeps even the back of the room close to the stage.

A lot of records and a lot of road have piled up in the gap. The band, founded by Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, released The New OK in 2020 and followed it with Welcome 2 Club XIII in 2022. In 2024 they took Southern Rock Opera back out on an anniversary tour that Rolling Stone framed as a journey through the past. Hood made a solo record, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams, in 2025. And this year, BrooklynVegan reported, the band spent four nights at the 40 Watt in Athens, Georgia, for its 2026 HeAthens Homecoming run.

That is the context for the Harrisburg date: a band that has spent the last few years looking back at its own catalog in public and still treating its hometown club like home base. Anyone who last saw them in 2020 is getting a group with two more albums and a revisited classic behind it.

Six and a half years is a long time between Truckers nights in Central Pennsylvania.

The opener is worth showing up early for. Brown Horse come from Norwich, England, and Americana UK has called them Norwich superstars, noting the band put out three albums in three years. BrooklynVegan describes them as a UK indie country band and reported that their third album, Total Dive, came with their first North American tour. They have already shared a bill with the Truckers this year, opening the band's Sept. 12 show at Burial Beer Co.'s Forestry Camp in Asheville, North Carolina, so the pairing is not a one-off.

Musically, the bill sits where rock, country and folk run together, which has been the Truckers' territory from the start: guitars up front and songs built on stories. Brown Horse come at the same tangle of styles from the other side of the Atlantic, which makes the pairing make sense.

A few practical notes. It is a weeknight show with an 8 p.m. start, so plan for a late drive home if you are coming in from Lancaster, York or farther out. February in Harrisburg means weather can be a factor; check the Ticketmaster page and XL Live before you leave. And at $50.55, this is a fair price to see a band of this standing in a room this size.

Six and a half years is a long gap for a band that tours as much as this one. Buy the ticket, bring the friend who wore out Southern Rock Opera in college, and get there for the opener.

Sources: JamBase: Drive-By Truckers at XL Live, Feb 23, 2027 (jambase.com); Ticketmaster: Drive-By Truckers, Harrisburg (ticketmaster.com); Travel Portland: Drive-by Truckers (founded by Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley) (travelportland.com); Stereogum: Drive-By Truckers The New OK (stereogum.com); AllMusic: Drive-By Truckers albums (Welcome 2 Club XIII) (allmusic.com); Rolling Stone: Drive-By Truckers to Journey Through the Past, Playing 'Southern Rock Opera' on Tour (rollingstone.com); Stereogum: Drive-By Truckers Announce Southern Rock Opera 23rd Anniversary Tour (stereogum.com); Exclaim!: Drive-By Truckers (Hood solo album Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams) (exclaim.ca); BrooklynVegan, Feb 12, 2026 (HeAthens Homecoming at the 40 Watt) (brooklynvegan.com); Americana UK: Norwich superstars Brown Horse set to release third album in three years (americana-uk.com); BrooklynVegan: UK indie country band Brown Horse announce new album Total Dive, North American tour (brooklynvegan.com); BrooklynVegan: Brown Horse announce fall North American tour (brooklynvegan.com); JamBase: Drive-By Truckers at Burial Beer Co. Forestry Camp, Sep 12, 2026 (jambase.com)