Dolly Parton Plots Charitable Hometown Tour Stop
With the full list of dates still under wraps, we do know one stop on Dolly Parton’s hotly-anticipated Pure and Simple tour: November 15th in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
Just six miles south of Parton’s hometown of Sevierville, Pigeon Forge is home to the entertainment icon’s theme park, Dollywood. She’ll hold her concert there at the LeConte Center, with tickets on sale July 1st and proceeds benefiting her Imagination Library — a non-profit organization that provides free books to young children. The Imagination Library has shipped more than 70 million books (and counting) to kids in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.
Taking Parton to more than 60 cities in the U.S. and Canada, the Pure & Simple tour is the singer’s first major North American concert tour in more than a quarter century. “There’s only four of us on stage,” she told Rolling Stone Country earlier this month, explaining the thought behind the tour’s moniker. “We play different instruments, and we all sing and do all those songs that people know, but they’re just not as big and we don’t have a lot of effects on stage. We did some shows at the Ryman [Auditorium] and at Dollywood all scaled down and people loved it. I got the best reviews I ever got! So I thought, ‘Well, why not just take that on the road?'”
Parton’s accompanying Pure & Simple album, which will be packaged in a box set along with Dolly’s Biggest Hits, will hit stores this summer.
Catch the living legend on next weekend’s ACM Awards, where she’ll receive the Tex Ritter Film award for her hugely successful Coat of Many Colors TV movie. Parton will also perform on the live broadcast with Katy Perry.