Effin returns to Oklahoma City in March, his first show here since 2020

The Heartbeats Tour brings the producer to the Tower Theatre on March 11, 2027, with Nikita, the Wicked and AYCH in support.

Oklahoma City's dance-music crowd has waited a while for this one. Effin last played here in April 2020, at the OKC Farmers Market. His next visit moves up the street to a 1937 movie palace on 23rd.

Effin plays the Tower Theatre on Thursday, March 11, 2027, with the show starting at 8 p.m. Nikita, the Wicked and AYCH open. Tickets are $20 to $50 through Prekindle. The date was announced Oct. 21, and his previous Oklahoma City show was April 9, 2020.

The occasion is a new album. Effin is taking *Heartbeats* on the road for a 37-date tour in early 2027 that hits San Diego, Seattle and Brooklyn among other cities, EDM Identity reported when the dates were announced. The Heartbeats Tour opens Jan. 15 at Mutiny Warehouse in Salt Lake City, so by the time it reaches Oklahoma City in March, the show will be nearly two months into its run and well dialed in.

The support slots are worth showing up early for. EDM Identity describes AYCH as a bass artist and Nikita, the Wicked as a "dance music villain." Nikita is a San Francisco-based DJ and producer whose sets lean on what one promoter listing calls a powerful, cinematic energy. Both are on the full run, so this is a package tour rather than local openers rotating in.

The room is a big part of the appeal. The Tower Theatre opened July 15, 1937, at 425 NW 23rd St., designed by architect W. Scott Dunne as an ornate, 1,500-seat movie house with a pipe organ, per Cinema Treasures. In 1965 it ran *The Sound of Music* for 82 weeks, which became the longest run for a film in Oklahoma history. The theater later went dark for years and spent about a year as a live music venue from January 1999 to January 2000 before closing again.

Its revival came with the rest of the neighborhood. A multimillion-dollar renovation turned it into a working concert hall again, and Pollstar covered its reopening; the theater is widely seen as central to the redevelopment of the Uptown 23rd district, per Wikipedia. Today it is a 1,000-capacity room with Art Deco bones, which means a bass-heavy show here feels a lot closer than one in a warehouse.

Five months out, the cheap end of that $20-to-$50 range is the reason to buy now rather than later. A Thursday-night 8 p.m. start leaves room for dinner on 23rd before doors.

It has been almost seven years since Effin's last Oklahoma City set. The Tower is a good place to make up for lost time.

Sources: Effin Heartbeats Tour dates (EDM Identity) (edmidentity.com); Nikita, the Wicked (Resident Advisor) (ra.co); Tower Theatre (Cinema Treasures) (cinematreasures.org); OKC's Tower Reopens (Pollstar) (news.pollstar.com); Uptown Oklahoma City (Wikipedia) (en.wikipedia.org); Historic Tower Theatre reopens on 23rd Street (News 9) (news9.com); Effin at Tower Theatre (JamBase) (jambase.com)