Mat Kearney brings a new record back to the Carolina Theatre

The songwriter returns to Durham on Friday, April 16, 2027, his first Triangle show since September 2024, this time carrying Hanging by a Heartstring.

The last time Mat Kearney played the Carolina Theatre was a Monday night in late September 2024. It's been about two and a half years since then, and he's booked the same room again with a different record to show it.

Mat Kearney plays the Carolina Theatre in Durham on Friday, April 16, 2027, at 7:30 p.m. The date was announced Oct. 27, and tickets are on sale through the Carolina Theatre box office. It's his first Raleigh–Durham show since Sept. 23, 2024, which was also at the Carolina Theatre. No opener has been listed yet.

The new album is the reason for the trip. In June, Kearney announced *Hanging by a Heartstring* and set an Oct. 9 release date. Earlier in the year, Local Spins in Grand Rapids reported that he was aiming for an October release and had already been previewing new songs on social media. The record will be about six months old by April. That's usually long enough for the new songs to settle into a set and sit comfortably next to the ones people bought tickets to hear.

Kearney kept working the road between the two Durham dates. In 2025 he toured behind a deluxe edition of *Still Drowning in Nostalgia*. This past winter he took out the Acoustic Trio Tour, a stripped-down version of the show that played rooms like the Argyros in Ketchum, Idaho, in February. So this spring's run comes from a writer who has spent a while working out how his songs hold up with less around them, and who now has a batch of new material to try that on.

The room suits that. The Carolina Theatre holds 1,323, which is big enough for a Friday night to feel like an event and small enough for the quieter songs to carry to the back rows. Kearney's catalog moves between rock, indie and folk, and a theater with real seats and good sound handles the full-band moments and the solo ones equally well. It's also the room where this market last saw him, so plenty of people in those seats will be checking the new songs against a show they remember.

This won't be a quick stop-in on the way to somewhere bigger. It's a headline night in a historic Durham theater on a spring weekend, eighteen months after he last played here, with a fresh album as the main draw. If you were at the 2024 show, this is a chance to hear how the new record changes the set. If you've only known him from the radio, a 1,300-seat theater is a good size to catch up in.

Practical notes: the show starts at 7:30 p.m. on a Friday, so leave yourself time for dinner and parking. Buy through the theater's own box office link so you know what you're paying. Support hasn't been announced yet, so watch the venue's listing for an opener.

Thirty-one months between visits isn't forever. It is long enough to come back with something new, though, and on April 16 Durham gets to hear it in a room it already knows well.

Sources: Mat Kearney – Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Tunesmith Mat Kearney set for Meijer Gardens show – Local Spins (localspins.com); Mat Kearney touring to support deluxe album Still Drowning in Nostalgia – antiMusic (musicpressbox.antimusic.com); Argyros presents Mat Kearney: The Acoustic Trio Tour – Visit Sun Valley (visitsunvalley.com); Mat Kearney at Carolina Theatre – tickets (ticketmaster.evyy.net)