Hairball books Satellite Music Hall for a Sunday of arena rock

The Minnesota arena-rock spectacle plays Memphis's newest big room on Feb. 28, 2027.

Bring the hairspray and leave your irony at home. Hairball is coming to Memphis.

The band plays Satellite Music Hall on Sunday, Feb. 28, 2027. The show starts at 7 p.m., and tickets are through Ticketmaster. It was announced Oct. 26. A Sunday-evening start means you can scream along to "Rock and Roll All Nite" and still be in bed at a reasonable hour before Monday.

If you've never seen Hairball, the short version is that it's an '80s arena-rock show compressed into one night. The Minnesota-based band covers acts including KISS, AC/DC, Mötley Crüe, Queen and Guns N' Roses, per a profile from Music Gateway. They'd prefer you not call them a tribute band, though that's how the listings file them. The band's own pitch describes the show as an experience, an attitude and an expression of music.

They're also road dogs. One band member told a Minnesota outlet that Hairball plays somewhere between 125 and 130 shows a year. Back home, the band's summer stand at Bayfront Festival Park in Duluth has become a yearly tradition, WDIO reported.

One night, a dozen arena acts, and nobody pretending to be too cool for it.

The venue is the other draw. Satellite Music Hall is Live Nation's new room at 1291 Autumn Ave., right next to Crosstown Concourse in Midtown, and it holds 1,300 people, according to TicketNews. The name is a deliberate nod to the city's history. Satellite Records was founded in 1957 by Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton and later became Stax after moving to McLemore Avenue, as Live Nation noted when it unveiled the venue. The hall also partners with the Stax Music Academy, whose students get to perform, produce and engineer shows there. The Band CAMINO was booked to christen the room in September, per Crosstown Concourse.

Hairball typically headlines rooms around 2,100 capacity, so a 1,300-capacity hall is a slightly tighter fit than the band is used to. For a show built on pyro-sized energy and crowd participation, a full, slightly cramped room is a good thing.

Memphis knows its music history better than most cities, and it has never been shy about a good time either. A new room named for Satellite Records hosting a night of Mötley Crüe and Queen covers might seem like an odd fit. It isn't. Not everything at the new hall has to be a history lesson.

Tickets are on sale now. Dig out the leather jacket.

Sources: Profiling the Hairball band - Music Gateway (musicgateway.com); Untangling Hairball: how a Minnesota-based arena rock tribute band draws in millions (mztributebands.com); Behind the scenes at Hairball: Duluth's rock tradition - WDIO (wdio.com); Satellite Music Hall opens 1,300-capacity Memphis venue - TicketNews (ticketnews.com); Honoring Memphis' Musical Roots: Satellite Music Hall Debuts at Crosstown Concourse - Live Nation Entertainment (news.livenationentertainment.com); Satellite Music Hall Breaks Ground at Crosstown, Partnering with Stax Music Academy - Choose901 (choose901.com); The Band CAMINO opens Satellite Music Hall - Crosstown Concourse (crosstownconcourse.com); Hairball - Ticketmaster (ticketmaster.evyy.net); Hairball at Satellite Music Hall - JamBase (jambase.com)