Are you an EARLY BIRD?

Are you an EARLY BIRD? Save money when you buy early!

You can save 25%-50% on tickets to certain shows in select seating areas and for select performances within a run. Tickets to most shows will go on sale to the public on Aug. 1, but Straz Center members can buy tickets now. Check out all of the benefits of membership, and get your tickets today!

The Early Bird sale ends on Aug. 31. Complete details and restrictions are noted with each show. Limit 2 Early Bird tickets per account per show. Discounts may be revoked or suspended at any time.

See a complete LIST of series and shows included with the EARLY BIRD discount on our website.

SHOW JUST ADDED: Natasha Bedingfield

Grammy nominated singer/songwriter Natasha Bedingfield has announced her upcoming Less Is More summer tour presented by Freschetta. The tour is in support of her most recent critically acclaimed third studio album, Strip Me (Epic Records).

Special guests on the tour, produced by Live Nation, include multi-talented singer-songwriter and actress Kate Voegele.

Show is Thursday, July 14, at 7:30 p.m. at The Ritz Ybor! Early doors open at 5:30 p.m.

Regularly priced tickets start at $20. Tickets go on sale to the general public TOMORROW, Fri., April 29th at noon.

BUY TICKETS HERE.

Cheech and Chong light up TBPAC on 9/28

Cheech and Chong come to TBPAC's Morsani Hall on 9/28 with their Light Up America ... tour.

Onsale information:
Music Today and Tier 1 TBPAC donors: 8/26 at 12n
Tier 2 TBPAC donors: 8/27 at 12n
General public: 8/29 at 4:20pm

Tickets are $39.50 and $59.50.

This show was just added to a whole slate of great stand-up comedians and spoken word artists coming up at the end of Sept./start of oct. including:

Margaret Cho - 9/25
Henry Rollins - 9/29
Lewis Black - 10/3
Joel McHale - 10/4

Daniel Tosh - on sale 2/9 at noon!

Comedian Daniel Tosh plays Ferguson Hall on April 5 at 8pm. The show goes on sale this Saturday - tomorrow - at noon.

I spent a chunk of time on YouTube trying to find a video of his stand-up that was clean enough to post on this blog. Wow. That was a challenge.

I ended up finding a clip of him on a radio show, where he actually talks about the difficulty of airing his comedy in the land of very stiff FCC fines. Check it out.



Also, after a bit of digging, it seems many young fans of comedy are dividing up into camps - one who claims Tosh is king, the other who feel that honor belongs to Dane Cook.

I might argue that honor belongs to the likes of Carlin, Pryor, Foxx, Bruce or even Hicks - but maybe I'm showing my age.

Frankie Valli on The Today Show

Follow this link to check out a clip of Frankie Valli's appearance on The Today Show from this morning. You'll need to wait out a commercial first, but it's there.

Don't forget, JERSEY BOYS - the red-hot musical based on the rise of Frankie Valli and the Four Season - goes on sale to the public on Oct. 14. This is the EXCLUSIVE Florida engagement of this four-time Tony Award winner.

GODSMACK - On sale March 17 at noon!

And here it is, the other rock on-sale I was talking about in the Bright Eyes announcement.

Godsmack will play TBPAC's Carol Morsani Hall on Fri., May 11. Tickets are $41 and go on sale this Sat. at noon. These guys sold out the Sundome last summer, and we expect tickets to go pretty fast for this date considering we have about 1/3 of that capacity.

Listen to 98Rock this week for your chance to win tickets before you can buy them.

Bright Eyes on sale Saturday at noon!

Indie/rock/folk/emo/pop/somebody-needs-to-agree-on-a-genre-of-this-band Bright Eyes is coming Wed., May 16 to Carol Morsani Hall! Tickets go on sale this Saturday (March 17) at noon by either calling 813.229.STAR or logging on to TBPAC.ORG. Set a reminder timer, because these tickets are not going to last!

Bright Eyes played Tampa Theatre not too long ago and sold it out. I was baffled when my wife and I walked by and saw dozens and dozens of crying waify girls standing outside who couldn't get tickets. (We didn't even know the show was on that night, and thought maybe someone in there had died) There just seemed to be a lot of crying going on in general. I have a friend who works there, who we could plainly see in the lobby. When we waved as we walked by we were instantly accosted by security who told us we weren't getting in there no matter who we knew.

Oookay ...

A friend here was quick to comment after we booked the show and I described them to the staff as emo that Conor Oberst really isn't emo, and that it's an unfair label. I was instantly reminded of how Andrew Eldritch of The Sisters of Mercy adamantly denied he was a goth or that the Sisters were a goth band, still doesn't mean that 90% of his fans weren't ...

Anyway, the whole thing ended by a third the marketing staff sending funny pictures of emo kids. I can't share a lot of them here or I would. You're smart people, you can figure out how to find your own.

Also ... I should be announcing another big-time rock act later this week that also goes on sale Saturday. I just can't say today.

I've had a few folks I deal with ask me if we're "going to start booking rock shows" now. We've always booked rock shows, it's just sometimes few and far between when rock bands tour halls like ours. I'm still very, very sad that we could never make it onto the Foo Fighters Skin and Bones acoustic tour they were on. I think Morsani Hall would have been a killer place to see that show.

-dj

TBPAC: A bit o' housekeeping

First, go friend our myspace profile if you haven't yet. You know you want to.

Also, a reminder of some show on-sales (we really do try to shill hard in the blog, but I'm also really tired of hearing people say that they don't hear about it when we add shows). These are listed in order of the show date, with the on sale info following:

• Dec. 9 - Jim Gaffigan - a 10p show was added a few weeks back, get em while they're hot! On sale now.
• Dec. 14-16 - One Slight Hitch - a staged reading of a play by Lewis Black. Come see the play then offer feedback to Lew yourself afterwards. On sale now.
• Jan. 20 - Jon Stewart - On sale now to donors, on sale to the public Dec. 1 at noon. Allow me to editorialize a bit here. Get your tickets in advance or pay a ridiculous amount to a ticket broker in order to see the show.
• Jan. 29 - LeRoy Bell and His Only Friends (Club Jaeb Series) - On sale now. Check out the link to listen to some samples. Good stuff.
• Feb. 14 - Joe Bonamassa - On sale now.
• Feb. 17 - Julio Iglesias - On sale to donors on Dec. 4 at noon, on sale to the public Dec. 8 at noon.

And finally, don't forget to go chime in on our open thread on holiday music!